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What Are the Benefits of Supplier Quality Audits?

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What Are the Benefits of Supplier Quality Audits?

What Are the Benefits of Supplier Quality Audits?

While you want to trust and count on your suppliers, do you really know for sure that they have the proper procedures in place, that the procedures are being actively applied, and that their employees follow their established procedures?

Supplier quality audits are the process of verifying that each of your suppliers is adhering to both industry standards as set by the law and independent organizations, as well as your own company and brand standards.

Audits are widely recognized as a pertinent part of doing business.

While there are many reasons for this practice, here are the six biggest benefits of performing supplier quality audits.

1. A Reduction of Risk

A significant amount of risk accompanies extended supply chains, outsourcing, and globalization. The risks include:

  1. Quality
  2. Safety
  3. Business Continuity
  4. Reputation
  5. Cost Volatility
  6. Supply Disruption
  7. Non-Compliance Fines
  8. Safety Incidents
  9. And More

2. Better Contractor Management and Business Relationships with Suppliers

Your business can gain ground when costs are reduced, contractor management is streamlined, brand reputation is protected, and long-term profitability is achieved. This is easier done when the following tasks are taken care of efficiently:

  1. Supplier Prequalification
  2. Supplier Audits
  3. Worker Management
  4. Insurance Monitoring
  5. Analytics

3. Expert Guidance on Safety and Sustainability Performance

While you already have strategies in place to manage the health, safety, and behaviors within your own organization, how do you know your suppliers, contractors, and vendors are similarly motivated?

Supplier quality audits actively foster an aligned culture of health and safety through:

  1. Contractor Prequalification
  2. Document Management
  3. Auditing
  4. Employee-Level Qualification and Training
  5. Insurance Verification
  6. Business Intelligence

4. Closer Alignment with Your Compliance Standards

Your business is under pressure to maintain compliance with:

  1. Country-specific regulations
  2. Industry standards and regulations
  3. Corporate policies and standards

5. Better Procurement Decisions

Procurement teams are under a lot of pressure to find, qualify, monitor, and manage suppliers, all while lowering the cost of doing so. With supplier quality auditing, procurement managers can make better and more cost-effective procurement decisions by:

  1. Mitigating risk through communication, evaluation, selection, and monitoring services.
  2. Gaining unprecedented visibility into safety statistics, risk profiles, and historical data.
  3. Reducing lead time and improving efficiency with ongoing guidance and support throughout the procurement process.
  4. Maximizing data quality on the entire supply chain.

6. Sustainable Business Practices

Today, an organization committed to improving the environment through sustainable growth is required to meet both regulatory requirements and societal expectations. Managing the long-term value of your company and its brand is party dependent on properly managing the environmental, social, financial, and economic impacts throughout its supply chain. All of this can be done more easily with thorough supplier quality audits.

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A Tale of Two Disciplines: Data Scientist and Business Analyst

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data scientist and BA

The ability to use data to achieve enterprise goals requires advanced skills that many organizations don’t yet have. But they are looking to add them – and fast. The question is, what type of big data expert is needed? Does an organization need a data scientist or does it need a business analyst? Maybe it even needs both. These two titles are often used interchangeably, and confusion abounds.

Business analysts typically have educational backgrounds in business and humanities. They find and extract valuable information from a variety of sources to evaluate past, present, and future business performance – and then determine which analytical models and approaches will help explain solutions to the end users who need them.

With educational backgrounds in computer science, mathematics, and technology, data scientists are digital builders. They use statistical programming to actually construct the framework for gathering and using the data by creating and implementing algorithms to do it. Such algorithms help businesses with decision making, data management, and the creation of data visualizations to help explain the data that they gather.

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Merchants scramble as shipper goes bankrupt

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Major retailers are scrambling to work out contingency plans to get their merchandise to stores as the bankruptcy of the Hanjin shipping line has thrown the retail supply chains around the world into confusion.

Hanjin, the world’s seventh-largest container shipper, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday and stopped accepting cargo. With its assets frozen, ships from China to Canada were refused permission to load or unload containers because there were no guarantees that tugboat pilots or stevedores would be paid. It’s also been a factor in shipping rates rising and could hurt trucking firms with contracts to pick up goods.

While some retailers’ holiday merchandise has probably been affected, experts say what’s most important is that the issue be resolved before the critical shipping month of October.

Degree of uncertainty

“Retailers always have robust contingency plans, but this degree of uncertainty is making it challenging to put those plans in place,” said Jessica Dankert, senior director of retail operations for the Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade alliance with members including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target.

Plano-based J.C. Penney said Hanjin is one of several ocean freight carriers it uses and when it learned there might be a problem it began to divert and reroute its containers. It said it uses “a variety of transportation methods and ports” and does not expect a significant effect on the flow of merchandise.

Target Corp. said it is watching the situation closely, and Wal-Mart said it is waiting for details about Hanjin’s bankruptcy proceedings and the implications to its merchandise before it can assess the effect.

As of Friday, 27 ships had been refused entry to ports or terminals, said Hanjin spokesman Park Min. The company said one ship in Singapore had been seized by the ship’s owner.

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Instagram and Pinterest are killing Gap, Abercrombie, & J. Crew

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Traditional mall retailers like Gap, J. Crew, and Abercrombie & Fitch have faced declining sales in recent years.

And the problem might be signaling something even more troublesome than dowdy apparel. Instead, it is a total shift in how teen consumers think.

Young people want to purchase experiences rather than actual stuff, and when they do buy clothing or shoes they want to be able to showcase purchases on social media.

“Their entire life, if it’s not shareable, it didn’t happen,” Marcie Merriman, Generation Z expert and executive director of growth strategy and retail innovation at Ernst & Young, said to Business of Fashion. “Experiences define them much more than the products that they buy.”

The only apparel young people want is clothing that can translate into an experience on Instagram or Snapchat.

Given their limited budgets and frugal tendencies, they’re more likely to purchase lots of clothes at fast fashion retailers, like cutting-edge Zara or cheap Forever 21, so that they have ample images to share.

Read more at Instagram and Pinterest are killing Gap, Abercrombie, & J. Crew

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