Creating Value and Competitive Advantage Through Diversity

Our supplier diversity and small business programs embrace a variety of people, ideas, talents and experiences. Our partnership with Cole Chemical & Distributing Inc., a Houston-based independent chemical distributor, demonstrates how our programs create value for our customers and our partners in the supply chain.

Cole Chemical, founded by CEO Donna Fujimoto Cole in 1980, has only 12 employees, yet it earned more than $50 million in sales in 2005. The company was one of a number of firms invited to bid on a new chemical distribution requirement for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, a 50 percent-owned affiliate. Cole Chemical's supplier partnership with us was initiated in August 2006 with a pilot project for the Gulf of Mexico business unit.

We nominated the company for the Houston Minority Business Council's Supplier of the Year Award, which it won in October 2006.

Building Employee Capacity

Thirty-six of our employees from 15 countries graduated from Arizona State University's M.B.A. program in May 2006 with specialties in supply chain management.

They are the second group to complete the customized 18-month program delivered online. This master's-level program provides us with procurement professionals who have the skills to manage in today's competitive supply chain environment.