Designing Sustainable Supply Chains
In addition to costs, time, and quality, sustainability and resilience are increasingly important factors in the management of supply chains. Disruptive changes, such as climate change or electrification in the automotive sector, are contributing to an increasingly volatile business environment. ZF responds with a clear strategy towards an integrated, resilient, and sustainable value chain.
Our future and existing suppliers are to present their commitment to sustainability standards, which are assessed and become mandatory, ensuring our climate journey starts at the very beginning.
Sustainability Requirements
CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY BID CONDITIONS
ZF has introduced bid conditions in the sourcing process. The adapted Corporate Sustainability Bid Conditions are used to define sustainability requirements towards the supply chain. The updated content covers requirements regarding climate and nature, and social responsibility.
These requirements also address our customer requirements and, therefore, are one of the criteria in the decision making process.
Performance Assessment
SUSTAINABILITY SCORE
To assess a supplier’s sustainability performance, we have implemented a Sustainability Score. It is calculated based on three different input KPIs: Green Electricity share 2025 (GE 2025), NQC self-assessment questionnaire result (NQC) and Business Partners Code of Conduct acceptance (BPCoC). The SUS Score is used in the sourcing and New Supplier Approval processes.
This solution grants us transparency on environmental and social compliance, ensures the minimum sustainability standards are met, and supports our decarbonization strategy.
NQC SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
ZF requires new and existing suppliers to complete a self-assessment questionnaire SAQ provided by the NQC platform (automotive standard).
Due to higher attention and increasing requirements on sustainability (from customers, legislation, stakeholders), we are convinced that a joint approach within a sector will help us to better mitigate and prevent sustainability risks. We see benefits of a better comparability, higher acceptance, more transparency and also less effort for our suppliers.
Development
We continuously support our suppliers via regular and free of charge trainings on the ZF Supplier Academy. Please visit Trainings for Suppliers for more details.
