Approved Vendor List - Non-responsive Vendors Requiring Approval

[aegoode]

Step into the shoes of the small machine shop operator. An email asking to fill out a "questionnaire" that they have had to do before will get ignored. What was their response when they did respond? Keep trying the phone, and make your inquiry "nice" and don't mention quality. If necessary go above the "buyers" (who appear to be jerks). If necessary, go to the nuclear option. Get Accounts payable on your side -- don't pay them until they respond. Good luck.

The gist of the response was "we're already a vendor." then basically radio silence to all my follow-up emails explaining that yes, they already are a vendor but we still need to follow the process to maintain their approval. And I haven't reached the escalation stage yet, as I remember working in supply chain many years ago attempting to approve vendors such as these, and the company I worked for then had much more required paperwork for them to complete, so I understand the aversion these companies have to completing paperwork. Currently, any accounting controls to "block" vendors in our ERP system is all controlled by upper management, who will definitely not go that route. Right now, I think my next option is just to find a way to break through with the buyers and get them to understand why we need to be doing this. Thanks!

 

[aegoode]

Welcome to Elsmar Cove
Right now, your internal procedures define you . There are other options, but your procedures will need to be revised.
My suggestion is to have different rules for different categories of suppliers. You can call this strategy Risk-Based Supplier List management. The risk of disruption from suppliers who sell packaging or cleaning supplies is much lower than that from suppliers of raw materials or outside services which become part of the product you produce. So the effort to approve and monitor low risk suppliers is comensurately lower. The former are called indirect suppliers and the latter, direct suppliers.

Another distinction, commonly used, is reduced approval/monitoring requirenments for Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) parts, also called catalog parts. COTS examples are fasteners and connectors which are assembled into your products. These are lower risk because the same part number is used by dozens of companies in differnt industries, and parts are likely produced in high volume batches from dedicated tooling. In the rare event a quality problem is discovered with a COTS part number, odds are good the problem would be first discovered and resolution demanded by other customers purchasing the same part number.

There are other avenues for Supplier Approval and Monitoring, in addition to the two you mentioned:

• desk audit of current suppliers (review their past track record, judging the severity of any quality hiccups, late deliveries or undershipments).and judge acceptable, discontinue or needs followup
• a Zoom interview or in-person visit to complete your supplier questionnaire might produce better cooperation than mailing out a survey
• a thorough review of prospective supplier's website and reputation/reviews, completed by your SQE or Buyer, to judge capabilities and dedication to quality and customer satisfaction
• find inroads to one of your supplier's top managers via networking, through LinkedIn connections for example., to foster better cooperation

You ask about lacking initial approval records. Since you mentioned this was a recertification audit and you are assigned to remedy the process, it sounds like this area received a non-conformance in the last audit. It is understood that to remedy an NC, changes to the process must be made, and full implementation takes time. Generate a plan, timetable and prioritized list to bring current suppliers into compliance with the newly revised procedure requirements. Legacy suppliers with positive track records can probably be grandfathered for the first year, as long as there is a long-term plan and commitment to address gaps.

My advice on corrective actions is be careful what you sign up for. You will be expected to live with whatever remedy you decide on. I see sometimes, in their haste and eagerness to close the NC and satisfy the auditor, an organization will write procedures and implement paperwork requirements they can't reasonably maintain for years into the future. So consider all your options and choose wisely.

These are some great tips, and I actually did some due diligence on these points, their Linked in has literally one member, the president, who is the person I had been emailing, so that route didn't work. Their website is incredibly basic, providing little to no information on their company or capabilities, which is also concerning. I will continue to try and get ahold of someone on the phone, but zoom is a good recommendation. As far as the audit, we were fortunate in that our auditor didn't look too deeply at our process, as they would have found much more issues, such as this one, so the finding was more towards how we are maintaining our vendor list according to our procedure, so we were able to respond to the finding with minimal changes to our process. I think the grandfather method will most likely be how we move forward with this vendor, so I will definitely be looking into that. Thank you.

 

[aegoode]

In addition to what Golfman said, get creative. Use positive incentives (we want to document a great partnership between our two companies) initially. If you need to get tougher, then use the options of consequences for not following through or responding. At a previous job, we were located on the West coast of the US and our non-responsive supplier was located on the East coast. Like your supplier, they stopped responding to emails, calls, etc. We looked them up on Google Maps and called the business located in the building next door to them see if they had seen people coming and going from the business. We then sent out one of our sales reps to have a face-to-face with them. It did eventually work to re-qualify the supplier for that round, but if I remember correctly, we did eventually remove them as a supplier because as a customer we should not have to jump through those kinds of hoops to meet basic requirements for control of suppliers.

Another option is if you suspect perhaps your communications are just not getting to the correct person, you can look on a site like LinkedIn to try to see who works there. You then potentially have another name to email because most companies use the same format for all employee email addresses (e.g., initial.last name @ company. whatever).

This is the same west coast/east coast logistics with this vendor, so no site visits unfortunately. But as I get familiar with our vendor base I will start to recognize which vendors are problematic and question if we want to keep dealing with them in the future. As far as this case goes, I think I'll find a way to re-qualify them for now as you mentioned, but make a note in their file for the future. Thanks.

