Qualifying a GCP Approved Supplier™: What we Audit
Posted by Craig Mottershead on Wed, Dec 14, 2011 @ 08:07 AM
As most of you know GCP is always searching for new products to supply as well as new suppliers to partner with. We rarely shy away from an opportunity or a challenge which is why we enjoy working on new sourcing projects and take supplier qualification very seriously. After all, we can only sell what we source and if we source poor quality products then we won’t have much of a business. Case in point, of the over 500 factories we have visited so far we have only qualified and approved 34 of them.
This is because we aim to build long-term mutually beneficial relationships with all our suppliers (and customers) and the pursuit of this severely limits the number of factories we deem suitable. For example we just finished auditing, what we initially thought was a fantastic supplier. They had lots of capital in the bank, rooms full of beautiful equipment and plenty of production capacity. They seemed perfect. And in many ways they were, just not for us.
In the end it came down to trust. We felt they weren’t being honest with their business intentions so consequently we weren’t prepared to invest our time and money to help them develop. In short, they failed point one on our audit list, assessment of intention.
The lesson here is, as important as it is to evaluate the supplier’s hard elements: equipment, R&D capability, production capacity, quality management systems etc. It’s equally essential to evaluate supplier’s soft elements such as: management team, communication ability, reliability, ownership commitment etc.
Below are some of the audit components our factories are subjected to and ultimately must pass before we call them a GCP Approved Supplier™.
Audit – Components
- Assessment of intention
- A strong commitment from the owner and GM - They are willing to sign an MOU
- Do they have effective communication and able to communicate regularly in English
- Do they have competitive pricing - They are within GCP’s target price and within the range of other manufacturer’s quote
- Do they deliver on time - Average delivery days against GCP’s expectation
- Do they have production systemized for timely delivery - They have an expert team/department to deal with RFQs, production, and logistics
- Do they provide certificate of compliance for orders
- Do they have R&D capability - An R&D team, a good facility, testing equipment
- Do they have the production capacity needed to regularly fulfill our requested volumes
- Reliability - Is there industry information that can be gathered about their past/current performance
- Do they have in-house product expertise
- Do they have in-house production expertise that can oversee and adhere to schedule for every order
- Do they have the ability to test quality during and after production and keep records
- Are they willing to bear the cost, time and resources to achieve agreed quality standards and follow instructions. What have they done, are they proactive, or are they evasive.
- Do they possess the adaptability to change
That’s it for today. Stay tuned for the next weeks post.
(For more than 10 years, GCP Industrial Products has successfully offered its customers a unique sourcing process that allows them to save money, streamline their supply chain and grow with new products. Our plans are to continue to grow based upon mutually beneficial relationships and the quality of our products and services to our ever growing customer base. To contact us please click here or phone 1-888-893-5427. Thank you.)