What's the longest supplier self survey you've had to fill out?

B

Benjamin28

#21
I'd like to bring this thread back to the front of the line for a bit. I handle most client surveys sent to us, which has become substantial as compared to previous years. I'm going to openly admit that I think this process of sending pages of questions with yes/no/na answers is unproductive, does not add any value, and completely misses the target goal of properly assessing a supplier.

I understand that companies must have a system in place to evaluate their suppliers, however, shouldn't this be a combination of evaluating performance, i.e. on time delivery, conformance of products supplied, etc... and ensuring their quality system is on par with requirements.

As suggested in this thread, these surveys are simply a request for information so that a company can assure themselves that their supplier has all applicable quality requirements in place and therefore a "canned" response seems much more reasonable than individually reviewing a multitude of surveys asking similar questions in different ways.

Not only this, but many of the surveys we recieve aren't even applicable to our trade, we are a service company performing destructive materials testing, a majority of the surveys we recieve are targeted at manufacturers, or even maintenance stations (FAA reqs).

In my opinion, the process of requiring companies to send a survey to their suppliers is backwards. The appropriate process should be to require your suppliers provide a detailed summary of their quality system which displays their compliance to required quality standards. A canned response from our company (as a service provider) would be much more detailed and relevant than many of these "canned" surveys we recieve.

On another note, I'm curious what others think...are surveys with open ended questions more likely to be useful than checklists with yes/no/na answers? We recieve both types, typically I prefer the checklist because it can be completed quicker, the open ended questions however (such as "describe how your company handles change control") are much more likely to provide our customer with a better understanding of our quality systems.

That's my :2cents: what do others think?
 
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errhine

Involved - Posts
#22
Speaking from a FAA Repair Station;

We must have our vendor survey and I have found that we have a much better response to the survey if it is of the Yes/No/NA variety. However,I do prefer receiving the canned response from my vendors for exactly the reasons you bring up.

That being said, I have a tendency to look at how many nonconforming parts I receive from a vendor to truly judge how well their quality system works. If I start to receive too many then I will ask more probative questions about any systemic issues they may have.
 
T

tyker

#23
Most of the surveys I get are from existing, satisfied customers who claim to be doing the survey to meet obscure ISO 9001 requirements rather than to evaluate our ability of which they are inevitably already aware.

My favourite questionnaire was a 20 pager from a potential customer which was entirely in German and had to be completed in that language.
French, Polish, Turkish and Gibberish I can cope with but that had me struggling. My employer was too mean to pay for a professional interpretation so I spent several interesting days trying to figure it out and put together a reply. Many of the questions related to the education of our workforce (how many shop floor workers have a university degree was easy to answer) and age of machinery (varies from brand new to 59 years) but most just left me baffled.
I'm still not sure if I answered the questions correctly or accidentally ordered some sauerkraut.
We didn't get the business.
 

Brizilla

Quite Involved in Discussions
#24
I'm working on a 15 pager as we speak.
It's from an Aerospace provider, they're AS9100 certified but we are not.
The old ISO cert won't work with them.
As far as discussing customers my standard reply is "proprietary information". Although I really like Wes's answer. :applause:
 

lindal

Involved In Discussions
#25
I know it would never fly, but I would be tempted to send a note back with the survey saying...

We are happy to send you the information on this survey. We know that you will diligently analyze the responses. When you will send us the results of your analysis, we will use them to improve our interaction with your company.

In order to keep from over-burdening your analysts, we will help you by not returning any additional surveys until you have had time to analyze and report to us the results of this survey.



:lol: :lol: :lol:

On the other side of this, when I was diligently analyzing and updating our supplier information last week, one supplier had a canned response which offerred to allow the customer to audit them for $50.00/hr and a copy of the quality manual was available for $20.00. This was accompanied by a refusal to accept or complete any surveys.

Now that's streamlining a process!

BTW - our survey is 4 pages, so I don't even come close to winning this contest.
 
J

JerryStem

#26
As an ISO-17025, I get these things at least once per week. Besides the "if you're already registered, send your cert" section, they still want all the address/phone/fax etc. stuff filled out.

About 2 years ago I made a 1 page cover letter for our scope and cert. I put the name, address, asstd people, what we do, avg sales, etc... on it in big print.

Then I put a section near the bottom saying this was a letter to answer the various supplier and vendor survey forms, and contains all the information needed, plus saving on filling in many small hard-to-read fax surveys and blank spaces.

No complaints yet.
 

Sidney Vianna

Post Responsibly
Staff member
Admin
#27
On the other side of this, when I was diligently analyzing and updating our supplier information last week, one supplier had a canned response which offerred to allow the customer to audit them for $50.00/hr and a copy of the quality manual was available for $20.00. This was accompanied by a refusal to accept or complete any surveys.
I am curious to know how you handled that situation. The supplier basically offered canned information as you said, and if you want to know more, you will get charged. So, what did you do, if anything? Or were you happy with the canned response?
 

lindal

Involved In Discussions
#28
I am curious to know how you handled that situation. The supplier basically offered canned information as you said, and if you want to know more, you will get charged. So, what did you do, if anything? Or were you happy with the canned response?
I reviewed their canned response, which had most of the information I needed and talked to the people internally (engineering, manufacturing) and externally (sales rep) that would answer my questions.

Our requirements are based on the criticality of the item and the supplier. Less critical parts or vendors do not necessarily need to complete the survey, it is only "recommended" per the matrix I have for qualification requirements. So my hands aren't tied by the procedure. These parts aren't very critical at all and we have few problems with their shipments.

It was fine, but seemed rude to me. I snippily did not reply to the email it was attached to, which bothered no one I'm sure because they hadn't included anything besides a reference to the attachment.
 

ScottK

Not out of the crisis
Staff member
Super Moderator
#29
Gah!

I just finished a 14 pager where I was supposed to rate myself on a scale of 0 to 5.
0 being no process and 5 being "world class".
I called the guy in charge of it and discussed how the checklist is geared towards and external auditor doing an actual audit and assigning a score. I, on the other hand, am not doing an audit but filling out a checklist at my desk. I can easily check "yes/no" but assigning a score is not for me to do. I don't know the full scope of their criteria.
His response "use your best judgement based on other QMS's you've seen."

Oh! and apparently their definition of "world class" is that there is none better. #1 best system in the world. There can be only one.
THEN WHY GIVE ME THE OPTION!!!! :frust:

So I just marked everything as "4" or "N/A".
 
B

Benjamin28

#30
I would have gone with 5 all the way through, how would he determine if it weren't world class A#1. In the end comments you could put "we're just that damned good!"

Honestly, most of these surveys are just paper to satisfy a requirement, they get filled out, filed, and that's the end of it.
 
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