Why Supplier Supervision Needed?
Many businesses rely on suppliers to supply raw materials, semi-finished products or finished products and the quality of these products. It is impossible for the enterprises that have the quality characteristics requested from the supplier companies, who cannot procure the processed or semi-processed material or raw material within the required period of time, act within the framework of their own quality policies. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that the companies adhering to the principles and principles are supervising and supervising on-site suppliers.
Maintaining product quality and creating customer satisfaction is only possible with effective supervision. Customer satisfaction and product quality are only achieved by the fact that the supplier companies have the management systems owned by the enterprises they work with and that they actually implement these systems. Naturally, suppliers cannot be expected to produce continuously with the same quality criteria. For this reason, it is important to check whether the suppliers provide products of the expected quality, safety and health and whether they produce in accordance with the relevant standards. These audits are also a requirement of the responsibilities of the enterprises towards their customers.
Supplier oversight activities are carried out by audits performed at the time intervals and criteria defined by the enterprises. The reports prepared as a result of these audits enable the enterprises to evaluate the suppliers in a professional manner and provide the opportunity to direct the suppliers to work according to the criteria they want.
The qualification and auditing criteria of the auditors working in the organization that will conduct the supplier surveillance studies are determined by a protocol to be made between the enterprises and the surveillance organization. The protocol also includes the audit approach and acceptable or unacceptable error definitions.
Supply chain has a high share in the success of enterprises, especially in today's challenging market conditions. Supervision of the compliance of the supplier companies with the criteria and standards of the enterprise is necessary in order to achieve a certain quality standard in the supply chain and to create a positive image in the public sector of the enterprise. Supplier inspections are carried out in accordance with the company's policy, standards, processes and work flow principles. In this way, enterprises can see the situation of the supply chain in the market and can respond to problems and situations that need to be intervened in a timely manner.
What Does Supplier Surveillance Gain for Businesses?
With the supervision of the suppliers, it is ensured that the enterprises follow the supply chain effectively and that the companies comply with the internationally accepted quality, environment and social responsibility principles. Businesses ensure that they fulfill their obligations in this way.
In the meantime, businesses see the strengths and weaknesses of the supplier companies they work with, while also recognizing the opportunities and threats they have, and determining which management systems and standards they should implement in this direction.
At the end of the supplier surveillance studies, companies have the opportunity to see the activities of the supplier companies on site, to examine the processes they follow, to understand the system applications, nonconformities, application deficiencies and how much they apply corrective and preventive activities.
Supplier oversight and auditing is usually carried out on a predetermined list of questions. Each of these questions has standard scores and they are recorded with the scores given by the auditors during the supervision. In such a calculation, the scores and deviations from the standard are determined by the supplier companies as a result of the supervision. With such a scoring system, two-way benefit is obtained. Namely,
- On the one hand, different supplier companies are supervised at different times and it is possible to compare supplier companies with each other with equal criteria.
- On the other hand, the scores obtained by the same supplier companies as a result of repeated inspections at different times are compared and their development over time is monitored.
The points to be included in the supplier surveillance forms are determined between the surveillance company and the enterprise. However, it is mainly related to the expectations of the enterprise from the surveillance studies and the ways in which the suppliers want to evaluate. For example, the competitiveness of the supplier, whether it has price flexibility, whether to deliver the products in a timely, accurate and complete manner, whether the product quality meets the needs of the enterprise, how honest and reliable it is in the market, the management system documents and standard documents it has.
The following benefits are noteworthy in view of what supplier oversight gives businesses:
- Businesses recognize timely supply chain problems.
- One-off or one-off suppliers are eliminated.
- It gives enterprises a new perspective in terms of performance and economic efficiency and helps the supplier to plan their requirements correctly.
- Another important gain is that enterprises create a systematic supplier competition in this way and increase the bargaining power of the enterprise.
Supervision of suppliers is carried out in food, automotive, pharmaceutical, machinery, chemical, textile and many other sectors and supervisors provide supplier development programs especially for retail chains.
With the supervision of suppliers, the production process of the enterprises is balanced and their competitiveness is increased. Businesses accelerate their development in this way and make their continuity permanent.
In today's globalizing markets, suppliers are not located in the same country or in the same region but in many distant parts of the world. Surveillance agencies monitor and supervise even these remote suppliers through their wide service networks. This gives enterprises a great advantage in global markets. Surveillance of all these suppliers, who live in different countries, different cultures, different economies and speak different languages, adds value to businesses with a common perspective.
At the same time, the situation of the enterprises in the domestic markets is evaluated in detail in terms of supplier relations and the competitiveness of these enterprises in international markets is revealed through the supplier surveillance studies.
