QIC Guru

Due to recent economic, safety and security issues, supplier quality management has emerged as one of the leading business practices in recent years. Today it is imperative for manufacturers to make significant investments in systems and processes to improve supplier quality. For instance, companies in the aerospace, food, and industrial products arena, need to preserve their preferred supplier status to continue to be considered for future business. As a result, they are under pressure to ensure that their products continue to meet or exceed acceptable quality levels and Corrective Action thresholds set by their customers. Therefore, managing their supplier’s quality is mandatory for these companies.

Supplier Auditing is an excellent tool to ensure that suppliers are following the processes and procedures that you agreed to during the selection processes. The supplier audit identifies non-conformances in manufacturing process, shipment process, engineering change process, invoicing process and quality process at the supplier. Once the audit is completed, the supplier and customer jointly identify corrective actions which must be implemented by the supplier within an agreed-upon timeframe. Continued surveillance audits ensure that these corrective actions have been successfully implemented.