Due Diligence Required – How Brands & Retailers Can Better Prepare for Regulatory Action

Regulatory bodies across the US and EU have been increasingly stepping up requirements on supply chain due diligence programs.  We have seen this in the US with the NY State Fashion Act and the UFLPA as well as in the EU with the Circular Economy Package, with proposed rules on making sustainable products the norm.  Supply chain visibility and transparency is no longer a “nice to have” but a requirement to import goods into major global markets.

Understanding your supply chain after T1 can be a difficult task - it is a significant challenge to gain visibility upstream and trace a specific purchase order or product’s complete chain of custody. However, this transparency and traceability is becoming increasingly vital. It’s now crucial for brands and retailers to perform supply chain due diligence and importers need to be prepared to provide clear and convincing evidence of this, as failure to do so can result in: 

• Damaged brand reputation
• Significant legal costs
• Incurred costs of shipping goods back to the point of origin
• Missed sales

But what does clear and convincing evidence mean and how do you present this?

Well, for example, the CBP has published guidance for importers which outlines the following as requirements:

• Document Reconciliation & Transaction History
• Supply Chain Mapping by Tier & Chain of Custody
• Robust Vendor Compliance Program
• Non-Compliance Remediation
• Vendor Production Capacity & Tracking
• Bill of Materials Management & Consumption tracking

This is not a simple exercise. Collecting this documentation can be a substantial drain on resources – but we’re here to help!

Pivot88 can help you to not only centralize all this information but capture it - providing deep insight through a variety of actionable real-time analytics. Our solution offers a broad range of modules to close the loop on your quality & compliance processes while educating users on best practices and current standards all from one platform.

With Pivot88 you can address: 

Traceability – Our Applied Artificial Intelligence driven Traceability module enables the digital reconciliation of your entire supply chain.  All required documents can be uploaded to our system for easy access & management.  This is done at the purchase order level.

Mapping – When documents are uploaded, our AI scans each of the documents and builds a digital and interactive map for your chain of custody as well as an overall view of your tiers. 

And a robust Vendor Compliance Program including:

Audits - Pivot88 has a comprehensive audits module that enables our clients to collect all relevant data about suppliers.  This includes, but is not limited to: environment audits, technical audits, CSR, labor, etc.  The options are endless.

Remediation - Non-conformities and non-compliances are easily tracked within our solution and remediation can be easily tracked through our solution.  Clients and vendors can submit non-conformity reports linked with each audit where a non-compliance was discovered, enabling easy access to historical records.

Vendor Training & Evaluation - Our clients can upload customized training content to ensure that their vendors are properly trained on their compliance initiatives and requirements.  Testing can be done in various formats, either through surveys or assessments with clients able to track each individual user’s progress.

Vendor Capacity & Production Management - The CBP will be requiring production capacities for each of the vendors within your supply chain.  Our WIP/Production Tracking module can easily help you capture real time production information and have access to historical information – tracking your production orders at each step.

Bill of Materials & Consumption Tracking - Integrate with your PLM to share Bill of Materials directly with your vendors.  Vendors can add consumption values to each component related to a product to better track sustainability goals. 

Customized Reporting – See the metrics and follow the KPIs that are specific to your business needs.   Pull data collected within Pivot88 and integrate with 3^rd party data sources to correlate information in a meaningful way, defined by you.

What’s more is Pivot88 can help you tell this story from one single dashboard.

The time to act is now - contact us today to learn more.