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| Case Study |
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Supplier Quality System helps Fortune
100 company drive conformance to global quality standards |
A Supplier Performance
rating system developed by Patni helped a Fortune 100 company
monitor, measure and benchmark the performance of its suppliers
against global quality standards
The Client
The client is a $5 billion subsidiary of a Fortune 100 Company.
It is among the largest producers of highperformance polymers
used by electronics, office equipment, computer, and automotive
manufacturers
The Challenge
It's a well-known fact that measurement drives behavior. This
also holds true for the supplier community. When procuring organizations
measure and communicate suppliers' performance regularly, it
helps in improving cost, quality, and responsiveness. The client
recognized that feedback to the suppliers was crucial for controlling
total costs, maintaining appropriate inventory levels and delivering
quality goods on time. The practice of continuous feedback had
the potential to not only boost supplier performance, but also
enable effective negotiation with suppliers having below-par
performance. Through the feedback, the client wanted to highlight
the performance gaps and suggest improvements to bridge those
gaps.
However, the client's ability to capture feedback from the suppliers
faced a few challenges. Some of these challenges included:
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Inability to provide role based access to design data |
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Managing the huge volume of studies on paper. |
Driven by the objectives of complying with the requirements
of its automotive OEM customers and improving its own reputation
as a quality conscious organization, the client decided to implement
QS-9000 quality system. The client expected that implementation
of a standardized quality system like QS-9000 would help it
to embark upon a supplier development plan.
The Solution
Patni proposed a system that would interface with the sourcing
data warehouse, the quality information system, and the online
marketplace. The sourcing data warehouse gives information on
suppliers and purchases on a daily basis, while the quality
system gives information on the defects and improvements in
supplier performance. All the defects and correction information
is then loaded back onto the sourcing data warehouse.
Patni also implemented a digitized workflow process for correcting
deliveries that had quality issues. The new system extracted
all deliveries with defects that needed a corrective action.
A corrective action note was created on the Intranet, and processed
through a workflow for communication to the vendor. The system
also interfaced via an external link with the online supplier
marketplace to incorporate feedback in the system. This system
recorded and communicated supplier defects, tracked and documented
corrective actions, and finally reported supplier performance.
Patni also developed a dashboard to measure supplier performance
in conformance with QS-9000. The calculated performance results
were presented in a span report format. The span value measures
supplier performance by illustrating the extent of deviation
from the desired result. This value measured the range of deviations
excluding 5% of the deviations on each extreme. Thus, a higher
span value implied a lower supplier performance.
The Technology
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Web: ASP, Java Script, Cold Fusion, VB Scripting, COM-DCOM,
Java, Java Server Pages |
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Client Server: Visual Basic, Oracle, MS SQL Server,
PL/SQL, Business Objects |
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IBM Mainframe: UNIX |
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The Benefits
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The solution helped the client automate the process
for incorporating quality measures and corrections with
the suppliers. This helped the company rank suppliers
on quality and delivery parameters |
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The quality conformance according to QS-9000 norms gave
standard benchmarks for quality measurement. This helped
both the client and its suppliers to objectively evaluate
performance |
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Performance measurement using span value gave the client
an effective tool to communicate defects. This measurement
did not merely point out defects on a caseto- case basis,
but could, in one view, show any supplier's complete history
of deviations. |
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