-Fredrik, what is happening in the purchasing area and how has the pandemic affected your work?
There has been and is a rapid development, partly because almost all of us at Ericsson in Sweden have been working from home since March 2020 and have continued to do so during 2021. Even though we started our digitalization early, the pandemic has accelerated and increased the pace of digitalization for us, as for many others. We have had to work with our leadership and our culture in new ways, as well as checking in digitally with all employees regularly, so that everyone is included.
Within purchasing, we focus on securing the technology for all customer deliveries and that the entire company has the external resources needed, with everything from communication and IT to equipment for working from home.
-What lessons and experiences are you taking with you from the past year and how do you think the function will change going forward?
Since the company is working hard to roll out 5G around the world, we in purchasing have full focus on supporting our suppliers, and they have also supported us well when the supply chains in logistics, components, and energy supply have been affected during the pandemic. We have therefore worked through our strategies so that we have alternative solutions for all key components and have also managed to strengthen relationships at the executive level with our most important suppliers.
All the different regulations also place a lot of demands on the preparatory work with each new supplier, where we put a lot of effort into simplifying as much as possible and using various digital tools to shorten lead times but still have full compliance with the regulations. It is important for us and all employees not to waste time on time-consuming monotonous routines.
-In what way can the purchasing function contribute to the work for sustainability and the environment?
What I appreciate very much with Ericsson is that we have worked with sustainability within purchasing for a long time. We were already doing it when I started as purchasing manager for network expansion services in 2009. We call it ”responsible sourcing” and it includes our ethical code towards business partners, how we handle conflict minerals, recycling, and circularity. Everything lands in the UN's global sustainability goals and it is engaging to get several companies involved in the climate work, with special focus on the 1.5-degree goal and the business guide we jointly developed with various companies and institutions to halve carbon dioxide emissions before 2030. The opportunity to develop and gain new knowledge every day contributes strongly to making the work feel valuable.