The Quality Hub Podcast

Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to the Quality Hub chatting with ISO experts. I’m your host, Xavier Francis, and I’m here with Kaitlin Wurzburg, consultant for Business Solutions. So glad you could be with us today, Kaitlin.

Yeah, I’m happy to be with you.

Awesome. Today’s show is entitled This Is Fine. Everything’s Fine. And we’ll be talking about supplier management. But first, let’s learn a little bit more about Kaitlin and her experience and journey. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, Kaitlin?

Yeah, of course. So I started in this industry back in 2017, right after I graduated from college. I got a temporary position in quality, in a quality department for a manufacturing facility, and that’s where I found my passion for this industry. Since then, I’ve worked for a variety of companies, mostly in the manufacturing realm and mostly startups or smaller companies. However, I was lucky to help them generate their quality management systems from the ground up. Since then, I found the next stage in my career in consulting with CORE. So now I’m on the other side of that, helping our customers with their certification in Denver. And since starting work in my career too, I’ve now got two master’s degrees and I have some internal auditor and food safety certifications. And yeah,

And that is a great amount of experience and wow, two masters. That’s awesome. Well, to get us started today, we’re talking about supplier management. What is ISO 9001 supplier management and why is it important for businesses?

Yeah, so about the standard, and for 9001 now it requires that the companies must identify your outside, either vendors or suppliers. Companies kind of use both of those names changeable and anybody that’s a product supplying the companies with any products or services. Specifically, we want to focus on suppliers that are providing the products or services that directly affect the quality of the organization’s output. So the outputs are the products or services that the company is providing to their customers.

Right. So that’s our we’re getting inputs from those vendors or suppliers.

Yes, exactly. And then so all of those suppliers must be identified, qualified, and evaluated regularly.

Awesome. So what you need to know is if they’re capable of meeting your needs as a supplier vendor.

Exactly. So like you said, those are important inputs. The suppliers, and what they provide for the organization. So if the quality of your inputs is affected, that could make for the company’s products or services to be undesirable affected as well. So when you implement a supplier management program, that kind of helps to mitigate those risks and properly control all of your suppliers and inputs. And then in doing so, this will ensure that you have consistent delivery of your products or services that meet your customer’s requirements.

That makes sense. So if the suppliers are late with delivering your materials or aren’t up to the specs you require, it’s going to affect your product. So that’s why that’s why I want you to take care of that.

Exactly. There’s a direct relationship there.

Okay. Well, that is important. So what are some of the key elements of an effective ISO 9001 supplier management system? And what are the benefits?

Some of the key elements include selecting and evaluating your suppliers. And then after that, you can establish the criteria for your supplier performance. Once you have all of your suppliers selected, there’s it’s important to keep monitoring the supplier performance and also take any actions, if there are any nonconformity or any deficiencies or discrepancies with any of the inputs that your suppliers are supplying you. So an effective system in consistently make sure that your suppliers are delivering you’re either products or services that meet not only your organization’s quality standards but then also contribute to the quality standards for their products, which goes into your overall customer satisfaction.

So let the supplier know the expectations of what they are getting to you and also make sure they are followed in addressing any errors or concerns that may come up.

Exactly. Exactly. And when you implement an effective system, there are a couple of different benefits that you can get out of. So start with quality assurance. So when you have an effective system, that will help your organization ensure that the products or services that you receive from your vendors are meeting your requirements like we’ve been talking about, and it will also help your system identify any risks before they happen so you can kind of stop those issues before they happen instead of reacting to them after they happen.

Being proactive that way.

Exactly. You can issue some corrective actions earlier on in the system. And then another benefit would include you can get consistency and reliability from your suppliers when they’re appropriately managed. You can create really good long-term relationships with them and have, like I said, reliability with your suppliers. And then when you have consistent ones as well, the turnaround time for your organization’s products or services can be reliable, which then builds your customer trust and loyalty.

Right. So you’re not you’re not saying, well, you know, we can’t get this done because we haven’t gotten the part to build up for you yet. Well, that’s not our problem. That’s your problem. Could alleviate some of that.

Yeah. You have that reliability with your suppliers. If they give you a time that something is going to be delivered you know for sure that would be the delivery date. And you can communicate that with your customer. And then you will also hit your on-time delivery for your customers. And then kind of like we’ve been discussing as well, your risk management is another benefit. It allows the companies to assess and mitigate any risks that are associated with their supply chain. You know, the supply chain has been a really big issue in the past couple of years. So this is even more important.

