Setting requirements and follow-up with suppliers, deviation management, and auditing.
The best thing about working for Culinar
Working with a combination of Swedish primary production and exciting raw materials from all over the world.
Hi Paulina! This year you’ve started a digital platform for registration, mailing and follow-up of our supplier assessments. What’s the aim of this new system?
Supplier assessment is a really important part of what we do! The new system is intended to give us better information and to facilitate our work. We have increased the number of questions related to sustainability, and revised the form so it’s as easy as possible to use. Digitalization makes follow-up much easier, not least because we get information via the system instead of having to send and compile individual emails.
What are the biggest challenges of supplier follow-up?
One challenge of starting up a new platform is getting our suppliers to understand how the system works and to see the benefits of using our system instead of their own. It can also be difficult to find the right level of question we want to ask so they aren’t too detailed but still provide useful information for our assessment.
What has been the most exciting thing about working with the new platform?
One very instructive and exciting part of this process has been carrying out CSR audits of our suppliers. In May, we visited four suppliers, which led to many new insights and interesting conversations. All of them were positive about the audit. Our suppliers have different degrees of maturity, which means we can learn from some and help others.
How will you phase in the new system?
We have identified 40 suppliers to begin with, and will also start sending out surveys specifically for our raw materials. The ambition is that this year we will digitalize all data for all suppliers, and for a proportion of our raw materials. We will refine how we ask questions, carry out follow-ups, and create reports and trend analyses so we can optimize our data’s usefulness, not least for when customers ask questions.
What’s the plan for the future?
We have a comprehensive plan for future audits and are dedicating extensive resources to highlighting and following up sustainability risks in our supplier chain. The aim is for this to contribute to sustainable development of spice cultivation, to ensure access to spices over time.
