Due to changing global trends and emerging technologies, companies need to change their production methods in their operations to adapt to innovations. In this regard, Industry 4.0 transformation is one of the most important issues for achieving competitiveness and advantage in local and global markets, ensuring profitability and industry continuity. Thanks to R&D studies and investments and the intellectual capital on which they are based, Vestel implements Industry 4.0 practices and aims to contribute to the transformation of the consumer electronics and major household appliances sectors in Türkiye.
Committed to leading the industry in Industry 4.0 and digitalization practices, Vestel's digital transformation teams work in various fields. These teams are working on artificial intelligence software for horizontal-vertical value chain integration, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, smart automation, automated guided material handling vehicles (AGV) and autonomous mobile robot (AMR) applications. Vestel also focuses on Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) efforts to achieve operational excellence in production.
The Company derives its innovation power from the studies conducted at R&D centers and its R&D team consisting of 1,821 people. R&D teams continue to work on the development or application of new technologies, new product designs, product development, productivity improvement and cost reduction.
Vestel Elektronik was awarded in prestigious design competitions for many innovative projects designed at its R&D centers. The Company received 12 design awards as of the end of 2023.
Training courses are held for R&D teams to make them adapt to the requirements of the current times and to raise their competencies, thereby ensuring that the Company continuously aligns with technological developments, maintains its competitive advantage and adopts an innovation-oriented approach.
Vestel allocates R&D and Innovation budget for the development of low carbon products and services. In 2023, the budget allocated by Vestel for low carbon product development amounts to TL 1,030,650,502.
Vestel Elektronik and Vestel Beyaz Eşya make patent applications to various institutions for their inventions. In 2023, Vestel Elektronik submitted a total of 20 patent applications, including five European Patent (EP) applications to the European Patent Office (EPO), five PCT patent applications to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and 10 TR patent applications to the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TÜRKPATENT) for 10 inventions meeting the criteria. Besides, 64 patents were granted registration. In 2023, Vestel Beyaz Eşya submitted 133 patent applications and 86 patents were registered. Thus, the number of patents owned by Vestel Group of Companies, from which commercial revenues are generated, reached 119.
Within the Company, there are open innovation practices in line with the efforts of Zorlu Holding. Vestel's employees also play an active role in the A Bright Idea program executed by the Holding. A shared space was created within Vestel Elektronik to encourage brainstorming workshops in a collaborative environment. Furthermore, an employee acts as a bridge for the evaluation of ideas and monitoring of the process, especially for external R&D ideas and for forwarding these ideas both to senior management and to the relevant unit within R&D. In addition, the ideas of the Project Management Office (PMO) within the R&D department, which collaborates with customers, are closely monitored by senior management.
As part of the activities of its R&D units, Vestel establishes strong collaborations with many national and international institutions and organizations, particularly universities. Vestel continues to develop collaborative projects within four active Horizon 2020 programs that continued in 2023. In addition, proposals were submitted through the Digital Europe platform on issues related to the domain of Vestel Elektronik in EU policies.
As part of Zorlu Holding's Smart Life 2030 strategy, Vestel companies also attend A Bright Idea, an intrapreneurship program. Launched with the aim of developing an innovation culture and an entrepreneurship spirit within companies, generating permanent solutions for problems, blending these solutions with technology and developing their area of impact and access, the program encourages the Zorlu Group employees, who have “a bright idea,” to bring their ideas into life by receiving funding from Zorlu Holding after going through various assessments.
The teams that were entitled to receive investment established a start-up where Zorlu Holding was a partner with 25%. In the first stage of the investment, which is planned to be made in two phases, each team received an investment of TL 500,000. Within the scope of the partnership, startups can also receive support from Zorlu Holding in areas such as law, accounting, human resources, finance, and communication.
Abilitypool, Be Right Back, Conectohub, Geliver and Ne Ekersen were the startups that stepped into the entrepreneurial journey by receiving investments from the two cycles implemented under Parlak Bi’Fikir (A Bright Idea). Following the second cycle of the program, Selffix, which was decided to continue its entrepreneurial journey as an internal project within Vestel, also keeps working on its activities.
