Global Citizenship

Supply Chain Management

• Original Smith Printing partners with Abbott and the Green Suppliers Network to provide environmentally friendly fulfillment services.

As with our own workforce, diversity in our suppliers is an essential element in Abbott’s ability to compete globally. Abbott is committed to purchasing from a diverse base of suppliers and actively seeks diverse businesses as partners. In the United States, these include small businesses and those owned by diverse groups, including minorities, women, veterans and nonprofits including sheltered workshops, as well as businesses located in Historically Underutilized Business Zones.

Abbott works with U.S. advocacy organizations that promote diverse businesses to identify suppliers and communicate sourcing opportunities. We also provide guidance to these suppliers through informal mentoring efforts and through our Supplier Excellence program, which reviews key suppliers’ performance metrics and results to determine their eligibility for Abbott’s Supplier Excellence Award. We further advocate for small businesses through our memberships in the Institute for Supply Chain Management Pharmaceutical Forum, the Conference Board Council on Supplier Diversity and the NMSDC Health Care Industry Group.

Abbott also maintains an aggressive outreach schedule including local, regional and national matchmaking events. These include the Reservation Economic Summit and American Indian Business Trade Fair (RES), the National Veteran Small Business Conference and Expo, the Women in Business National Conference and Business Fair (WBENC) and the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC).

In a year that was economically difficult for many businesses, Abbott reported that our purchase of goods and services from small and diverse suppliers was greater than $1 billion, an increase of more than 15 percent from the prior year. Today, Abbott works with more than 1,700 diverse suppliers and 162 nonprofit organizations.

Abbott continues to support the growth of high-potential Minority Business Enterprise suppliers by providing indirect financial assistance that enables their leaders to attend proven business programs through the ISM Pharmaceutical Forum. Our support has enabled business owners to attend the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College and the Advanced Management Education program at Kellogg School of Management.

We also work to educate our employees about the advantages of a diverse supplier base through our ethics and compliance curriculum, which is part of the required training for Abbott employees in the United States.