At your side 24/7
SFS is a reliable companion throughout your day, from early in the morning to late at night, seven days a week. Not many people realize this, since our precision components and mechanical fastening systems are embedded in the successful products of our customers, where they perform often critical functions.
Your first contact with SFS products happens early in the morning when using your coffee machine or your smartphone. Driving to work, you are also surrounded by numerous SFS products: integrated in your car’s safety systems such as seat belts, airbags and braking systems, they help to protect your life in the event of an accident. At work, hard disk drives function with high-precision miniature SFS components. SFS products can be found in many electronic lifestyle products, such as adventure cameras, smart watches and smart home devices as well as a growing number of AR/VR solutions. In the field of healthcare, our precision components in bone screws, dental implant fixtures and surgical instruments help improve your quality of life.
Our value proposition:
creating sustainable added value for the customer
SFS components embedded into a customer’s product often account for less than 1% of the total product cost. But the costs at the customer end arising from procurement, logistics and handling operations can be several times the actual cost of these components. That is why we are not primarily focusing on reducing our direct product costs and differentiating ourselves on price – there would be limited potential. Instead, our main goal is to optimize our customers’ overall product-related costs. This approach generates significantly more cost-savings potential and allows us to create sustainable value for our customers. Our value engineering model focuses on product design, definition of manufacturing processes and on exploiting the power of digitalization. The result: custom-tailored products and intelligent solutions that increase the competitiveness of our customers. Hence, the SFS solutions lead to greater differentiation and stronger collaborative partnerships.
Sustainability is an integral component of our value proposition
Sustainability is important to us – it’s in our DNA! Embracing a sustainable mindset and practices drives innovation and gives us a chance to re-examine our products and processes on a daily basis and improve them continuously for the good of all stakeholders. As a value engineering specialist, working with our customers to develop sustainable products and solutions gives us a multitude of opportunities to utilize our expertise and offer our customers added value – in keeping with our corporate principle of “Inventing success together”. In close collaboration with customers and suppliers, we strive to improve cost transparency on an ongoing basis and also incorporate other aspects of sustainability into the calculations.
Detailed information on the topic of sustainability at SFS can be found at sustainability.sfs.com. As a signatory of the UN Global Compact, SFS is committed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and currently prioritizing following four goals: SDG 4 – Quality education, SDG 8 – Decent work and economic growth, SDG 12 – Responsible consumption and production and SDG 13 – Climate action. This prioritization is reflected in the material topics identified in the materiality assessment conducted in 2019 (economic performance, occupational health and safety, training and education, emissions reduction and socioeconomic compliance), which are reviewed every two years. SFS has set itself ambitious goals on these material topics:
- Economic performance: Steady creation of value for all stakeholder groups
- Occupational health and safety: Reduce the number of work-related accidents to half the 2019 level by 2025
- Training and education: SFS’s long-term goal is to have 5–7% of its permanent employees around the world participate in a dual education program
- Emissions reduction:
- Reduce CO2 emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by ≥90% until 2030 (measured as tons of CO2 per Swiss franc of value added) compared to 2020
- Reduce CO2 emissions (Scope 3) by ≥90% until 2040 (measured as tons of CO2 per Swiss franc of value added)
- Socioeconomic compliance: Fair, correct conduct is an expression of a healthy partnership. SFS should not be subject to any penalties in the area of socioeconomic compliance
The next sustainability report will be published at the end of May 2022 and, in addition to an updated materiality analysis, also provide information about progress made during 2021 and the Group’s priorities for 2022.