In line with its vision of being a technology company creating social and environmental benefits, Vestel integrates digitalization into both its production processes and working culture, and the products and services it offers. Transformation and digitalization in production processes are implemented within the scope of Industry 4.0. Other efforts and ongoing investments include proactively managing cyber security risks to provide customers with a better product experience, manage supply chain processes more effectively and protect data privacy.
Digital Transformation Office strives to maintain coordination at all stages of the digital transformation journey, design data-driven and appropriate methods/processes and promote them throughout the organization. The Company strives to adopt and introduce modern and agile methods in all of its operations through human-oriented working, systemic perspective and strategic management approaches. Vestel carries on its activities with 66 projects, 20 different transformation processes and methods, 491 employees and 103 transformation ambassadors.
Active participation of women in corporate life has positive impacts on the productivity and financial performance of companies. In this respect, Vestel encourages efforts to ensure gender equality throughout the Company, including recruitment practices. Under the guidance of Zorlu Holding's (Eşit Bi’Hayat) Equal Life Gender Equality Manifesto and being a signatory to the United Nations Women's Empowerment Principles, the Company assumes the responsibility to contribute to gender equality in society, in the electronics and major household appliances sectors, and among Vestel's employees at all levels.
Vestel established the Gender Equality Group within Vestel in order to develop volunteering projects that raise awareness with the motto “An Equal Life is Possible for All.” In this regard, a Domestic Violence Prevention Policy was published for all Zorlu Holding Group companies, including Vestel, which aims to ensure more equal working conditions for working mothers through the Happy Mother Project. In 2023, 10,133 people received 5,221 hours of gender equality training.
Women Entrepreneurs Association of Türkiye (KAGİDER) Equal Opportunity Model Certificate was obtained in 2023. In line with its gender equality approach, Vestel published “Eşit Bi'Hayat (An Equal Life) Dictionary" to serve as a guide to avoid sexist discourse patterns and idioms embedded in our language. It brought together alternative discourses that can be used from an equal and inclusive perspective in the dictionary, which can be accessed by all stakeholders via the Smart Life 2030 website.
Zorlu Holding and all of its companies (Zorlu Group) undertake to conduct business and take actions in full compliance with Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work adopted by International Labor Organization and, as a signatory party, United Nations Global Impact. This commitment includes standing against all forms of discrimination, providing a safe working environment, not allowing child labor, and ensuring a working environment where employees can freely express themselves. The sustainability of the commitment is guaranteed by the “Zorlu Holding Human Rights Policy” and “Zorlu Holding Ethical Principles.”
Talent gap or shortage is at the forefront of the problems that companies may face in the 21st century. As a company providing services in the fields of engineering and technology, Vestel considers talent management as a significant factor in its success and innovation capacity.
Attracting new and right talents to the Company with the motto “Being where the talent is" forms the basis of Vestel’s strategy. One of Vestel’s top priorities is to find the right talent to lead technology and digitalization, to retain existing talents, and to enable them to connect with Vestel. Talent management processes at Vestel are handled with a human resources analytics approach.
The training activities conducted at Vestel with both internal and external trainers are designed with the goal of discovering and developing a workforce that thinks, researches, questions, creates, innovates, and produces. Today, where the need for competent human resources constantly increases, Vestel implements its training investments for employees in terms of sections, departments and projects. The investment in development does not limited to Vestel employees. It also includes dealers and service employees. The Company analyzes the training of employees by grouping them by age, gender, seniority and training types. An average of 18 hours of training was provided per employee in 2023, and a training budget of TL 874 was allocated for each employee. The same year, a total of 1,944 hours of training was provided to 11,315 employees under the sustainability topics of “Environment" and “Zero Waste.”
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Employee Development Trainings |
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Vestel Technology Academy Vestel Academy provides training activities in line with the vision and mission of Vestel, which will contribute to progress of the Company towards its success target. All employees within the Vestel Group of Companies are provided with technical and mandatory vocational training programs, as well as personal development and managerial competency training programs. By using hybrid learning methods, an agile education approach continues to contribute to the corporate culture. |
Vestel Retail Academy Vestel Retail Academy was established with the vision of training retailers who are well-equipped, improve their knowledge and shape the sector. The Academy offers training on "Sales-Marketing,” "Management Skills,” "Performance Development,” "Personal Development" and "Finance" for head office employees, corporate store employees and dealer business partners.
