I do not climb the soap box very often, but in the case of those surveys I am happy to make an exception
:
Why are those surveys still sent out?
Excellent question. In my not so humble opinion they are generally dished out by people who have been led to believe that they
have to send them. I agree that they are a horrendous waste of time that could and should be put to much better use: Improvement comes to mind.
It should be:
1.Do you have a Quality Management System in place? Yes/No
2. If yes please provide proof of certification.
That would suffice, but db also makes a good point:
Why indeed? I am willing to bet that the vast majority of those surveys end up in a file cabinet or possibly (if the company in question has realized that we have entered the 21st century) a hard disk, never to see the light of day again this side of the retention time.
Writing and sending surveys is easy. Writing useful and effective surveys and sending them to the people most inclined to give accurate answers - and to answer at all - is not so easy.
Exactly: They are often poorly written and/or outdated (a few days ago I received one asking us if we were registered acc. to ISO 9002
), but on the other hand they are not put to any worthwhile use either, so why waste the energy to improve them? Sidney expressed it well:
I've mentioned
several times that there are many better ways to waste
precious time, rather than being involved with these meaningless surveys.
Amen to that. While we are on the subject of wasting time, I think we should also mention the interesting fact that so many of those surveys come in the dreaded pdf format, forcing you to FILL THEM IN BY HAND, without a mail or even fax address making it necessary to also return them by snail mail!
Once more: 21st century, anyone?
As for using supplier surveys for on-going relationships, as means of "monitoring" supplier performance, it is non-sensical.
Shake my hand, brother.
Ok, rant done.
/Claes