Providing customers a Quality Assurance Summary instead of filling out their questionnaires

[Quality_Goblin]

Hi All,

As we get new customers, they ask us to fill out their supplier qualification surveys/questionnaires. And as we are qualifying suppliers, we do the same thing. I recently came across a couple of our suppliers who, rather than filling out our documents, provided us with their own Quality Summary documents providing general company information as well as information related to QMS requirements, etc.

I thought this was a good idea and took their templates to draft one for our company to hand out to customers during our supplier qualification period.

My question to you - how many of you have done this with your customers and how has the feedback been? I proposed this idea to one of my Quality Engineers and he didn't think it was a good idea, suggesting that regardless, our customers will still request us to fill out their paperwork. I am looking to get some of your feedback so I can gage whether this is still a good idea or not, thanks.

 

[geoffairey]

Hi All,

As we get new customers, they ask us to fill out their supplier qualification surveys/questionnaires. And as we are qualifying suppliers, we do the same thing. I recently came across a couple of our suppliers who, rather than filling out our documents, provided us with their own Quality Summary documents providing general company information as well as information related to QMS requirements, etc.

I thought this was a good idea and took their templates to draft one for our company to hand out to customers during our supplier qualification period.

My question to you - how many of you have done this with your customers and how has the feedback been? I proposed this idea to one of my Quality Engineers and he didn't think it was a good idea, suggesting that regardless, our customers will still request us to fill out their paperwork. I am looking to get some of your feedback so I can gage whether this is still a good idea or not, thanks.

We do a similar thing from a security perspective with customers, but now you've mentioned it, it could work for Quality too.
1) we offer a Security Overview document (we also offer a Data Protection overview document) which hits the key points in layperson's terms; and
2) We looked at the questions we get asked most often and provide a pre-filled questionnaire to customers with more than 160 Security questions and answers, and about 40 Data Protection Questions.
We now refuse to complete customer questionnaires, offering our pre-filled questionnaire instead and promising to answer any reasonable and applicable questions we've not answered in the pre-filled questionnaire. And it's made a massive difference, saving us significant amounts of time.
You can go one step further too if you're able, but providing these documents via a customer portal or trust centre to allow the customer to self serve alongside your Certs, even removing the need to send them out.

 

[Nichole F]

I've worked at companies that elected to send a Quality Summary document package rather than filling out the customer's form. 90% of the time, the customer was absolutely okay with it. The other 10% we still filled out their forms. Either way you save yourself time so it really is win-win.

We also encountered the same thing with our suppliers. Some would fill out our forms, but some refused to do so. If we didn't accept their document package we were out of luck. Most of the time, we were not a large enough customer for them to care if we took our business elsewhere.

 

[Miner]

The idea is actually pretty good. However, the likelihood of success will probably depend on the relative negotiating power of both parties. If you as the supplier are large and the customer small or with a small portion of your business, the chances of success are much higher than if you are a smaller supplier to a large customer that is a large portion of your business.

 

[Bev D]

I’ve done this in several organizations. Almost every question from a ‘Custom” Customer questionnaire is exactly the same just in a different order. I had a stock set of answers.

Filling out boilerplate forms with boilerplate questions is a waste of everybody's time. Especially the redundant ISO questions.

I always looked for the real critical questions - rarely there - like did we have the actual equipment (manufacturing and test) that woudl allow us ot make their product.

I never had a customer complain. And if had I probably would have recommended that we not take the business as the customer was obviously incapable of critical thinking.

 

[ChrisM]

Replying with a standard response document has been common for many years. No customer should object to such a response especially if you already hold certification to ISO9001 or equivalent. The last 2 places I have worked for, I raised this question as I would spend many hours of my time filling out basically the same questions dozens of times per year, but was told that no, we needed to pander to our customer's specific needs otherwise we risked losing their business......
Where I am currently, we had a repeat questionnaire in the form of an Excel spreadsheet a few weeks ago, and there were over 400 questions contained in it - we are a Distributor and do not manufacture anything of our own, and the customer in question spend just a few hundred dollars with us in the preceding 12 months. We declined to complete the document......
Some customer send us such forms annually, some every 2 years, some every 3 years. Some of our customers don't even bother to check our website and download our current AS certificates but insist in emailing us to ask for a copy......

 

[Ed Panek]

We have a questionnaire with options for responses. If we are looking for a calibration company, we might ask a few dozen questions about their QMS and ability to calibrate our equipment. OTOH, we might accept a "We are ISO 17025 certified and your product types are 35% of our business." That might also satisfy our approval. Unless it's a high-risk or medium-risk item, we might not dig too deep.

 

[hogheavenfarm]

As Bev pointed out, most of the supplier surveys we get are almost identical copies. I was thinking about just using one of these as a prefilled blank template to simply return to them. Fortunately I only get a handful of these each year, so it hasnt been on my priority list.

 

[Golfman25]

All 100% a redundant waste of time. I thought that was the whole idea behind these "certifications." Here's my ticket, we should be good to go. If you're really interested, stop by and we'll show you what we do.

 

[optomist1]

good thread...within the automotive arena, "New" or "Potential New Suppliers", are "evaluated" via several methods, one is by a multi-step SEA or Supplier Eligibility Assessment sequence, excel spreadsheet...this typically culminates in a site visit to review, see touch and feel the various responses to a list of criteria and associated questions...Evidence Folders, hard copy or electronic substantiate the suppliers responses and compliance. hope this helps...
optomist1