Supplier Process Management

The Problems

Supplier Process Management is increasingly important in today’s global economy. In order to reduce cost, more and more of a product’s content is being sourced to suppliers, many of them in other geographic regions.

Most companies have refined their internal processes to a high degree of efficiency, by investing in powerful PLM and ERP systems. However, the success of a product increasingly depends on the level of execution of a company’s processes within their supplier community. Many companies have integrated with some of their biggest suppliers, but the challenge remains, how do you reach the rest of your suppliers?

Do these problems sound familiar?

• I can’t tell what requirements are due when, and who is responsible.
• Finding the correct revision of a document is difficult, both during and after launch.
• Time is wasted collecting data, meeting about it, and producing status reports that are out of date.
• Tracking status across suppliers, products and programs is difficult if not impossible

The Needs

• Communicate requirements to your suppliers – Your process may be best of breed, but only if your suppliers have access to the right requirements, and fully understand them. Your suppliers will not be effective unless they not only know what to do, but when.
• Provide a single source of information – The information provided in your process is critical for many disciplines within both the customer organization and their supplier community. It must be accurate and easy to find,
• Provide Visibility to Risk – The key to a successful implementation of your supplier management process requires that data is driven back into your organization so the risks can be identified in time to take action. Summarizing the information needs to be automated so that different people can see the slices of information they need to assess risk.