Suppliers

Global Supplier Quality (GSQ) establishes and maintains the necessary controls to ensure our suppliers comply with the applicable global regulatory requirements and meet or exceed our Quality Management System requirements. We implement rigorous supplier selection, evaluation, and monitoring processes to ensure that our partners consistently meet our expectations. We establish strategic, risk-based inventory targets for all raw materials, finished goods and spare parts (at varying levels), within our supply chain and distribution network, to provide enhanced risk protection from market, operational or geographic risks.

By designing our supply chain with resiliency, we are able to provide safe and reliable experiences for our customers:

• We supported more than 2.2 million procedures globally in 2023, via supply chain continuity and stability.
• Intuitive’s robotic surgical systems are known for their extreme reliability: they have more than 99 percent “up time,” meaning that they are almost always available when surgeons and care teams need them. Instruments & Accessories orders received are typically shipped within one business day.

Intuitive is committed to proactively establishing policies and practices that support strong corporate governance and financial transparency. Policies and statements of note to our current and future suppliers include our Supplier Code of Conduct, California Supply Chain Statement, UK Modern Slavery Statement, and Canada Forced Labour Policy Statement.

With global operations, Intuitive is committed to the highest standards of business conduct and considers its suppliers an extension of our business. Intuitive expects the same demonstration of commitment to legal, ethical, environmental, and social responsibilities from external suppliers.

Supply chain diversity, equity, and inclusion

Intuitive strives to maintain collaborative and trusting supplier relationships and encourage a broad diversity of suppliers to work with us. We currently verify diversity status of direct tier 1 suppliers in the following categories: Disabled owned, minority owned, women owned, and LGBTQ+ owned.

Intuitive Surgical encourages and recognizes the memberships in the following organizations: (membership is not required to do business with us).

• Diversity classifications and their certifying agencies:
  • Minority Business Enterprise (MBE)
  • National Minority Supplier Development Council
  • Women Business Enterprise (WBE)
  • Women's Business Enterprise National Council
  • Disabled Owned Business Enterprise (DOBE)
  • Disability:IN
  • Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Business Enterprise (LGBTBE)
  • National LGBT Chamber of Commerce
  • Service-Disabled/Veteran Owned Business Enterprise
  • National Veteran Business Development Council
  
  
• Small Business specific classifications and resources:
• Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB)
• Woman-owned Small Business (WOSB)
• Small Business (SB)
• Veteran Owned Small Business (VOSB)
• Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB)
• Historically Underutilized Business Zone Small Business (HUBZone)
• Small Business Size Standards
• SAM.gov
• HUBZone Map



Human Rights

To uphold fair labor practices across our supply chain, Intuitive enforces comprehensive guidelines and policies through our Supplier Agreement, Quality Agreement, and Supplier Code of Conduct. Beyond the initial screening process, we engage our suppliers through surveys to monitor labor practices. Further, we employ SaaS tools to monitor updates related to our supply chain. We follow industry norms such as the standards listed by the International Labour Organization.

Environmental

We’re collaborating with you for a sustainable future. We ensure that our operations meet the ISO 14001:2015 standard, an accepted international framework for environmental management. We’re also working with our suppliers to adopt this approach.