Eaton: sustainably powering business worldwide

Planes. Hospitals. Factories. Data centers. Vehicles. The electrical grid. Every day, all around the world, people depend on technology, transportation, energy and infrastructure to live, work and thrive. Everything we experience in our modern world is made possible thanks to power.

So behind the scenes, who is supporting the safe and reliable operation of power and energy? As one of the "invisible giants," Eaton is dedicated to powering the daily lives of people worldwide.

Eaton, as a diversified power management enterprise with a history of more than 100 years, has released the sustainability report every year in China for the past 10 consecutive years, so as to share its efforts and achievements with clients, business partners, the community, employees and other industry influencers. 

This year is a year of significance, and in the same year the Eaton China 2017 Sustainability Report was published, which not only summarizes Eaton’s past glories but also showcases its strong confidence for a brighter future.

As the specification of corporate social responsibility, there seems to be chapters to look into in the Sustainability Report, but only those from the inside can explain its true mystery.

During her interview with China WTO Tribune, Anna Zhuang, Corporate Communications Director of Eaton APAC, showed her spectacular and unique insights around the Eaton China Sustainability Report, demonstrating Eaton’s promising outlook of powering the world with safe, reliable, green, highly efficient and sustainable energy sources.

About the Report: Sustainable development is not just a plain slogan

“China WTO Tribune”: This report is the 9th Eaton China Sustainability Report, how do you perceive the value it brought to Eaton?

Anna: In Eaton, sustainable development is way beyond a plain slogan, instead, it has been integrated into every inch of the company’s vision, commitment and daily operation.

For customers, we strive to provide efficient power solutions; for suppliers, we insist on evaluating sustainable performance in the selection process of supply chain management; for employees, we develop inclusion and diversity; for the community, we actively carry out public welfare activities to support education, the environment, poverty alleviation and the well-being of the elderly, so as to boost the long-term development of the community.

This 9th Eaton China Sustainability Report was honored with the GoldenBee Excellent CSR Report Evergreen Award 2017, representing Eaton’s unremitting and long-standing efforts in sustainability development. Eaton strives to integrate corporate vision with local practices, as well as penetrate stakeholders’ welfare into business operations of the organization.

From this year's report, we can see that Eaton has made more in-depth exploration on the sustainable supply chain. Does this indicate that Eaton will deploy the sustainable development report as management guidance for the sustainable development of supply chains in the future?

Anna: The Eaton sustainability report highlights our commitment to sustainability, which is deeply rooted in Eaton’s corporate strategy and daily operations. Undoubtedly, it will remain our tool to guide the corporate sustainable development of supply chains.

Eaton adheres to the goals of sustainable development and manages to combine it into the process of supply chain management. In addition, Eaton will push forward the digitalization transformation of supply chain management, from the adoption, approval and review of new suppliers, to proactive risk detection in each link of the process.

We are delighted to see that our current suppliers have reached consensus with Eaton with respect to the necessity of continuous improvements in the supply chain. For instance, when unexpected quality issues occur, our supplier would collaborate with Eaton’s professional team to work on solutions and to optimize the quality control mechanism. And through the on-site investigation and continuous follow-up measures conducted by Eaton, the inefficiency of the production process has been limited significantly.

Inclusion and diversity is also the focus of this report, which is widely perceived as a serious challenge for any enterprise. So in your view, what are Eaton’s "secrets" as to the implementation of inclusion and diversity across the company?

Anna: Not exactly some kind of secret, instead, I would like to talk about how much effort our company has put into the implementation of inclusion and diversity.

As quoted by Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management: "Be inclusive to the diversity of employees so that our company won't become a factory that shapes employees into a group of people with identical personalities." Regarding the process of recruiting, advancing and managing talent in the company, it is essential and challenging for our company to achieve inclusion and diversity. However, we do believe that only in this way can our employees truly realize their personal value and generate even more value for our company as a whole.

For those companies that are struggling to build inclusion and diversity within their companies, I believe that it is vital for them to firstly build strategic pillars of inclusion and diversity, which fit in their companies’ own unique cultures and business features. And at Eaton, we also established the Global Inclusion Committee, the Regional Inclusion Committee and the Inclusion Employee Resource Group, striving for diversified working environments, employee career development and employee welfare. Eaton’s inclusion and diversity strategy has reinforced the communication between leadership and employees that allows messages including Eaton's vision and leadership attributes to be effectively delivered to employees, and meanwhile employees’ voices can be heard and valued by leadership. We are proud to say that Eaton’s strategic pillars are constructed based on multiple angles including talent, performance, globalization and innovation, which truly reflect Eaton’s values and have deeply influenced our employees’ personal beliefs as well as their career development.

