Ideas for developing a Supplier Quality Management System, non automotive

[Thomas Dorner]

Hi,

I would like to get your input for a project I have to run at work - Developing a Supplier Quality Management System.
In our company, we have an existing Supply Chain, which "takes care" about supplier issues. From the quality perspective, we distributing only band aids.

I have in mind something like, Supplier development.

Would like to establish - supplier assessments, supplier audits, scorecards etc., but would really like your help/input/comments to this, which will definitely help to create a presentation, which, I hope, will finally get the support from management and results in a long term project.

Please every remark is very welcome to this topic. Speaking about topic - I hope the forum is the right one.

Thank you and stay safe,
Thomas

 

[Marc]

Supplier development has been discussed a lot here over the years. Does this help as a start? Supplier Development Discussions

 

[Cari Spears]

Hi, Thomas,

Here's our Supplier Management Procedure. We're not currently distributing performance reports to our suppliers - that's something I'm working on now. Our company is aerospace tooling design and manufacture - but hopefully browsing our process will be helpful to you.

 

[Jim Wynne]

Hi,

I would like to get your input for a project I have to run at work - Developing a Supplier Quality Management System.
In our company, we have an existing Supply Chain, which "takes care" about supplier issues. From the quality perspective, we distributing only band aids.

I have in mind something like, Supplier development.

Would like to establish - supplier assessments, supplier audits, scorecards etc., but would really like your help/input/comments to this, which will definitely help to create a presentation, which, I hope, will finally get the support from management and results in a long term project.

Please every remark is very welcome to this topic. Speaking about topic - I hope the forum is the right one.

Thank you and stay safe,
Thomas

What are your primary concerns? Are there recurring problems that you think might be helped by a dedicated effort? When you devise a plan, you need to take specific goals into account, and developing goals will tell you much of what you need to do. From my own experience, I can tell you that many companies do these things because other companies do them, and using scorecards and audits and other such tools rarely do any good. If your suppliers are ISO 9001 (or anything else) registered, they're already being audited, and supplier audits shouldn't be done by people who don't have experience in the supplier processes being audited. I don't want to discourage you, but you need to be sure that the effort that you put into a supplier development program can have measure able results.

 

[Thomas Dorner]

What are your primary concerns? Are there recurring problems that you think might be helped by a dedicated effort? When you devise a plan, you need to take specific goals into account, and developing goals will tell you much of what you need to do. From my own experience, I can tell you that many companies do these things because other companies do them, and using scorecards and audits and other such tools rarely do any good. If your suppliers are ISO 9001 (or anything else) registered, they're already being audited, and supplier audits shouldn't be done by people who don't have experience in the supplier processes being audited. I don't want to discourage you, but you need to be sure that the effort that you put into a supplier development program can have measure able results.

Hi Jim,

Thank you for your reply.

I understand that suppliers that are ISO certified don't need to be audited in general. We have companies in our supplier base that are ranging from a workshop up to certified (by ISO 9001, ISO 13485 etc.).

I have the idea to classify our supply base by criticality. Like A=most critical to business down to D=less. Then to focus on A and B suppliers.
I feel pretty confident to audit companies, workshops and even ISO certified companies (I am a certified principal auditor).

But, in my experience, even companies they claim to be ISO certified they have issues within supply chain (late shipments, less quality etc.). ISO certified doesn't necessarily mean that you will have always good quality products, what I learned over the past, you can assume to a higher percentage you will get higher and more consistent quality.

Since we are rapidly growing, the idea why we want to establish a SQM, we would like to minimize our efforts and resources in receiving inspection and working with a supply base that we can trust to get good quality. Now we are just reacting instead of being proactive.

I just would like to know what are typical modules for a SQM, what is widely commonly used.

Thank you,
Thomas

 

[Jim Wynne]

Since we are rapidly growing, the idea why we want to establish a SQM, we would like to minimize our efforts and resources in receiving inspection and working with a supply base that we can trust to get good quality. Now we are just reacting instead of being proactive.

I just would like to know what are typical modules for a SQM, what is widely commonly used.

Thomas

Reducing the need for incoming inspection is a good goal. I'll say again, though, that you should not assume that what others are doing is what you should be doing. There is a lot of wasted effort in supplier management programs. I worked as a supplier development engineer for a large vehicle manufacturer that had a significant emphasis on supplier qualification audits. People who, in the main, didn't know what they were looking at were dispatched around the country and the globe doing audits. I asked the person in charge of all of this whether, after having done these audits for a few years, there was evidence that suppliers qualified via audits performed better than those who had not been audited before the practice began. There was no evidence. They did it because everyone else did it.

Decide what needs to be improved, and work with your suppliers to help (when appropriate) in the improvement effort.