Building Stronger Relationships

Building strong relationships with suppliers is central to our ability to create a sustainable supply chain. Without strong relationships, we lessen our ability to influence the sustainability goals and management processes of our suppliers. We base our relationships with suppliers on open communication, clear expectations and consistent requirements and processes.

We work to maintain these relationships by:

• Deploying a single, global product-creation process that combines aggressive execution of product plans with minimal variances
• Enhancing process and part stability, commonality and reusability
• Providing real-time performance data to our supply base
• Providing suppliers with greater access to senior Ford managers in small group settings
• Improving order fulfillment
• Engaging suppliers in discussions about process stability, incoming quality and corporate responsibility

Engaging Strategic Suppliers Through Our Aligned Business Framework

In addition to the efforts we make to build relationships with all of our suppliers, we engage even more robustly with our most strategic suppliers, through our Aligned Business Framework (ABF). We introduced the ABF for our most strategic suppliers in 2005, to improve quality, drive innovation and help us encourage shared commitment to sustainability goals. Through our ABF program, we help our Tier 1 suppliers develop the capability to manage their own supply chain sustainability issues.

We sign bilateral agreements with our ABF suppliers that comprehensively and formally spell out business commitments. For example, ABF suppliers must commit to manage and assure proper working conditions and responsible environmental management in their facilities and their supply chains. All suppliers, including our ABF suppliers must adhere to our Global Terms and Conditions. Requiring suppliers to commit to these terms reduces the risk of operational or reputational issues that could affect production and provides the basis for Ford to work with suppliers to ensure responsible behavior throughout our supply chain. See the Building Shared Commitment and Capability Throughout Our Supply Chain section for more on how we engage ABF suppliers on sustainability issues.