Supplier Quality Management : A Brief Guide – Qualityze

Even after being
equipped with modern tools and equipment in the production unit, manufacturing
businesses are concerned about reducing risks and avoiding costly production
failures. It can happen due to poorly-managed processes, poorly maintained
equipment and devices, periodic audits, and most important of all, flawed
supplier management process – where it all begins.

Ensuring good quality
output or products requires you to have the best quality raw materials and
components. It is not practically feasible to check every single material,
component, or part for quality. This is the reason; you need reliable suppliers
for your business.

So, how you identify reliable suppliers?

Through the supplier
qualification process! It is not as simple as it sounds. It requires you to
document all the details related to suppliers like Supplier Name, Category,
Site, Addresses, Contacts, Type, Certifications, and more. You can create your
supplier onboarding questionnaire to verify whether the selected supplier meets
all the criteria and requirements.

The next generation, cloud-based supplier quality management software comes with a pre-defined questionnaire that you can customize as per your internal and external specifications to streamline the supplier selection process.

Why is Supplier Quality Management Important?

Supplier quality
management is imperative to manage critical functions such as managing supplier
information, performance, and relationships. It enables any organization to:

• Improve Collaboration and
  Communication with Suppliers,
• Ensure consistent quality
  products,
• Strengthen business
  relationships,
• Deliver value to their
  customers,
• Gain operational excellence and
  competitive-edge, and much more.

Step-By-Step Approach:
Makes Supplier Quality Management Successful

All enterprises need to develop a successful supplier quality management system is having a well-organized approach that includes the following steps:

1. Selecting the right supplier for your business and industry-type

Your business model and industry-type are different; so is the
supplier-type for your business. You cannot just select the first supplier you
find on the internet with minimum prices. Price is a thing that comes last.
First and foremost is the quality of the products and services that the
supplier delivers. In the online world of businesses where every other supplier
promises to deliver quality, it can get daunting to pick the right one for your
business.

Here’s the simple hack for it. Create a list of questions based
on your business requirements to evaluate suppliers, including their market
experience, clients they have worked for, location, and much more. It will make
supplier selection easier for you.

2. Creating and reviewing the approved supplier list

Creating an approved supplier list helps you identify the
suppliers that meet your organization’s selection and evaluation criteria. But
you cannot keep it constant unless the suppliers continue to meet the
requirements and pass the regular audits with flying colors. Reviewing the
approved supplier list often helps you keep track of supplier performance and
give them feedback, ensuring continuous improvements in the supplier quality.

Like audits, you can plan review for the approved supplier list
regularly to grow and improve mutually, ensuring quality end-products for the
customers without fail. It will significantly help improve your
business-supplier relationship.

3. Auditing your supplier at regular intervals

If you want to stay ahead of ongoing supplier quality performance, you must have a streamlined supplier auditing process. The audits will help identify the supplier-related processes’ inconsistencies while enabling you to assess the supplier capabilities and make the supplier onboarding process easy and efficient. Planning and scheduling the supplier audits well-in-advance is preferred as best-practice to avoid any impact on the ongoing operations.

The best solution is integrated Supplier Quality Management
Software that can help you efficiently manage audit criteria, schedule supplier
audits, track and document results, and perform follow-up activities. It will
help eliminate all the supplier defects and non-compliances quite
systematically.

4. Measuring supplier performance and generating their scorecards

Measuring supplier performance is quite similar to the supplier
selection process. It also requires you to have specific metrics defined for an
error-free and unbiased evaluation of the suppliers associated with you for a
long-time. The audits can be of great help here since they point out
inconsistencies to investigate and determine the root cause. You can further
generate supplier scorecards based on audit results and other performance
criteria. It will ensure that you are associated with quality suppliers only
who care for the business as much as you do.

With the right supplier quality management software, you can
document all the supplier performance records as evidence of switching to
another supplier. It demonstrates your organization’s commitment to best
practices at the time of inspections and regulatory audits.

5. Sharing timely feedback with supplier for improved quality

Be it any business; constructive feedbacks help us all to
improve and grow. It is equally essential for your suppliers to know what’s
going well and what’s not to make necessary changes in their processes. It
would be best if you will share feedbacks with suppliers at regular intervals.
It will improve the quality of the product and strengthen your business
relationships for the long-term.

The cloud-based supplier quality management software can help
you collaborate and communicate with your suppliers quite often regarding the
improvement required. You can also schedule follow-ups on the improvement
activities using the advanced functionalities.

6. Tracking supplier performance for informed decision making

Keeping track of supplier performance is critical for informed
decision making for your supplier onboarding process. You must have critical
metrics to identify the fluctuations in supplier performance. You can also
observe the patterns of downtime and uptime. It will help you make informed
decisions to keep a supplier on board and provide them feedback for improvement
or to end up the contract for continued poor performance over time.

Thanks to the advanced reporting and analytics feature of the
supplier quality management software, it has become a lot easier and more
efficient to track the supplier performance for any period and improve your
decision-making ability. You can also guide your suppliers on the timeline
their performance dripped all-time low so they can investigate at their level
and improve accordingly.

Isn’t it an all-inclusive approach to perform the supplier quality management well? You can simplify it even more with the right Supplier Quality Management software like Qualityze that helps you track and manage the qualification process of new potential suppliers, maintain complete records of all suppliers evaluated on a centralized database, timely communication with all suppliers to provide feedbacks, manage approved supplier list (ASL), and manage supplier scorecard while seamlessly integrating with your existing ERP system.

Qualityze Supplier Quality Management enables organizations to
streamline and standardize their supplier-related processes and mitigate
operational challenges. Built on the Salesforce.com platform, it offers
greater flexibility, security, and scalability to control and manage
voluminous supplier records without any hassles.

A product’s quality
starts at the supplier selection process as the suppliers play a vital role in
bringing the product to the market. So, have you implemented a powerful
supplier quality management system yet?

If not, the Qualityze
customer success team can help. All you need to do is get in touch with us on
1-877-207-8616 or write to us at [email protected], and we will be right there
for you. You can also request a free demo to get real-time insights into how
the software works and make supplier quality management simple and
straightforward.