Leading product companies are looking for every possible edge to compress timelines to bring products to market ahead of the competition. At the same time, procurement professionals must accomplish more with fewer resources while maintaining a continuous supply of raw materials and components. Attaining the right good at the right time, place, quality, terms, cost, and risk level has never been more challenging.

Most people don’t enjoy taking tests and as the time to commence a test approaches many people get nervous. Unfortunately, test taking often shares similarities with plant audits for suppliers across many industries. Our experience has demonstrated that improving the supplier plant audit process results in an enhanced supplier experience allowing companies to de-risk supply over time by proactively identifying continuous improvement opportunities and developing better relationships with their supply partners.

A Supplier Quality Management System is developed to encourage continuous improvement by clearly communicating your company’s expectations and requirements to your supply partners. It also helps ensure that a professional and structured exchange is achieved between all parties on all issues regarding product Quality, Delivery, Cost, and Responsiveness.

The sales and operations planning process has taken various forms throughout the decades, but ultimately became standard practice for many organizations. Today’s customer-driven business environment poses new obstacles for companies, particularly in the consumer products industry, that is experiencing short product life cycles in tandem with high demand volatility.

At this moment, an organization somewhere in the world is struggling to support its customer’s demand requirements. The result from failing to meet customer demand requirements can lead to disruption in product supply, decline in sales, and harm to the company’s reputation.

In today’s business environment, actions tend to be driven based on the results of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), and this is especially true in the manufacturing space. The typical organization develops KPI’s to enable them to holistically measure Quality, Delivery, and Total Cost of products they are supplying to their customers.

As companies grow and evolve it is statistically inevitable that supply partners will come and go. There are many reasons why a company may want and/or need to transition supply partners such as supplier financial instability, poor quality performance, and production supply disruption.