RSSB
Buying power T
he GB rail sector is a big buyer, relying on thousands of suppliers of every shape and size. These can range from international corporations to one-man-bands, dealing with almost anything you could imagine, whether it’s new trains, complete major infrastructure re-modelling such as Reading, or diving expertise for inspection of the foundations of the Forth rail bridge.
Buyers are responsible for controlling their supply chain risk. Supplier assurance is used as part of a buyer’s safety management system to assess a company’s capability to consistently deliver its products and services to the spec. It also supports good procurement practice by providing buyers with a pool of capable suppliers for tendering purposes. Given that the modern rail industry has numerous buyers seeking to procure from a common supply chain, to be efficient, the industry really needs a single ‘shop window’. This would provide a consistent picture of suppliers’ credentials. For higher risk goods and services, there is a need to have proof that these credentials are met, including, where necessary, having this formally assessed and certificated by third parties. Any of us can relate to this. After all we will pay much more attention and want more confidence if we’re buying services that have a bearing on our personal safety and well-being (electricians, car maintenance), compared to generic low-risk products (office stationery). Unfortunately, there is no single shop window, and over the past 20 years, arrangements for all this have become more complex, confusing and expensive. So how did we get here? During the 1980’s British Rail started to adopt modern supplier quality assurance principles to the business, which included its supply chain. Purchased products were allocated QA ratings according to criticality, and supplier inspection teams were replaced with the requirement for suppliers to demonstrate management capability and systems. However, an unintended consequence of privatisation and European liberalisation was that these arrangements
became fragmented and more numerous, being delivered by different organisations and third parties, leading to a lot of duplication. In short there was no system level thinking about how the supply chain could be risk-based and cost-efficient. The problem has persisted to the present day, assessments are still being duplicated. Industry asked RSSB to research the issue, and working with Arthur D Little, has shown that there is an opportunity to realise an estimated annual time-cost saving of £35 million per annum. This equates to about 375 ‘person-years’ of effort, by making arrangements more simple, effective and efficient with the added bonus of building a sustainable supply chain in the process. The whole industry, including Network Rail, train operators and suppliers, now wants to work together in a much bigger way to start accessing these savings.
So what’s being done?
The first step has been to agree on a single supplier assurance vocabulary as well as
Industry is starting to collaborate in working smarter to get supplier assurance costs down, says John Abbott
universal definitions on all the products and services that industry buys. This has become known as RICCL (Rail Industry Commodity Classification List) which is being adopted into the principles of major supplier assurance schemes such as Link-Up (dealing with the registration and qualification of suppliers) and RISAS (acquiring proof that processes and systems do what they say they do, and having this assessed and certificated by third parties). Work is well-advanced on a risk-based tool to support procurement at each point in the RICCL.
Another important component of this increased cooperation is the need to start coordinating the range of schemes industry funds and supports. Backed by the Rail Delivery Group, the Board of RSSB has recently set up the Railway Industry Supplier Qualification Scheme (RISQS), with its own board, to govern Link-Up. With an agreed language, approach and governance, the next step has been to agree principles of recognition and
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