With COVID.

Yep. COVID put a dent in that. So this is important when all of your suppliers are reviewed, qualified, and evaluated, the issues can be addressed before they happen.

Makes sense. Makes sense.

And then to go in on another benefit is looking at kind of cost of pricing. When you evaluate your suppliers, you have the opportunity to identify suppliers that may offer competitive pricing without compromising on quality as well. So you can kind of source different suppliers, but still make sure when you’re doing the assessments that they’re going to deliver you with quality products or services.

Because yeah sometimes cheaper isn’t always better or I should say less expensive. Sometimes it’s cheaper, you know, and maybe its quality is good, but you can’t rely on them or they’re always on time, but they’re suspect, you know, with the specs and all that.

Exactly. Do you still want to do those assessments? Yeah. And then one of the last ones too, is continuous improvement, which ISO 9001 preaches. They enjoy continuous improvement. So when you have a supplier management system, this requires that you continuously improve and monitor your supply performance. If you’re having issues with the suppliers, you either address them or you go find new suppliers. So there’s always that improvement that goes along with keeping track of your vendors.

That’s that’s a staple of 9001. Absolutely. Helps you to keep your outputs up to the level you desire them to be. So how can businesses evaluate and select suppliers that meet ISO 9001 requirements?

Yeah. So the first step is when you’re evaluating or selecting your suppliers you want to first define the supplier criteria. So this will be different based on each company, based on what products or services they provide. But it could include things like technical specifications if the suppliers are capable and experienced pricing and availability on-time delivery, product or service quality, etc. It’s really up to the organizations to determine what’s important to them in their supplier performances and establish the criteria for that. And then once the criteria are defined and noted down, you can start to evaluate their current suppliers and then use the same criteria to qualify any new suppliers. So when you’re first setting up a supplier, that’s when you qualify them. And then and on at least a yearly basis, depending on how many suppliers, maybe more, you can evaluate them based on the same criteria and just make sure that they’re still meeting those requirements that you want your suppliers to meet.

So this isn’t a once-and-done thing, you know, but you’re checking it at least yearly, maybe, maybe if there’s an issue maybe more frequently. Now, if there is any nonconformance, is there anything like that?

Exactly. Yeah. And then each one of the requirements for 9001 is also for each qualification or evaluation to be documented. So that’s important to not only do it but if you’re making if you’re having discussions with them, with the team in a meeting to take notes and make sure that all of the evaluations and qualifications are recorded as evidence somewhere.

Makes sense.

Yes. And then also companies can perform other evaluation or selection activities. So you can send supplier questionnaires, you can perform supplier audits, and you could request samples if you’re having them deliver you any products. Or you could also ask for supplier references. Sometimes it’s hard to get suppliers to answer supplier questionnaires, which is why the qualifications are done internally. But if it’s a critical supplier, some of these may be important to implement. So maybe doing an onsite audit where you go to the supplier and make sure that what they’re saying they’re doing, they’re doing right requesting samples, you know, looking at making sure the products are quality and up to your standard or also asking for references. So that would include asking for information from their customers to see their feedback as well.

And maybe even looking at them from a perspective, are they ISO 9001 certified? So they’re familiar with the process. They understand they’re trying to do their best as well. Or do you understand they’re trying to do the best from a quality point as well?

Exactly. And based on some other industries, there might be other certifications or requirements that organizations require their suppliers to have as well. But then all of those activities that we were discussing should be performed by personnel in the company that is actively involved in supplier management. So this could be someone in your purchasing department, or accounting department who’s ever really interacting with the suppliers and can build on that relationship and should be involved in these activities.

A lot of times when you’re dealing with suppliers and purchases, you know, you have that purchase person that’s in charge of it. You don’t want to necessarily just have your management rep take over. You want to keep that or maybe maybe they’re part of a conversation, but they’re not they’re not the only direct person in contact with them. Use your salespeople, use your will, and in purchasing.

Exactly.

I can see how this makes a difference in confirming a supplier and that they’ll function as you need them to when with the specific requirements in mind for whatever they’re supplying you. So what do you find are some of the most common challenges businesses face when they’re implementing this ISO 9001 supplier management and how can they overcome them?