Auto Industry Collaboration Key To Addressing Conflict Minerals Challenge

October 22, 2012— Many companies, and entire industries, are still coming to terms with how they will find, and report on, the presence of “conflict minerals” in their products and supply chains. Due to recently finalized rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), hundreds of thousands of companies in numerous industries will need to report on the use of conflict minerals by 2014. The goal is to make sure that these minerals — tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold (“3TG”) — are not financing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the surrounding countries.

In the automotive industry, where I’ve worked on corporate responsibility issues for more than 12 years, this task is particularly daunting: tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold are used in numerous automotive components and manufacturing processes, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and Tier-1 suppliers can each have thousands of suppliers. Yet like many industries, these supply chains are overlapping and highly interconnected, with only a few companies sometimes supplying a certain product such as resin to the entire industry. Companies in our industry agree that working together on a complex issue such as conflict minerals can yield efficiencies and make things easier for everyone. The challenge is to align the individual corporate styles of industry companies to take unified action with flexibility for implementation.

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