In a world of increasingly complex and global supply chains, the suppliers you choose to work with can significantly affect your business success. The right relationships can help you ensure continuity of supply, improve the quality, efficiency and sustainability of your operations, and improve customer satisfaction. More customers than ever are looking to work with companies with good sustainability credentials – with many online sustainability platforms (like IntegrityNext and EcoVadis) including the supplier ecosystem in their company assessments.
Achieving and maintaining your industry accreditations can also depend on your supplier relationships. ISO 9001, for example, requires businesses to show they fully understand the position of all their suppliers and that they have proactively addressed the risks and opportunities of working with them.
So for many reasons, your suppliers need to be a strong part of your business ecosystem, going beyond being simply a provider of raw ingredients or products. At Rakem Group, we work as a full business partner, delivering wide and sustainable supply chain solutions. And we use a QHSE framework to help us deliver it with impact.
Building QHSE into your supply chain
At Rakem Group, our quality, health, safety and environmental (QHSE) framework brings together guidelines, processes and procedures to ensure all the different aspects of our business work together efficiently, responsibly and effectively. It also creates a transparency of operations across our business that extends to our customers: our QHSE framework enables you to fully understand the way we work, and we can contribute to the strength, robustness and transparency of your own supply chain.
A focus on the four QHSE framework areas ensures our business compliance and keeps our people safe and engaged. But QHSE also enables us to go beyond simply ‘complying’ – enabling us to underpin constant improvement in efficiency, customer satisfaction/support, and sustainability, across our businesses.
Our commitment to continuous improvement and QHSE is demonstrably strong throughout the Rakem Group – our core values have been part of our DNA from the start:
- We’re highly compliant with all relevant regulations, not only in the industries we operate in, but also around people and HR.
- As a group, we have achieved a number of ISO certifications including ISO 9001 (Quality Management Systems), ISO 14001 (Environment Management Systems) and ISO 45001 certified (Occupational Health and Safety at Work).
- We believe in corporate social responsibility, and our CSR policies go far beyond the legal minimum. We make sure everything we do aligns with our customers’ needs.
As an ISO-certified business ourselves, we understand the work that goes into achieving and maintaining this type of accreditation and the role that suppliers play in it. We work closely with our own suppliers to achieve the same transparency of supply chain as our customers demand of us, giving you total visibility and clear expectations across your whole supply ecosystem.
A continuing focus on QHSE
We’re always looking at pushing the boundaries of the QHSE framework, going as far beyond the legislative minimum as possible. The way we work is already setting the standard for manufacturing, and we are committed to further continuous improvement across the four key QHSE areas, for example:
Quality
- We have a highly experienced testing function, but we continually invest in new roles so we can do more and deeper internal and customer testing. We are extending testing into raw materials, so we can increase our output quality, speeding up production and reducing rework for us and our customers.
- We also make continual process improvements beyond our manufacturing functions, for example streamlining our administrative and financial processes to deliver a better customer experience.
Health
- We go beyond legislative requirements to make sure our people are looked after, for example using time and motion studies to make workspaces more comfortable and accessible. We also promote physical health through the provision of a wide range of wellness therapies and activities.
- We create a safe environment for our teams to work in – we want to be a community where people feel valued for the work they do, and have the opportunity to progress.
Safety
- Safety is paramount to Rakem Group. We integrate continuous improvement into all of our safety schemes, whether it’s noise reduction in the warehouse or making vehicle movements safer.
- We will continue to go above and beyond, continuing to achieve and exceed risk reduction targets set for us.
Environmental
- We integrate environmental factors into all our decision-making processes, prioritising the decisions that deliver even greater carbon reductions. We optimise energy efficiency, water consumption and waste management, and support the development and distribution of eco-friendly products.
- We put sustainability above profit, for example choosing more expensive but locally produced packaging over cheaper packaging with less environmentally friendly shipping.
Conclusion
At Rakem Group, we’re proud to believe in people, planet, and profit – in that order. We centre our business around an approach that focuses on quality, health, safety and the environment, which makes it easy for us to create a happy, healthy and sustainable business. We go beyond manufacturing to deliver better products, services and customer experiences – and be a trusted business partner for our customers.
