Supplier management when the supplier is your headquarter

[Graciel]

Hello, one question about supplier management. Today in the company I work, the supplier is our headquarter (I´m in the brazilian facility and the headquarter is in China). They provide the components for us. So, we have one procedure writen to manage a future nationa supplier that we may or not have. Considering the headquarter is responsible for the brazilian facility implementation (project fase, hiring, financial help etc) do we need to create a supplier rules for them? We don´t see them actually as a supplier, since they weren´t developed as we would considering our internal procedure. They developed us as affiliate , but they supply to our facility. The only thing we do is manage the complaints we make about rejected parts they send. Is that enough ? In our audit, the auditor didn´t really go there.

 

[Sebastian]

From your perspective I would manage it as remote supporting function. Supported process - manufacturing.
But it can be a concern.

 

[Tagin]

We don´t see them actually as a supplier, since they weren´t developed as we would considering our internal procedure. They developed us as affiliate , but they supply to our facility.

As I understand it, the term 'affiliate' indicates that your company and the Chinese company are separate businesses. You may have a contractual relationship as an affiliate, but still you are separate companies and so I would consider the Chinese company a supplier. Your contractual relationship may not give you many options to take action if the Chinese company performs badly as a supplier, but I think they still need to be treated as a supplier, because their performance as a supplier is one of the criteria that your company would use to judge whether to continue as an affiliate or not.

Edit: Maybe what you could do is note that review of this particular supplier is performed as part of the periodic review of Interested Parties (4.2). (I.e., is this affiliate relationship continuing to benefit our company or not?)

 

[Graciel]

As I understand it, the term 'affiliate' indicates that your company and the Chinese company are separate businesses. You may have a contractual relationship as an affiliate, but still you are separate companies and so I would consider the Chinese company a supplier. Your contractual relationship may not give you many options to take action if the Chinese company performs badly as a supplier, but I think they still need to be treated as a supplier, because their performance as a supplier is one of the criteria that your company would use to judge whether to continue as an affiliate or not.

Edit: Maybe what you could do is note that review of this particular supplier is performed as part of the periodic review of Interested Parties (4.2). (I.e., is this affiliate relationship continuing to benefit our company or not?)

Thank you!