Assessment of suppliers

Purchasing Cost reduction, conflicts with other departments Joint objectives with other departments (S OP) Assessment of suppliers based on quality, exchange of information with selected suppliers The leader controls purchasing in the network Purchasing jointly coordinated in the network... 

Application of extended criteria for selection and periodical assessment of suppliers... 

Fig. 5.6, the framework for supplier assessment and development is presented. There are different factors influencing the assessment of suppliers. 

As stated above the Surveyor s role will include an assessment of the yard s quality control department including the suppliers of any contracted NDE services. The Surveyor will look for the employment of qualified personnel, the availability of adequate inspection procedures and the presentation of definitive NDE reports. 

The link with FMEA brings into play the additional dimension of potential variability into the assessment of the failure modes and the effects on the customer. The Conformability Matrix also highlights those bought-in components and/or assemblies that have been analysed and found to have conformance problems and require further communication with the supplier. This will ultimately improve the supplier development process by highlighting problems up front. 

Similarly, the aehievement of quality assuranee eertifieation, sueh as BS EN ISO 9000 (1994), is also not a guarantee of good quality produets. The quality assuranee model reeommends quality system requirements for the purpose of a supplier demonstrating its eapability, and for assessment of the eapability in terms of design, development, produetion, installation and servieing (BS EN ISO 9001,... 

The assessment of transportation risk must include consideration of the capabilities, equipment, and practices of both raw materials suppliers and customers. Some apparently attractive options may need to be discarded because of what suppliers of raw materials or customers... 

In the Intoduction to ISO 9001 it states that the quality assurance models represent three distinct forms of quality system suitable for the purpose of a supplier demonstrating its capability and for the assessment of such capability by external parties. In other words, the standard is suitable for contractual as well as for assessment purposes, but it does not actually require demonstration of capability to the assessor or purchaser unless required by the contract. 

You will need a procedure for controlling the list of assessed subcontractors/suppliers, which covers the entry of organizations onto the list and their removal from the list. 

Subcontractor/supplier performance will be evident from audit reports, surveillance visit reports, and receipt inspections carried out by you or the third party if one has been employed. You need to examine these documents for evidence that the subcontractor s quality system is controlling the quality of the products and services supplied. You can determine the effectiveness of these controls by periodic review of the subcontractor s performance what some firms call vendor rating . By collecting data on the performance of subcontractors/suppliers over a long period you can measure their effectiveness and rate them on a scale from excellent to poor. In such cases you should measure at least three characteristics quality, delivery, and service. Quality would be measured by the ratio of defective conforming products received delivery would be measured by the number of days early or late and service would be measured by the responsiveness to actions requested by you on scale of excellent to poor. The output of these reviews should be in the form of updates to the list of assessed subcontractors/suppliers. 

Assessments by second or third parties can be an acceptable alternative but it depends on the standards used for the assessments. An ISO 9000 assessment alone would not give sufficient confidence to remove all receiving inspection for deliveries from that particular supplier. You need to examine product as well as the system until you have gained the confidence to reduce inspection and eventually remove it. Subsequently continual assessment of the subcontractor should be carried out. 

Recently there have been a variety of suppliers with chemical peel kits claiming ease of use and increased efficacy. These proprietary kits vary from the vehicle used in delivering the TCA to having color indicators to inform the physician of a peel s completion. Caution should be used when using such kits as many times the physician loses the ability to easily assess the degree of frosting and in turn the depth and safety of the chemical peel. 

Some of the intended categories of use of radioisotopic reference material have been reviewed recently by Fajgelj et al. (1999). They include assignment of property values, establishing the traceability of a measurement result, determining the uncertainty of a measurement result, calibration of an apparatus, assessment of a measurement method, use for recovery studies and use for quality control purposes. It should be noted however that, in general, natural matrix reference materials are not recommended for calibration purposes. This should preferably be done with pure chemical forms of the element labelled with the isotope of interest. Calibrated isotopic sources of this kind are available from a number of commercial suppliers and are not the subject of this review. 

Assessment of raw materials (purity hidden ingredients supplier monitoring)... 

Once a sample is acquired, the supplier can begin to prepare the material in the state it will be used. It is particularly important at this stage to stabilize the material (if required) to prevent changes in composition of critical components and to homogenize the material so that all future sub-samples will be as identical as possible. If additional procedures (e.g., reduction of grain size) are needed to prepare the desired material, they should occur at this stage. At this point a preliminary assessment of homogenization should also be made. 

For further calculation and assessment of business cases the performance of the operating or auxiliary material and the know-how of the supplier are now decisive factors, too. 

In business terms, auditing of software developers will allow you to assess the vendor s technical competence, vendor reaction to your company s user requirements specification (URS), vendor QA system adequacy, supplier experience with GXP systems, and quality level of vendor-prepared validation and qualification protocols. In short, vendor auditing is a regulatory expectation and auditing provides a means of assessing the supplier s ability to deliver a validatable system that will achieve the requirements of your company s URS. 

External audits of raw material suppliers and contracted services should be handled in much the same way as the internal QAP. Audit protocols should be customized and tailored to the specific organization to be audited. For example, an assessment of a contract laboratory service should be conducted under the auspices of the internal audit team and follow similar procedures in terms of identifying deficiencies, installing corrective and preventative measures, and reports issuing. It is an advantage to employ the same personnel for both the internal and external audits. This approach assures a standardized and uniform audit procedure across the board. 

Supervision of producers and importers as primary suppliers of chemicals is a task requiring specific skills and qualifications on the part of inspectors, e.g. in toxicology and hazard assessment. To supervise retail sales is a simpler type of control. Supervision of users is, again, more complex, requiring still other types of inspector skills and qualifications for assessment of exposure and of risks, control of technical safety measures, etc. 

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