No Quality Professional vs Having a Quality Professional

[NDesouza]

Hi NDesouza,

Sounds like you're in quite the pickle.

Is it not up to your organisation to approve the progression and closure of SCARs? In my experience, the supplier develops an action plan, provides a root cause analysis and suggests a CAPA plan, and each of these stages could be subject to the organisation's approval.

Ultimately, it would be up to the organisation to accept or reject the outcome of a SCAR so if you have determined that the supplier's root cause and CAPA plan are not robust enough, you should reject this.

Lots of good points raised by other posters here; how does your organisation handle poorly performing suppliers?

Thanks for your response,
I am a 3rd party brought on as part of a supplier management solution the customer. I don't actually work for either side directly. When the customer doesn't approve of the RCCA, they inform the supplier and myself. Together me and the supplier work to improve this. I have implemented a feedback loop to keep the supplier from submitting poorly written RCCAs. When they follow the plan, it works very well. The problem is that submitting poor RCCAs isn't the only problem internally for these suppliers.

 

[NDesouza]

Your supplier reselection criteria allow your company to continue working with these troublesome suppliers?

Why?

Also, be careful what you wish for. You may have someone to talk to but you are imposing a solution that may not work.

I’d rather have the leader take personal responsibility for how their organization works (or not) as an effective system.

I am agree with you totally about having the leader take personal responsibility.

 

[NDesouza]

What are these suppliers providing? And why do their customers keep using them if they're performing poorly?

They make cables and aerospace parts of various types. Apparently they are single sourced. The customers can't find any other suppliers who make those parts.

 

[John Broomfield]

So, it appears that your client has removed itself from forming any sort of productive relationship with its suppliers by putting your firm in the middle.

What authority does the contract between your client and their supplier give your firm? Precious little, it seems. And this lack of authority is damaging the service you’re able to deliver to your client. If so, in service design terms, your firm also has a nonconformity in need of effective corrective action.

You may need to arrange a meeting at the highest level between your client and the supplier to lay out the facts and agree a course of action. You should attend to keep it factual but not to impose any remedies; to do so may weaken the supplier’s ownership of the remedy or their sense of commitment to quality.

It’ll be difficult because you want the leaders to face the facts and to stop using your firm as a buffer or band-aid. So, it has commercial implications for your firm too. But your firm’s service may be due a redesign to more effectively prevent supplier selection and reselection problems while facilitating your client’s ongoing improvement of their suppliers.

 

[Mike S.]

Thanks for your response,
I am a 3rd party brought on as part of a supplier management solution the customer. I don't actually work for either side directly. When the customer doesn't approve of the RCCA, they inform the supplier and myself. Together me and the supplier work to improve this. I have implemented a feedback loop to keep the supplier from submitting poorly written RCCAs. When they follow the plan, it works very well. The problem is that submitting poor RCCAs isn't the only problem internally for these suppliers.

This is a very strange arrangement to me. It seems to me that adding a 3rd party (your company) only makes solutions more difficult.

 

[Ed Panek]

There are incremental steps you can write into the SQA assuming the customer has some leverage in the relationship. If the supplier agrees they are in the wrong a cost of handling issues can be added to the contract making a direct bottom line impact on their mistakes.

 

[Tagin]

They make cables and aerospace parts of various types. Apparently they are single sourced. The customers can't find any other suppliers who make those parts.

Ah, yes. If it is sole-source then the customer has minimal leverage they can apply.

If you can show the supplier the total cost per SCAR (activity costs, time lost ,etc. in addition to materials, shipping, etc.) then maybe it might have some influence on the supplier's decision-making. Of course, annually the total cost of these quality issues would have to be substantially more than the total annual cost of hiring a quality person in order to be persuasive.

 

[Ninja]

Another approach here:

I gather from the above that the customer has no choice of other supplier.
I gather from the above that the supplier doesn't really care about the SCARs, possibly due to the non-competitive situation.

One approach here is to just stop writing the SCARs...if they're useless and ineffective anyway, why bother?

Try the above suggestions first and see if you can get more positive effect than the supplier did...but if not, save the time and money writing ineffective paperwork.
I note that this approach would save the supplier and customer time and money, but may also decrease your third-party company's revenue...so think carefully.

 

[John Broomfield]

Remember that the biggest cost of nonconformity is paid only by those suppliers whose customers enforce the requirements.

 

[outdoorsNW]

Are the cables single sourced due to regulatory lock in creating a high cost to qualify another supplier or are these cable truly unique?
Have you done a bit of checking to se if you can find another suitable supplier?