This is a contributed article.
The manufacturing landscape today is as competitive as it ever has been, which means that strong supply relationships remain pivotal for ensuring reliability and innovation. When it comes down to it, trust is at the heart of the supplier relationships and these are developed through effective communication and through a mutual understanding of what is expected.
You need to be able to reduce your risk and increase supply chain stability and traditionally manufacturers have relied on emails and phone calls to maintain those connections. However, some face to face connection is OK too. Manufacturers have to adopt efficient tools and technologies to ensure that you get the product that you are looking for. Whether you are dealing with companies like Tecan who are invested in chemical manufacturing and etching, or you are talking to businesses about product prototypes, you need to have excellent communication for this to work. Here are some tips on building better supplier relationships.
1. Communicate.
We mentioned this one already, but you can only develop trust with your suppliers through effective communication. Manufacturers, along with suppliers, require clear, consistent and open lines of communication so that everybody gets what they want. You need to trust your supplier to be able to give you what you’ve been looking for and to follow the outlines that you’ve been giving them. They also need to trust that the outlines that you’ve been giving them were correct in the first place. It costs a lot of money to manufacture anything, which means that you should ensure that you have a centralized way of ensuring all communication is secure. You can move away from scattered emails and phone calls to something that’s more integrated, so looking for the right technology to do this is important.
2. Set clear expectations
The expectations that you have for your suppliers should be measurable in their standards. It’s crucial for managing supplier performance, and scorecards are an excellent tool for helping. Here you can track your key metrics such as on time delivery and on budget statistics. These will help everybody involved in the relationship to see what the standards are and how they can be measured.
3. Adopt agile systems
You need to be as flexible as possible, so adopting the right systems that can help you to pivot and adapt quickly when supply chain chain disruption occur is essential.You have to be flexible in not only maintaining continuity, but showing suppliers that you’re committed to finding those solutions together. Supplier relationship management software can enhance your agility and it can help you to provide the real time insights and data that you need to make informed choices. With this level of responsiveness, you’ll be able to maintain better supply relationships that are driving positive outcomes. This is especially important in times of uncertainty.
With the right relationships in place, your manufacturing outcomes are going to be solid. Communication is key, so once you have communication in place, the rest should fall in line.