Managing Difficult Suppliers

Most supplier problem resolutions do not start at the production stage. Many problems begin from working with suppliers’ whose managers or owners think they have special relationships with their customers’ management. Many production problems start when suppliers refuse to co-operate with its customers’ managers whom they do not know, or customer appointed quality and technical experts to implement corrective actions.

 
AMREP had a biomedical device customer which had the device plastic components manufactured in Singapore.  These components were then sent to another contract manufacturer for the final assembly of the device.  Most components were always rejected for assembly.  A customer material expert was stationed in Singapore to resolve quality problems relating to tooling and material usage.  Attempted problem resolution always ended up in disagreements.  AMREP plastic and tooling specialist added-in by the customer to track problems could never get detailed information on problems.  Final assembly in Thailand was always delayed because of components issue.

 
Supplier problems resolution can never be achieved when supplier management bypass a customer’s quality representative and talk directly to his boss because of an established “special relationship” with the customer’s top management.

 
In our biomedical device customer case, our AMREP CEO and Chairman was brutally frank to our customers’ top management when he said, “ When a supplier is reluctant to cooperate and do not understand the meaning of customer’s money and customer satisfaction, it is time to look for another supplier in double quick time”.

 
Are you having problems with resisting suppliers???

 
For more information on how we solve suppliers’ resistance to improvement,
contact Isabel at 1 954 4430046 or 1-800-692-8539(Toll-Free).
Email supplyquality@amrepinspect.com