 

[aegoode]

One of the long established practices accepted in the “certification world” is the one called grandfathering, by which you can deem a historic well performing supplier as approved, without the need to retroact any artificial reviews and records. The key thing is, you should be able to demonstrate, via factual evidence, they are indeed a high performing supplier.

Having said that, based on the text I quoted from your message above, the real concern, from a risk-based perspective is: you have a critical, single-source vendor that is unresponsive. To me, that is an obvious poor way of managing that business relationship. An unresponsive supplier is, without a question, a liability, either present or future.

Good luck.

Thank you, I think a risk assessment and grandfathering will probably be the answers for this case. And I completely agree, it's hard to understand why a company wouldn't want to work with such a consistent customer such as my current company, and it's not like we're asking for much, our questionnaire is comically simple to complete, it's actually something I want to make more robust in the future. I appreciate the insight.

 

[optomist1]

Thank you, I think a risk assessment and grandfathering will probably be the answers for this case. And I completely agree, it's hard to understand why a company wouldn't want to work with such a consistent customer such as my current company, and it's not like we're asking for much, our questionnaire is comically simple to complete, it's actually something I want to make more robust in the future. I appreciate the insight.

a bit late to this part, yet if a supplier is ostensibly ignoring a "consistent customer", internally and/or externally escalate the issue. If this matter if worthy of your time and your company's efforts...escalate their non-responsiveness. My aero/defense experience is certainly dated, yet this type of situation and the need to escalate to resolve is independent of aero/defense, automotive, or other fields...my two cents

hope this is of some value...optomist1

 

[Golfman25]

Thank you, I think a risk assessment and grandfathering will probably be the answers for this case. And I completely agree, it's hard to understand why a company wouldn't want to work with such a consistent customer such as my current company, and it's not like we're asking for much, our questionnaire is comically simple to complete, it's actually something I want to make more robust in the future. I appreciate the insight.

The gist of the response was "we're already a vendor." then basically radio silence to all my follow-up emails explaining that yes, they already are a vendor but we still need to follow the process to maintain their approval. And I haven't reached the escalation stage yet, as I remember working in supply chain many years ago attempting to approve vendors such as these, and the company I worked for then had much more required paperwork for them to complete, so I understand the aversion these companies have to completing paperwork. Currently, any accounting controls to "block" vendors in our ERP system is all controlled by upper management, who will definitely not go that route. Right now, I think my next option is just to find a way to break through with the buyers and get them to understand why we need to be doing this. Thanks!

Well there is your problem. These questionnaires are a waste of time and your vendor probably gets several a year. I hate them with a passion and would ignore them if I could.

You'll need to convince them to help you. Good luck.

 

[jmech]

There doesn't seem to be a real need for them to complete this questionnaire (aside from conformance to your procedure), so change your procedure to allow you to maintain supplier approval (possibly based on no or low nonconformances since the last evaluation) and stop bothering your suppliers with time-wasting questionnaires.

 

[aegoode]

There doesn't seem to be a real need for them to complete this questionnaire (aside from conformance to your procedure), so change your procedure to allow you to maintain supplier approval (possibly based on no or low nonconformances since the last evaluation) and stop bothering your suppliers with time-wasting questionnaires.

This questionnaire is only required when we first approve a supplier, and we maintain them how you mentioned. The issue is we've never had this vendor fill one out initially, if they had a certificate such as ISO:9001 or AS9100, we only require a copy for their file and they do not need to do a questionnaire at all. However they don't seem to be certified. I agree about the time-wasting questionnaires, but it's basically a one time thing.

 

[aegoode]

a bit late to this part, yet if a supplier is ostensibly ignoring a "consistent customer", internally and/or externally escalate the issue. If this matter if worthy of your time and your company's efforts...escalate their non-responsiveness. My aero/defense experience is certainly dated, yet this type of situation and the need to escalate to resolve is independent of aero/defense, automotive, or other fields...my two cents

hope this is of some value...optomist1

It will most definitely be escalated, just hasn't reached that point yet, really just wanted to know what options we had if the issue persists. Much appreciated.

 

[John Predmore]

our company is on the west coast and this vendor is on the east coast, so a site visit is out of the question currently

Here is an idea. Ask around, maybe one of your managers occasionally travels to the other coast and you could deputize them for a short detour to this supplier. My company's sales manager had a son going to a college in Boston, so on back-to-college weekend, she was willing to make a pre-arranged visit to a key supplier we had never visited before. I wouldn't proceed under false pretenses, but maybe frame the visit on the fact that you are recently AS9100 certified, and you hope to expand your business in aerospace industry, therefore you wanted to visit all your "key supplier partners" to share this exciting news and spend 20 minutes discussing your supplier's capabilities and opportunities. If they don't answer email, then send a registered letter with the exciting announcement. Frame the visit as a win-win, and see if that strategy gets your representative in the door. There is a saying, 'You catch more flies with honey.'

A second idea is to contract with a manufacturer's rep in the area and pay them an hourly rate to visit this supplier on your behalf and write a visit summary for your files.