Page 12
www.us-
tech.com
Supply Chain
You Get What You Measure, Not What You Order
By John Daker, Vice President Business Development, Riverwood Solutions
providing your outsourced manufac- turing partner with a detailed speci- fication of your requirements, but even that is not where it ends. Time and time again we have seen projects go awry because a brand or OEM has failed to measure and manage the performance of its vendors.
I
have said a lot in the past about the importance of vendor selec- tion, contract negotiation and
monitoring your vendors is to know what you want to measure before you start and to understand what a good and bad product looks like. It is not enough to define a surface as flat. How flat is flat? Define the term and the tolerance, what is suitably flat for the application you are using the product for, and if the vendor can meet this level of flatness with a yield that allows it to manufacture at
Most vendor partnerships start well, but complacency is the enemy. If left unmonitored, standards may drift, and the attention to detail that was impressive at the beginning may disappear.
Most vendor partnerships start
well, but complacency is the enemy. If left unmonitored, standards may drift, and the attention to detail that was impressive at the beginning may dis- appear.
Provide Detailed Specifications The first stage in the process of
the price you have agreed upon. Real numbers are better than a
“golden” product, so give your vendor an understanding of what is inside and outside of tolerance and why it is essential. Do not specify something you don’t need or something that has zero impact on your ability to sell or use the product. This implies a lack
1 2/25/16 4:28 PM
of understanding of the production process and of your vendor. Let the vendor know that you
will be measuring the flatness of each and every product in the initial batches and systematically there- after. Ideally, have someone onsite to check the initial batches and to let the vendor know when it is close to tolerance or if they see measure- ments drifting in a particular direc- tion. If the first batches are out of tol- erance, work with the vendor to get them right, don’t just throw the prob- lem at the vendor and say fix it! After that, consider asking your
vendor to batch inspect and to provide you with a certificate of compliance for each shipment and let the vendor know what your key performance in- dicators are for the product. Open re- porting is an important part of any partnership, so make sure the vendor provides you with any test results you need and check them regularly. If they are using a particular
tool to measure, be sure to get a cer- tificate of calibration for that device. If they don’t have the right tool for the job, work with them to outsource the testing or measurement, or to create a measurement process that works for both parties.
Open Communication When you see problems occur-
Trust NTE Electronics to be your Electronic Components Supplier
INDUSTRIAL CONSUMER
COMMERCIAL MRO APPLICATIONS
Cross references for over 525,000 industry part numbers
Expanded range of high quality product offerings
Convenient distributor network for instant inventory fulfillment Professional and knowledgeable staff Quantity discounts available
Active/passive/electro-mechanical/ interconnect and optoelectronics
www.nteinc.com
The company behind the NTE and ECG Brands!
YOUR SOURCE FOR SEMICONDUCTORS, RELAYS, SWITCHES, CAPACITORS, RESISTORS, AND MORE
ring, get on them immediately, even if they are not critical. You may not have products outside tolerance or failing in the field, but you may have a trend in that direction, which if spotted early enough, can be rectified before a single faulty product is made. This will save time, money and a whole lot of stress. When there is an issue, let the
vendor know and put a plan into ac- tion to address the problem as quickly as possible. This is not the time to point fingers and blame, there will be plenty of time for that later, this is the time to be collaborative, to work to- gether to resolve the issue as quickly as possible to keep production flowing. Typically, purchasers can be
quite detached from the design or product team, which can often result in them not really knowing what they are buying. In these cases they tend to rely on the assumption that the order is correct, so the product shipped will be also. This is not good enough unless the ordered item truly is a commodity, and sometimes not even then. Having a connected path from
the design and product team through the procurement and supply chain teams to the vendors is essential when an outsourced partner is being asked to build a complete product or subassembly. Open communications are at the heart of any good relation-
ship and the vendor/customer rela- tionship is no different. At Riverwood Solutions we pro-
vide a variety of services to support the vendor/customer relationship, not the least of which is our HOST service (Hybrid Outsourced Services Team), which provides feet on the
September, 2016
John Daker, Vice President, Business Development, Riverwood Solutions
ground — supporting brands by meeting with, selecting, negotiating, auditing and managing vendor rela- tionships. This often means the pro- vision of fractional staff, providing a tooling or test engineer, a quality en- gineer, or a lean manufacturing ex- pert for just the days that they are needed rather than having someone full-time just waiting for something to go wrong. Sometimes it means de- ploying a whole team quickly to swoop in and fix a problem that has occurred and then get out. There’s an old saying that you
can only improve what you can meas- ure. This definitely holds true for outsourced manufacturing. The more you measure and check in the early stages, the more success and peace of mind you will have when volumes start to grow. r
John Daker is a career operations, engineering and supply chain profes- sional with more than 15 years of global operations experience that he brings to his role at Riverwood. He has held engineering, operations, and program management roles at several companies including NASA, Flextronics, NHT, PowerFile, and Tesla Motors. John has worked with products in consumer electronics, networking, photonics, and managed manufacturing facilities producing audio components and electric vehi- cle power trains.
Riverwood Solutions helps OEMs and Brand Owning Enterprises of all sizes with manufacturing strategy, supply chain operations optimization, sourcing, and supply relationships. The company provides consulting and managed services to the world’s lead- ing technology product companies.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116