DHL 2009 Annual Report Download - page 97

Organisational enhancements
Procurement is a centralised function in the Group.  e heads of Global Sourcing
and their  category managers work closely with regional procurement managers and
report to Corporate Procurement.  is allows us to pool our needs worldwide whilst
satisfying the service and quality requirements of internal customers.
In order to streamline our regional organisation, we merged North and South
America into a single procurement region, thus reducing the number of procurement
regions to  ve. Now the regional competence centres take more responsibility for stra-
tegic procurement and the relevant processes.
In the year under review, we opened the  Procurement O ce China in Shang-
hai.  is o ce follows the principle of best cost country sourcing, which aims for an
optimum balance between cost, quality and risk.  e new procurement o ce will work
closely together with all regions to better meet our international requirements.
Our procurement success depends on the skills and calibre of our employees. We
therefore continued our FitProcurement programme in the reporting year, which
put us amongst the  best companies to be nominated for the international Talents
in Supply Chain Management prize.  is prize is awarded by the European Business
School and the Supply Chain Management Institute, both private institutions.
Together with these two organisations, we bestowed the ProLog Award for pro-
curement and logistics in  for the third time.  is award is given for scienti c
research with signi cant practical results. One of the research projects honoured was a
study of the ecological aspects of procurement.
Green procurement
Our Green Team, made up of procurement managers from various regions and
product groups, takes care of the environmental aspects of procurement. One of the
achievements of the Green Team has been to introduce a globally standardised form
that suppliers can use to furnish information on how well they meet environmental
requirements. Entrenching ecological indicators into the strategic procurement pro-
cess is also planned. Calculation of the total cost of ownership, for example, now also
includes energy and carbon e ciency.  is is intended to help us gauge the maturity of
our procurement markets in terms of environmental friendliness so that if necessary,
we can switch to more environmentally friendly procurement sources.
In many cases, environmental aspects are already being taken into account in pro-
curement. We are one of Deutsche Bahn’s  rst key accounts to use its new, climate-
friendly Umwelt Plus Ticket (environment plus ticket) for all business trips.  is means
that   of the electricity used comes from renewable energy sources.  e agreement
with Deutsche Bahn was concluded with retroactive e ect as of  January .  ere-
fore, the , tickets used in  resulted in savings of around , tonnes of 
emissions.
Another example is the new, eco-friendly mail sorting machines we purchased
from Siemens . Siemens will deliver  sorting machines for standard and compact
letters and up to  sorting systems for  ats and maxi  ats by .  e new sorting
machines for standard and compact letters alone will reduce our  emissions by
nearly , tonnes per year, and they also use   less energy.
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