Hi Steve,
Did you manage to develop the risk based supplier assessment. I was thinking of developing a standard assessment and using this together with catagorisation in order to give the supplier a rating. I wonder could you just use
FMEA? Or maybe a correlation and matrix table like Quality Function Deployment could be employed?
Hi Mrs. Moloney:
The short answer to your question is no. I was heading down the path of a risk-based supplier assessment, but in the end I abandoned the idea. It seemed to cumbersome. We've taken our current supplier classifications and sub-divided our "Critical" Suppliers into "Critical" and "Select" (our supplier classifications are based on a three-letter acronym - that's where "select" came from

).
...anyway, the "Critical" Suppliers will be the ones that have the "Quarterly Supplier Assessment" due primarily based on dollars spent. "Select" suppliers will require all of the up-front evaluation and approval, but will be monitored primarily through our incoming inspection and our NC (non-conformance) system. Both categories supply critical parts and materials, but for the "select" suppliers - since they only supply parts/materials once or twice a Quarter - they will be monitored by a less time consuming part of our Quality System.
Just for information sake, the rest of our suppliers are categorized as "Approved" (i.e. everyone else we buy stuff from such as tape, non-critical supplies and services, etc.), "New" (suppliers we've had to put into our MRP System to generate a PO but have not completed the approval gauntlet), "Probationary" (those who just ain't cuttin' the mustard at the present time) and finally "Rejected" (...as the name implies). We decided to track rejected suppliers so that we don't go down this road again unless absolutely necessary - plus we'll have the history documented as to why we no longer deal with them and will document why we want to begin again.
I'm sure this doesn't help your endeavor, but I thought I'd give you a quick glance as to where we ended up from the "loft goal" I originally set.
FMEA's, to me, have always been a personal pet-peeve of mine. They are useful, but can be easily skewed since they are typically "subjective" instead of "Objective". As far as QFD - I really don't know much about that area so I don't know if it would be useful or not.
...More than you wanted to know, but that's my story...
-Steve