QIC Guru

When I first started out some twenty years ago, the communications process for supplier management was somewhat akin to the pony express. You pick up the phone and hope to reach your contact or play phone tag for a few days until you finally made contact. You wrote letters and then waited weeks for a response. You got on a plane and traveled all day to meet for a few hours and travel another day to get back to the office, so you could write more memos to make sure everyone who needed to know the outcome of your trip was informed. Then of course there were the endless meetings which resulted in still more telephone calls, travel, memos, etc.. 

Supplier quality management was and continues to be a time consuming and costly initiative. Granted the pay back, if done well, far out ways the cost. But what if you could accomplish everything you wanted for half the cost and with half the effort. I personally have been a part of the never ending struggle to rain in my supplier base to keep moving forward to drive cost out and improve the quality of the products and services that I am required to purchase. Unfortunately I found that the programs that we put in place ultimately resulted in increase costs of their own.

Just recently I came across the most wonderful supply chain management software. This software enables you to meet all of your supply chain needs while reducing travel and improving communications real time, both internally and externally. With this software you can conduct quality management audits of your suppliers without leaving your office chair. Corrective and preventive actions are real time with communications to all interested parties at the touch of a computer key board. Evaluating and reevaluating your suppliers becomes an automatic process that lets you stay on top of non-conformances, inspection reports, on time delivery, new product development activities and schedule meeting which included supplier and customer input. What a difference a day makes.