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Since the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 has been regarded as a pandemic, spreading its impact around the world. As a result, supply chain management of enterprises is facing more challenges. How to cope with this change through implementing preventive measures is essential for the sustainable operation of enterprises. In 2015, UMC issued the "GREEN 2020 Policy" and took the initiative to promote voluntary environmental protection actions by setting the goal of 10% each in the areas of water saving, electricity saving, and waste reduction, showing the company’s commitment to a sustainable environment. The Material Management Department of UMC knows the importance of supply chain, and has initiated the three-year "UMC Triple R League Project" green supply chain in 2017 after receiving strong support from SC Chien, UMC President and the CSR Committee Chairman of. The Triple R League Project invites suppliers to participate in the green supply chain, strengthens supply chain management, and fulfills corporate responsibilities as well as commitments, working together with suppliers to achieve the goal of sustainable operation through energy saving and carbon reduction.
How do we promote supplier participation?
In the beginning of the Triple R League Project, the project team encountered the immediate challenge of how to invite the suppliers to voluntarily join the project without any direct incentives, and how to stimulate the ambition and enthusiasm of the suppliers to achieve our set goals. Through substantial discussion between the project team and the suppliers as well as continuous brainstorming, we decided to carry out the promotion in the form of "competitions," and praise the suppliers with outstanding achievements via public annual awards. The openness and the positive exposure of the competition are the motivations that encourage the suppliers to join the Project.
Five implementation strategies of the Triple R League Project
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（1）Develop simple and feasible carbon reduction methods
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Through the "self health check," production processes and factory facilities of the suppliers can be better understood so that tailor-made and feasible solutions will be provided. This allows suppliers to accurately identify the target and implementation direction, and quickly start the carbon reduction plan as well as the follow-up work based on the company's operation and available resources.
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（2） Formulate competition rules and present awards to promote suppliers’ participation
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To avoid discrepency in carbon reduction targets due to the size of the company, the project adopts a "quantitative" or "qualitative" carbon reduction approach. Effective incentives are provided to encourage outstanding suppliers, and the size of the company will be taken into consideration to prevent the efforts of smaller companies from being ignored.
An open and formal award ceremony (Figure 1) is held every year. UMC's executives will personally attend the award ceremony to commend the suppliers with outstanding energy-saving and carbon-reduction results. In addition, a press release will be announced to show the results of the joint efforts.
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（3）Conduct on-site audit regularly to confirm the effectiveness of implementation
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To ensure that carbon reduction plan and implementation are on the right track, UMC conducts on-site audits for participating suppliers every six months. During the audit, UMC will carry out supplier data collection, evaluation, and result checks to better understand the progress and effectiveness of the measures implemented by the suppliers, providing timely guidance to confirm the direction and the overall effectiveness of the implementation.
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（4） Organize diverse sharing sessions regularly encourage continuous promotion
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UMC organizes two Triple R experience sharing sessions every year, which is helpful for the suppliers to gain the right ideas and learn successful experiences quickly. In addition to inviting the Factory Affairs Department of UMC to share the implementation results of the company and the excellent energy-saving projects with the suppliers, consultants and experts with professional authority from academia are also invited to provide guidance and experience sharing with suppliers who have shown outstanding implementation results. By inviting suppliers, experts and scholars in different fields, the issue of circular economy will be discussed from different perspectives. The sharing session is not limited to energy saving and carbon reduction; it also provides new thinking to the entire green supply chain.
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（5）Establlishing a knowledge inheritance and feedback platform
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To make the successful experience available for suppliers to learn and access at all time, UMC has compiled the experience and results from successful cases into guide books, and released the Triple R Experience Sharing Collection (Figure 2) for suppliers to use, serving as reference for future project implementation. In addition, UMC's official website has also added a Triple R section to create a platform exclusively for the Triple R Project (Figure 3) and provide a contact for inquiry so participating suppliers can exchange information and interact with each other. The platform enables UMC to hear everyone’s voice and feedback, know the actual needs and the improvements required for carrying out the project, and adjust the content and the method of the implementation appropriately, allowing everyone to continuously improve in energy saving, carbon reduction and green production.
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 Figure 1: 2020 (3rd) UMC Triple R outstanding supplier awarding ceremony
 Figure 2: Triple R Experience Sharing Collection Figure 3: UMC.COM Triple R League
Results and Achievements
During the three-year implementation period of the project, the number of participating suppliers increased from 26 in the first year to 35 in the second year, and continued to increase to 39 in the third year, with a total increase of 50% in three years. UMC’s efforts in energy saving and carbon reduction for the overall supply chain have achieved a carbon reduction benefit of 409,000 tons of carbon equivalent (CO2e), which is equivalent to the annual carbon reduction of 1,567 Daan Parks. In the past three years, UMC has achieved remarkable results, and has been unanimously recognized and praised by the Hsinchu City Government; relevant authorities; industries (Figure 4) and customers. In addition to extensive media coverage and the invitation by customers to share experiences, UMC has expanded its influence with leading upstream/downstream suppliers and manufacturers to participate in the project, further enhancing the ESG image of all participating companies. In the global green trend, UMC can only continuously innovate in advance in order to maintain its lead. Therefore, UMC also takes the initiative to think about and formulate the future goals in realizing sustainability. Even though the UMC Triple R League Project ended in 2020, we believe that this is just the beginning. The DNA of Triple R has been deeply embedded in the overall supply chain, continuing to expand and grow. UMC is proud to be a leader in green innovation. We hope to consider the Triple R initiative as a start, continue to make good use of corporate resources, and work with all stakeholders to create a sustainable future.
 Figure 4: UMC won the 2020 SGS CSR Award for outstanding supply chain management
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