Me again,:bigwave:

Still in that purchasing mode. My clients supplier evaluation approval status is either Approved, Approved w/inspection or Unacceptable. The supplier evaluation form is a yes/no form but even though they may answer no to everything they may still be put on the Approved Supplier list for reasons of market monopoly, for example, and if all yes answers they may be rejected because of qeographic undesireability, for example. I feel that the approval decision should be qualified in the procedure but I'm not really sure how to do that. They put unacceptable people on the list as well. I worry that if they have an "Unacceptable" vendor on the list because of NCs or what have you that we will get a major over it. We can justify why we keep them but it just seems to me that it will be highly frowned upon and be a sticking point for every assessor that comes in here.

Qualitygal

Justification do help but for exceptions only. If the practice is more often than not, then maybe you need to review the evaluation criteria. (of course, without compromising the effect on the quality of your product / service)

For suppliers who are acceptable according to the current criteria, but are still not on the approved list due to some or the other reason such as 'geographic undesirability', you need to include such reasons in your evaluation criteria.

If I'm reading this correctly, you're saying that suppliers that have been (somehow) determined to be "unacceptable" are sometimes put on the "approved" supplier list. This raises a number of questions beyond the obvious one, but let's start with two:

Why is there a list?
Why is there an evaluation process if there are no documented criteria?It appears that anyone who wants to can add a supplier to the list and start buying from them, so what's the point?