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When measuring supplier performance, it’s how well, not how many

Recently I was asked about how many suppliers are typically monitored and measured, on average, using a supplier performance management (SPM) system or solution and whether there is a best practice. I have never come across a best practice in terms of numbers of suppliers to measure.

I know of one large company that was measuring 1200 suppliers [...]

Download a book chapter from Supplier Evaluation and Performance Excellence

Subscribers to the Value Chain Group site may now download Chapter 1 of Supplier Evaluation and Performance Excellence: A Guide to Meaningful Metrics and Successful Results. This download includes:

Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter One  — Introduction, including why the book was written and the business case for supplier performance management

The book has been praised by its [...]

Quality measurement challenge: when a supplier’s performance is tied to your review

Recently a supplier quality manager asked me about a dilemma he was having with the way his manufacturing facility was measuring in-process supplier quality. If they found defects in supplier parts during the manufacturing process, each defective item was tallied as part of the total. That is, each defective part counted against the total quality performance rather than [...]

Supplier site visits – looking beyond audit checklists

Just as you might go beyond words and try to ready a person’s body language to understand what they mean, the same approach can apply to a customer firm on a supplier site visit. While a quality audit has its rules and rigors, there’s nothing like old-fashioned intuition to uncover what’s really going on. As Norman Black [...]

Here’s a Classic: Why Supplier Scorecards Fail

I’ve spent more brain cells than I care to think about on supplier evaluation and supplier scorecards. I’ve made a number of posts about the subject on this blog, which I will list in a future post.  And I’ve been a guest blogger on the subject. As part of its Best of Spend Matters series at [...]

Too Many KPIs: Rightsizing the Supplier Scorecard

You’ve heard of supplier rationalization and “rightsizing” the supply base. What about too many KPIs on the supplier scorecard? I’ve mentioned the problem of measuring too many KPIs in previous posts. In 11 Reasons Why Supplier Scorecards Fail, I list measuring too many KPIs as a reason for failure. In Supplier Scorecard Metrics: Easy vs Meaningful, I [...]

Supplier Auditing Michelin-Guide Style

In a recent article in the New Yorker, author John Colapinto describes his adventures with a stealth Michelin Guide restaurant inspector in New York City as she visited some restaurants to see if they met the stringent guidelines to merit the coveted Michelin stars. The Michelin hotel and restaurant guide has enjoyed enormous success in France and many other [...]

Managing and Improving Supplier Performance in a Lean Environment

I am in Covington, Kentucky attending the AME International Lean Conference, Journey to Greatness. Attendance is excellent despite the economy and its adverse impact on other conferences this year.  This may be due to various lean journeys presented by practitioners and couldn’t be more relevant in a down economy.  AME (Association for Manufacturing Excellence) puts on [...]

Upcoming Webinar: Evaluating Your Suppliers

The Purchasing Management Association of Canada (PMAC) is offering a monthly webinar series on various topics of interest. As the second in the series, I am giving a webinar entitled: Evaluating Your Suppliers: Practical Approaches to Getting Results. It runs from 12:00 pm until 1:30 pm ET on Thursday, October 15th. This is a practical overview of [...]

Supplier Assessment Can Be Supplier Education

Evaluating suppliers can be educational for the supplier. When suppliers are asked to comply with customer requirements that are considered industry best practices, they may have the opportunity to learn more about those practices. You may wonder how a company can end up with suppliers who are unaware of best practices that are customer requirements. For [...]