Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition Code of Conduct
The development of Dell's Supplier Principles was a key element of our commitment to work with our suppliers in promoting sustainable practices. We launched these Supplier Principles early in calendar year 2004 with involvement from our stakeholders. Initially, our focus was on communication, awareness and education to ensure that suppliers understood Dell's expectations. However, during this process, we realized that there was a tremendous opportunity to reduce inefficiency and confusion by collaborating with industry partners. Therefore, when a coalition of electronic manufacturers approached Dell to develop a joint industry code, we chose to participate. The result of this unprecedented effort is the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC) 
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The code was developed among Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP), International Business Machines (IBM) and the electronic manufacturers Solectron, Sanmina-SCI, Flextronics, Celestica and Jabil. Since the coalition’s inception, a number of brands and suppliers' companies have joined the effort by supporting this common industry code. A coalition of technology companies updates the EICC Code of Conduct periodically to reflect input from a wide variety of stakeholder organizations.
In October 2005, the EICC Group established a partnership with the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI), which represents information and communications technology (ICT) companies in Europe, North America and Asia. The partnership was formed to develop common implementation tools for supply-chain management and broaden the impact of this collaborative effort.
This common implementation tool set includes:
- A Supplier Risk Assessment for companies to evaluate the level of risk of a particular supplier in the area of Corporate Responsibility
- A Self Assessment Questionnaire which was released in early October 2005 and available in multiple languages
- A Common-Audit Methodology, which suppliers, participant companies and approved third-party auditors can use to obtain the benefits of a common audit approach. The tool set includes communication templates, supplier preparation guidelines, a facility audit question set, audit report templates and auditor guidelines, and training modules.
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A Web-based Platform to facilitate efficient and transparent information sharing among participants
EICC Code Provisions
The EICC contains provisions to address performance in the following areas:
| Labor | |
| Freely Chosen Employment Working Hours Humane Treatment Freedom of Association | Child Labor Avoidance Wages and Benefits Non-Discrimination |
| Health and Safety | |
| Occupational Safety Occupational Injury and Illness Physically Demanding Work Dormitory and Canteen | Emergency Preparedness Industrial Hygiene Machine Safeguarding |
| Environment | |
| Environmental Permits and Reporting Hazardous Substances Air Emissions | Pollution Prevention and Resource Reduction Wastewater and Solid Waste Product Content Restrictions |
| Ethics | |
| Business Integrity Disclosure of Information Fair Business, Advertisement and Competition Community | No Improver Advantage Intellectual Property Protection of Identity |
| Management Systems | |
| Company Commitment Legal and Customer Requirement Performance Objectives with Implementation Plan and Measures Training Worker Feedback and Participation Corrective Action Process | Management Accountability and Responsibility Risk Assessment and Risk Management Communication Audits and Assessments Documentation and Records |
Through this industry collaborative effort, we expect to obtain the following benefits:
- Improved working conditions where workers are treated with dignity and respect
- Increased efficiency and less duplication of efforts (suppliers can concentrate on driving change and improvement instead of responding to different customer-audit requests
- Greater industry alignment and understanding of best practices
- Industry-wide stakeholder engagement
- Benchmarking best practices for supply-chain implementation in our industry