About development: difficulty calls for responsibility and commitment

This report shows that Eaton has been engaged in facilitating the implementation of New Urbanization. So what kind of opportunities and challenges does Eaton have and how will Eaton take advantage of these opportunities?

Anna: The development progress of new urbanization in China is also a brief history of environmental development.

For instance, inefficient power management has led to environmental and energy problems. As urbanization progress is accelerating in China, it is inevitable that city infrastructure will require increasing investment and innovation, so as to cope with the new era of digitization, informatization and the Internet of Things, while this rapid growth can never be achieved without vast amounts of energy consumption. That being the case, climate change, energy poverty, and inefficient power management have become an insurmountable obstacle in the sustainable development of a city.

Eaton makes what matters work, and when encountering these obstacles, Eaton is committed to further deep exploration into the new digitalization industry through developing innovative digital products and solutions with enormous investment of time and resources. In order to help our customers, partners and society as a whole to alleviate severe business and industrial challenges, Eaton corporation has implemented the global digitalization strategy, concentrating on the digital transformation of the front-end process, revenue-generating IoT, manufacturing productivity, industry 4.0 and internal productivity.

From utilities, buildings, health care facilities, and data centers to city transportation, air transportation, agriculture, and food processing, Eaton’s products are running reliably and stably all the time across the world, silently playing their role as an invisible giant.

Eaton is dedicated in powering business worldwide, but as the public perceived, power stands for energy consumption. So as sustainability development has become a mission in this era, will powering businesses sustainably become even more challenging?

Anna: Difficulty calls for responsibility and commitment. This is exactly why Eaton strives for making what matters work.

Whether in aerospace, electric power, petroleum, petrochemical and other industrial manufacturing fields, or in transportation, education, health care and housing, Eaton provides highly efficient, clean, safe and innovative products and solutions to assist our clients in saving energy and boosting efficiency, while at the same time, reducing their carbon footprints to alleviate environmental problems worldwide.

At the AirShow China 2018, I witnessed the integration of Eaton’s commitment to sustainability with its product design and technology. For instance, Eaton designed the world’s first high pressure commercial hydraulic power generation system to enhance the efficiency of fuel systems and hence to reduce carbon emissions; developed advanced debris and oil condition monitoring technologies that significantly reinforce motor reliability; and deployed composite materials and additive manufacturing technologies in aircraft components, saving a full metric ton in weight of each airplane.

This technology was also employed in the COMAC C919 single-aisle commercial aircraft program. As the manufacturer of key components of the C919 aircraft and business partner of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), Eaton supported its joint venture with COMAC in designing, developing and manufacturing the hydraulic and fuel conveyance systems for the program.

2018 is a significant year, marking the 40th anniversary of China’s reforming and opening-up. As a pioneer of corporate social responsibility, in which ways can Eaton make further contributions to society at large?

Anna: This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reforming and opening-up, and meanwhile is the 25th year since Eaton entered the Chinese market.

Eaton is determined to further expanding and deepening communication and collaboration with the Chinese government and local enterprises, in order to boost quality and efficiency as well as implement transformation and upgrading through penetrating into the global trade system.

Eaton has spared no effort in promoting sustainable development goals, emphasizing areas including gender equality, quality education, cheap and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, sustainable cities and communities along with responsible consumption and production. And in the future, Eaton will strive for continuously developing innovative technologies to further explore affordable, reliable and sustainable new energy, as well as extending marketing channels and the after-sales market to provide clients with better products and services. As called for by the UN and the Chinese government, Eaton will adhere to its own commitment in reviving the sustainable global partnership, by means of combining sustainability into every link of manufacturing, operation and supply chain management.

In all, Eaton will continue contributing to the growth of Chinese society by combining Eaton’s unique understanding of sustainability with the demands of development in Chinese society, aiming to achieve sustainable development goals in China and advance the GoldenBee Global 2030 CSR initiatives.