Supplier Audit Process

I am new at my company and there seems to be some antiquated practices that we use when it comes to supplier quality. I work specifically with one supplier of our electronics and the company had a system set up where they would visit here every quarter and we would go there every quarter. I have been here about 9 months and have been to their facility in Mexico three times. This whole process seems a bit redundant and this is not my experience based on previous places of employment.

I sketched out a process flow for the current process where there is 4 times a failure is getting analyzed, and two of those are by the supplier (one on site and one at their facility). There is also 4 separate times that the part number and serial numbers are getting recorded. This makes no sense to me.

If anyone has some insight to the process that you use when determining non-conforming material and dealing with suppliers I would love to hear about something more streamlined. Sounds basically like a trust issue, which I have dealt with before but never to this level.

Thanks

 

Luke, you may be correct about the trust issue. Two languages and being on different sides of the border may be an influence on what you view as redundancy. What is the nature of the product line ?

 

Redo the sketch as a value stream, which will get the attention of the people who control the money. Use all the lean and value stream buzzwords.

Reasonable thinker: Hey guys, this seems sort of redundant. It takes more effort than necessary.
Controllers of money: MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER !!!!
Reasonable thinker: Well, yes, but it doesn't make sense. See, we already do this thing here .... why are we doing it again?
Controllers of money: MORE IS BETTER !!!!
Reasonable thinker: (after going away and drawing a value stream) OK guys, see here? Look at this long, unnecessary value stream, we are losing money.
Controller of money: OFF WITH THEIR HEADS !!!!

I am completely exaggerating the exchange, of course, to illustrate the point that once you exit the data driven world, everything is a sales pitch.

(Or maybe its only a slight exaggeration.)