Supply Chain Quality Excellence
Driving World Class Supplier Performance through a Proven 5-Step Model
Almost all companies will have at some stage experienced difficulties in finding strong, reliable suppliers or are currently experiencing supply chain issues which generally fall into any one of 3 categories:
Supplier selected not performing as expected or ‘promised’ by supplier itself
Supplier cost is high relative to its Quality and Engineering Capability
Supplier relationship is poor as Quality issues are not being solved quickly enough
The cause of the above supplier experiences is due to gaps in the approach taken to initially evaluate new suppliers and how to apply manage-by-measurement model that minimises variability and risk.
Many companies have strong supplier selection and management criteria, but how objective are they in helping make good sourcing decisions? Also how effective are they at mitigating risk and creating a strong world-class supply chain for your product base?
Often suppliers get selected on ‘Gut Feel’ from a quick subjective-style supplier assessment/audit with little or no objective summaries to give confidence in supplier capability.
Supply Chain Disruptions: What Could Go Wrong?
The old methods of simply performing an ISO-style audit to ensure all documentation is in place, procedures updated, work instructions followed, etc do NOT in any way drive achievement of world-class quality, hence a more sophisticated approach is required to handle complex part and assembly suppliers.
Since before COVID-19, Martin Shaw of Reliability Solutions has been increasingly focused on Supply Chain Quality improvement to help drive better product reliability at an affordable cost. During the COVID period Martin’s clients still needed to find new suppliers and manage existing ones, both required to be done virtually.
Hence the formation of his 5-step model. World Class supplier quality at low cost is not something that just happens, it requires a very robust approach which is outlined in the 5 steps below.
Step
1
Complete the Reliability Solutions Virtual Quality Questionnaire from which the SQE will score responses to decide if supplier is even worthy of a visit
Step
2
Review supplier process in detail and apply the Reliability Solutions intensive on-site supplier audit procedure with scorings applied and grading of supplier on completion
Step
3
For new devices / products the Reliability Solutions ‘Master Quality Plan’ is introduced to manage the Supplier Quality and build up from the prototype stage through pilot production and into mass production via a controlled NPI model.
Step
4
Formal Mass Production starts and supplier process and quality reporting starts to enable SQE Virtual Management using reporting models developed by Reliability Solutions to provide true reflection of Supplier Performance in advance of shipment to customer.
Step
5
Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) using the Reliability Solutions scoring model
Where Next?
The simple answer is to contact Martin Shaw via email at Reliabilitysolutions@yahoo.co.uk and find out more about how he can help your company drive world-class supplier performance.
Supply Chain Selection / Management seminars are available which can be directly discussed or booked with Martin who will be happy to engage with you and provide more details, or if you prefer on-site consultancy and advice this can also be offered alongside the training or independent of it.