Welcome back to my blog series on Deming's 14 points. If you are just stumbling into this event, I started on point one on the first of April. If you want to read the points in order you'll have to wait until I'm done. The order is off on purpose and the sequence creates a particular way of considering these ideas. The sequence itself and how it all fits together is what inspired this sequence in the first place. My writings are intentionally brief as your time is important.
End Lowest Price Contracts
Price of components is rarely the only piece of the quality puzzle. Deming is pointing out at least two ideas with this point. First, you get what you pay for. If you cheap out of parts, you are passing your failure onto your customer. Second, you've spent time investing in quality, now use those tools to build external relationships with suppliers. Creation of an enterprise to support your production system can be useful to ensure you pass quality along to your customer.
Cheap products are seen as just that. Cheap. If cheap isn't your goal, take steps to prevent it from being related to your products. I'm not exactly suggesting you go with the highest price. As a portion of your product market research, you should understand the level of quality your customers require. Don't exceed this. One of the identified lean wastes is making products to a higher quality level than your customer demands. Understand your customers inside and out and pick your parts accordingly.
Supplier relationships are a big component of this. Leadership should initiate contact with key business partners. If you do supplier monitoring such as audits, ensure you are using best practices to maintain the professionalism of the arrangement. I have done supplier site visits and audits, it has always been of the utmost importance to be polite, professional, and prepared for these events. You suppliers expend significant resources to support a site visit. Don't abuse their goodwill by failing to be ready or endlessly rescheduling.
Start. Somewhere. and Price
Start. Somewhere. is going to help you identify where you can add quality to a system. Depending on the system we are working on, it might be your supplier controls.
My recommendations for supplier relationships:
- Be consistent
- Maintain a consistent method of communication with your suppliers
- Make sure your supplier agreement isn't an awful mess
- Provide good documentation
- If you are a company sending drawings, send good ones
- Investigate best GD&T practices and employ as many as you can
- Ask your suppliers for feedback
- Be professional (Do I have to explain this?)
- Leadership should initiate relationships
- Be ready for audits if you do them, don't waste their time
- Help
- Do you have skills your supplier can benefit from?
- If you audit or do surveillance of suppliers, provide useful & actionable feedback
Deming is really trying to tell us to be leaders inside and outside our organizations. Although leading when you're not in charge maybe wasn't coined as it is today, he was very much pointing us in the right direction. You can lead your suppliers to excellence if you practice it. It rubs off.
If you'd like to see how to improve your supplier relationships and the system supporting you, reach out. Smash the Start button at the top of the page or schedule a free consultation. Thanks for reading!
