In today’s world of business, a company’s success relies on not just internal efforts, but outside resources as well. Selecting and fostering healthy relationships with suppliers reaps many benefits, including:
These benefits can impact manufacturing capabilities and project schedules, so it’s essential to select vendors that align with a company’s quality standards and deliver on time. In this article, we’ll explore what makes a vendor qualified to us at ACT, share risk factors to consider, and share how we qualify a supplier to ensure they maintain our required standards.
Every company has its unique strategy for sourcing quality suppliers. What checkboxes might ACT be looking to mark when analyzing a potential new supplier? For one, the quality of products and/or services is of the utmost importance. Evidence of robust quality processes is a key indicator as to whether a vendor is quality-focused. Here at ACT, where quality is a company value and a must-have for the defense industry we serve, this is vital.
On-time delivery and accurate order fulfillment are paramount to any company’s success—and ACT is no exception. We pride ourselves on fulfilling orders on time or earlier, so we need suppliers who will do the same for us as we would for our customers.
Suppliers who are responsive and can easily adapt to various scenarios are a huge asset. Those who can be flexible in response to changing demands or timelines give companies like ours the ability to compensate for unforeseen circumstances. When it comes to military power supply manufacturing, we must stay agile to fulfill the needs of our customers, which means our suppliers do too.
There are several risk factors a company must consider when selecting vendors to form relationships with in any industry. Some of these include:
At ACT, we have several ways to mitigate these risks. One mitigation strategy is to perform regular vendor audits and implement supplier scorecards. Regular check-ins go a long way in maintaining healthy communications and relationships with suppliers.
Having multiple vendors available as opposed to only one is another way to help overcome potential risk factors. Forming dependable connections with choice suppliers is a good way to avoid potential supply chain hold-ups and schedule interference.
We take several steps when determining whether a supplier should be considered a “Qualified Vendor.” The first is initial screening, which involves gathering data about the vendor, including its qualifications and capabilities. Part of our vendor validation is a supplier survey. This survey covers a myriad of topics, including but not limited to the vendor’s Quality Management System.
It’s highly preferable if the vendor is ISO 9001 and/or AS9100 certified. To hold at least one of these certifications demonstrates that the company is committed to the industry’s and ACT’s unique quality and safety needs. However, a lack of these certifications doesn’t necessarily disqualify a vendor. This just means that our purchasing and quality departments will need to perform an extra thorough investigation to determine a vendor’s capabilities. In such cases, a risk assessment is conducted by our internal quality team to ensure the vendor is a good fit and will meet our stringent quality standards.
To ensure quality is preserved, we’ve implemented a scorecard system for our vendors. This means our suppliers are evaluated twice a year to ensure they are maintaining the standards required to be an ACT vendor. The two categories assessed are item quality and delivery.
The item quality category looks at whether any shipments from the supplier were rejected due to materials not matching the correct specifications. The delivery category is graded according to whether historical deliveries were considered on time or late.
If a supplier’s performance is found to be below the acceptable standard, a deeper analysis of the supplier’s performance will be conducted to ascertain whether the data assessed was reliable. If the dissatisfactory score is valid, we will issue a written notice requesting that the supplier make immediate corrections to preclude further issues or discrepancies. In more dire cases, a Supplier Corrective Action Report, also known as a SCAR, may be issued to the supplier to be completed and returned promptly. In general, SCARs are implemented when there has been a trend of egregious performance or when a supplier’s lack of quality and/or timeliness with deliveries has a direct negative impact on our ability to operate.
Here at ACT, we’re on a mission to design, build, and support power solutions that perform and protect. This means our supplier partnerships need to align with us, so we can stay focused on providing military-grade power supplies that are ready when needed. We pride ourselves not only on our product performance, but also on our agility in meeting customers’ deadlines.
If you’re a supplier seeking a partnership, please review our supplier quality resources.
If you’re looking to partner power, let’s chat! Our team is at the ready to support your mission-critical power needs.
