Supply Chain Management
At The McGraw-Hill Companies, our commitment to responsibility extends to our relationships with our suppliers and vendors. As a leading information services provider, our own intellectual capital forms the basis for our product offerings. As a result, we are less dependent than other businesses on raw material suppliers to bring our products to market.
We conduct business with all suppliers in an ethical manner and with the greatest integrity, following our Code of Business Ethics in all business dealings, and we take a number of steps to ensure suppliers are operating in an ethical manner. Supplier contracts include language, as applicable, forbidding the use of child labor, ensuring performance in accordance with all local laws and requiring compliance with product safety laws and regulations.
Further, our concern for the environment extends to the practices of our vendors, which we review annually. For our paper suppliers, for example, we require a copy of their environmental policy, survey them annually to make sure they are in compliance with all federal, state and local environmental regulations, and encourage the use of independent, third-party certification to ensure that the paper we purchase comes from sustainably managed forests. We also recently began a green procurement effort, in which we review janitorial service companies to assess their use of green cleaning products and cleaning methods.
In 2010, we began work to develop a standard supplier review in order to understand the current environmental and sustainability efforts of our key suppliers as defined by spend. We surveyed a variety of suppliers, including our printing and packaging suppliers.
Supplier Diversity
Our Supplier Diversity Program supports minority and women-owned businesses. In 2010, we directed $65 million to minority and women-owned firms. Click here to learn more about our Supplier Diversity Program, which concentrates these efforts under one department in the company.
The McGraw-Hill Companies is an active member of the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) and participates in events throughout the year. In addition, each year we participate in the NY Business Opportunity Expo and the NMSDC National Conference. These efforts help promote awareness of our involvement to potential suppliers and customers.
Going Forward
As part of our continuous commitment to enhancing our supply chain practices we are pursuing the following:
- developing a uniform McGraw-Hill Supplier Compact,
- having our supplier policies and practices independently evaluated by a third-party and
- expanding our supplier survey to a wider universe of vendors.
