Supply Chain Quality Improvement
Lean is a journey of continuous improvement. Suppliers must often be provided with technical assistance which leads to co operation. At times, top management must provide the leadership in obtaining action from suppliers. If the initial step in an improvement program is a meeting of both the buyer's and supplier's top management teams, amazing results can be obtained. These people plan the action steps of improvement together. Such discussions have greater impact than a meeting of the two quality managers.
Pareto analysis of suppliers:
Analysis of losses by material number or part number: This kind of analysis serves a beneficial purpose applied to catalogue numbers involving substantial or frequent purchases.
Analysis of losses by product family: This process recognises the main few product families present in small but numerous purchases of common product families.
Analysis of losses by process: This means classification of the defects or rejections in terms of the processes to which they relate to.
Analysis by supplier across the entire spectrum of purchases: This process might help in finding weakness in the supplier's managerial approach, as contrasted with the technological, which is usually correlated with products and processes.
Analysis by failure mode: This method is used to discover major defects in the management system. For example: suppose that research disclose major defects in the working to the wrong issue of specification. In such cases, the system used for specification revision should be examined thoroughly.
The buyer-specific drop down occurs when buyers see no obvious potential benefits form working on supplier development. To avoid this situation, companies found these tips to be helpful:
- Consolidate to fewer suppliers.
- Keep a long term focus.
- Determine the total cost of ownership.
- Set small goals.
- Make executive commitment in the buyer organisation a priority.