Caterpillar Inc. sustainability report Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Douglas R. Oberhelman has never been more committed to sustainable development that he is today. He is concentrated on question what does the world need while world population is growing and modernizing. But what the world needs is very hard to find, because everyone wants something else. The Caterpillar Inc. is world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, industrial gas turbines, diesel and natural gas engines and diesel-electric locomotives.
Caterpillar has more than 125,000 employees. They have more than 300 products in more than 180 countries. While reading the sustainability report I found a lot of useful basic information about company and its mission and vision. I wrote some basic information that I found in the report as an introduction of a company. A lot of them were given in the CEO’s Douglas R. Oberhelman message. He talks about what they have achieve, where is their focus etc.. I found his speech very useful because I have got the basic picture of the company, what they do etc..
That is the reason why I would give all 25 points for basic information part. Mission and vision is given clearly. In both there you can find goal to preserve the planet. In my opinion they have very good written vision, it talks about fulfilling people basic need such as shelter, clean water, sanitation and reliable power. Good written vision and mission are very important for me, because I come from faculty of economics and the first thing that I have learned about representing any company is that vision and mission are very important to potential investors and business partners.
For that reason I would give full 25 points for this part of sustainability report. Picture 1: The world in progress (CEO world magazine). Description of sustainability management is not clearly given as well as sustainability programme, material and energy flow, environmental impacts of the products and services and the analysis of the problems and challenges. All those topics are overlapping and they form a whole unit. The main focus of the report is energy. First they wrote an energy statement that says that Caterpillar Inc. as a fundamental interest in and understanding of energy as a global consumer and power industrial manufacturer and a major manufacturer of energy conversion and power generation products. For them energy is a key requirement for sustainable progress and development around the world. They find challenge in rapidly rising energy consumption, driven by worldwide population growth, improving global living standards. Their main concern is their effect on environment and global climate change. I disagree about part talking of global warming because of greenhouse gas emission.
I think that climate changes are part of Earth life cycle. In my opinion there should be more focus about earth pollution, water pollution etc.. On the other hand because of global warming drama, many governmental and intergovernmental organizations are trying to prevent pollution that should cause global warming. It is very difficult to find exactly where they describe sustainability management and sustainability program. In every paragraph of the sustainability report there are some things that describe how they do or plan to improve economic, environmental, social and governance performance.
For me very interesting paragraph was about supporting healthcare and education programs. For example in South Africa Caterpillar sponsors a free mobile dental care service for disadvantage children, whose teeth have never been checked before. In Peru Caterpillar initiated a program to improve children’s reading ability. Safety is very important for Caterpillar. That is the reason that Health and Safety has few pages in sustainability report. The recordable injuries per 200000 worked hours dropped from 6. 06 at year 2003 to 1. 3 at year 2011. Their goal is to reduce that rate to 0. 6 until year 2020. At the end there is listed lot of other goals that Caterpillar wants to achieve before 2020. They want to: increase energy efficiency by 25%, reduce absolute greenhouse gas emission from existing facilities by 25%, eliminate waste by reducing waste and reusing or recycling all that remains, hold water consumption flat, increase custumer materials effiency by 20% In my opinion the Caterpillar’s sustainability report is written in understandable way.
It is a little bit difficult to compare it with some other because everything is overlapping. Language is clear and it is easy to find key point that author of this sustainability report wanted to give. I especially like the graphic design, I think this kind of report can be very boring but with this kind of graphic design it is very interesting. In total I gave 395 points out of 450 points, and I think this is well built sustainability report, which can give you good view of company achievement and plans on environmental, economic, social and governance performance.
Here are the points according to different topics: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Basic information (25/25 pts. ) Sustainability policy (mission and vision) (25/25 pts. ) Description of sustainability management (10/25 pts. ) Material and energy flows (40/50 pts) Environmental impacts of the products and services (75/75 pts. ) The analysis of the problems and challenges (30/50pts. ) Sustainability programme (70/75pts. ) Reliable, understandable, comparable (70/75 pts. Appearance, language, graphics (50/50 pts. ) For the conclusion, I think that sustainability report is targeted to potential investors, business partners, to consumers and very directly to people who would like to work for Caterpillar Inc. I can Support my statement with lots of health and safety goals that are written in sustainability report. Links: Caterpillar sustainability report, 1. 10. 2012: http://www. caterpillar. com/cda/files/3694814/7/CAT-015_2011_SR_PDF_v2. 5. pdf
