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Suppliers

Our supply chain is complex. It ranges from major strategic relationships with contract manufacturers that make final medicines for us to suppliers of key materials.

EHS audits
We conduct regular EHS audits of our key suppliers to check they comply with our EHS standards and key legislation. In 2004, we carried out 35 site-based EHS audits of existing and potential suppliers. We found a wide variation in performance across the sites audited. The lowest score was 22% and the highest was 92%. We make recommendations to sites following the audits and have a process to monitor progress, with a particular focus on poorly performing sites.

In 2004, three potential key suppliers achieved unacceptable EHS scores (less than 30%) and therefore we did not source from them. No existing supplier scored below 30%.

We found that health and safety was generally well managed at supplier sites in Europe and North America. However, we identified some challenges in emerging economies, especially in areas relating to fire prevention and response, occupational hygiene and control of chemical exposure, identification of hazards and risks, and systems for reporting and investigating incidents. See suppliers and contractors (in the environmental section of this website) for more about our EHS audits.

Supplier performance
We have approximately 80 centrally managed key suppliers, which include both contract manufacturers and suppliers of materials.

We are working towards reporting the health and safety performance of our contract manufacturers. This is a more difficult process than collecting data from our own sites because contract manufacturers are independently managed.

In 2004 we collected health and safety data from 13 major contract manufacturers. This data is not included in the verification by ERM.

Employees at the 13 contract manufacturers who reported health and safety data worked a total of 12.8 million hours on manufacturing GSK products in 2004.

Lost time injury and illness:
There were 65 lost time injuries and 16 lost time illnesses corresponding to a combined rate of 0.64 per 100,000 hours worked.

Injury and illness without lost time:
There were 121 injuries without lost time and 22 illnesses without lost time corresponding to a combined rate of 1.11 per 100,000 hours worked.

Calendar days lost from injury and illness:
There were 1,540 lost days from injuries and 84 lost days from illnesses corresponding to a combined rate of 12.71 per 100,000 hours worked.

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