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Vestel Service Academy Vestel Service Academy has been operating within Vestel Customer Services since 2012 for the regular and continuous training and development of all service teams, such as authorized service provider technicians, customer representatives and service managers in order to provide a flawless experience in after-sales services.
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As part of Vestel's sustainability approach, one of its key goals is to increase corporate volunteering efforts. Launched in 2019, the “Sparks Movement" aims to carry out volunteering activities in five main groups within the Vestel Group of Companies: “environment,” “children,” “people with disabilities,” “material recycling" and “animals-our friends.” In 2023, 810 Vestel employees volunteered in these activities for a total of 3,334 hours.
Vestel emphasizes Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) policies and practices to ensure a safe and healthy working environment and strives to assess and manage all risks that may result in loss, injury or damage arising from any hazard in the workplace and the potential impacts on employees, subcontractors, sub-industries, visitors, solution partners and other employees in the workplace. Vestel’s goals include examining the risks that the employees may encounter in the field, raising the awareness of the employees, improving and developing processes, creating ergonomic working areas, ensuring that the most stringent safety measures are taken regarding changing production processes, providing a safe and healthy working environment to the employees, preventing occupational diseases and achieving zero accident.
Vestel Elektronik continued to provide OHS training to all employees and organized a total of 134,522 hours of basic OHS training during the year.
Vestel has been a major supporter of the Turkish volleyball in the last seven years and will carry on its support as the main sponsor of the Turkish Volleyball Federation (TVF) in the 2023-2024 season. Vestel will also be the chest sponsor of the Men's National Team and will carry on being the main sponsors of TVF.
Communication activities such as the "We Are a Country of Volleyball" campaign continue to support volleyball in Türkiye. Vestel's communications efforts have resulted in a total of 45 awards so far, and have been ranked among the most successful in the sector. In 2022, through the agreement drawn up with the Turkish Gymnastics Federation, Vestel became “Main Sponsor of the Turkish Gymnastics Federation" and “Main Sponsor of the Gymnastics National Teams.” The company carried on this sponsorship also in 2023. Additionally, Vestel's sponsorship of Let Your Stance Be Inspiration aims to contribute to the development of Turkish gymnastics, increase the motivation of young athletes and attract interest in gymnastics. The goals of sponsorship include increasing the national and international success of Turkish gymnastics, making gymnastics more well-known and popular in the society, supporting the acceptance and expansion of gymnastics as a fundamental sport. Thanks to Vestel's support, the Turkish Gymnastics Federation expanded from 12 to 81 cities, from 600 athletes to 25,000 competitors, and from 1,200 to 120,000 licensed athletes. Gymnasts won medals at the European, World and Olympic Games.
Furthermore, in 2023, Vestel became the Main Sponsor of the Turkish Sports Federation for the Physically Disabled to contribute to the accessibility and democratization of sports for all. This sponsorship covers all branches of the Turkish Physically Disabled Sports Federation.
Vestel monitors the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and strategies of its suppliers. In this respect, Vestel strives to ensure Supply chain sustainability by demanding that its suppliers improve their performance on various aspects such as respecting the human rights of their employees, ensuring their health and safety and developing systems against corruption and bribery. From this point of view, the Vestel Supplier Monitoring and Development Program was launched to enable suppliers to effectively participate in sustainability processes, understand and improve their current levels.
This program aims to inform, evaluate and develop Vestel's suppliers regarding sustainability. As part of the program, suppliers are required to share their data on environmental, social and governance issues with Vestel at regular intervals through designated platforms and software, and are expected to participate in the evaluation studies to be carried out by independent evaluation institutions.
Vestel Supplier Monitoring and Development Program consists of two stages as training and audit:
audit organization. In 2023, 100 critical suppliers of Vestel completed this assessment. Upon completion of the training and audit processes, supplier sustainability scores are calculated and reflected on supplier scorecards.
Vestel makes 80% of its payments to its critical suppliers.