WACKER revised the hierarchy of its management documents in 2011 and prepared a new policy for issuing Group regulations. Twenty-one regulations now govern topics of overall significance for the company. They concern management, organization and collaboration, law and compliance, strategy and business processes as well as financing, controlling, accounting and taxes. Numerous other controlled documents regulate processes for environmental and health protection, plant and workplace safety, and product safety, on a Group, regional and site-specific level.

All our processes are designed to keep customers satisfied, meet our obligations to society, and to secure WACKER’s competitiveness. Each of our sites achieves these goals in different ways. At Siltronic’s Portland site (Oregon, USA), a very effective “Quality and Value Improvement System” uses a wide range of control mechanisms – such as balanced scorecards, and systems for developing, prioritizing and tracking action plans. So that employees can view action plans and success rates at any time, Portland publishes them in a database and on a bulletin board.

We have developed an analytical tool that enables us to estimate, already in the R&D phase, the environmental impact of new products. Launched in 2012, the environmental analysis performed with the WACKER^® Eco Assessment Tool is gradually being established within the Group. It helps us to assess the sustainability of our products and improve it accordingly.

In 2011, en route to a Corporate Carbon Footprint report, we conducted the first survey of our indirect greenhouse gas emissions from bought-in energy (as per Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2). In 2012, we started determining our Scope 3 emissions. These include all emissions generated along the supply chain, e.g. by suppliers or through waste disposal and the transportation of products. This Corporate Carbon Footprint report is an important tool for improving climate protection.

We are in the process of standardizing our various IT systems for groupwide sustainability reporting. Standardization includes not only the management of environmental metrics, energy data, and environmentally relevant and safety-related events, but also audit planning and follow-up measures within the integrated management system. In 2012, we defined software requirements and began implementing them.