Write About the Process of Supplier Appraisal Case Study (Case Study Sample)

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The operation process carried out is supplier appraisal and evaluation. Supplier appraisal is concerned with the assessment of a supplier’s capability as well as suitability to deliver specified goods and services to the organization before the contract is awarded to them. Management of suppliers in a stout way that brings measurable and tangible results is essential to each and every organization. The process involves various activities some of which include assessing whether the supplier has the required established certificate for example BS EN ISO, is the supplier managerially proficient, is the supplier reliable, is the supplier technically sound, is the supplier competitive in terms of availability and price, does the supplier provide quality goods and services and finally is the supplier ethically upright CITATION She08 \l 1033 (Gordon, 2008).
Appraisal involves the assessment of the supplier in question so as to establish whether they have the capability of taking charge of the management of the supply needs. This usually involves four factors which are quality, delivery, service and price. Rating requirements are put in place and then combined into an overall or final score that can be objectively analyzed alongside other suppliers.
The process of supplier evaluation may take up to a whole month before the organization enters into a contract with the supplier. The evaluation takes consideration of the ten Cs of supplier evaluation. The first C is considering competency of the supplier. Here the capabilities of the supplier are evaluated against the organization’s needs. This is done by interacting with other customers and getting their view about the supplier. You ask them questions such as, how happy are they with the supplier, have they faced any problems with the suppliers and enquiring the reason why former customers abandoned the supplier.
The second C is capacity, here we assess if the supplier has the required capacity to meet the requirements of the firm. What is looked at here is that does the supplier have the needed resources especially the ones needed by the client for example, storage, equipment and staff. The other C is commitment, here you analyze if the supplier is Capable of providing the required quality standards. The supplier should show commitment to the organization during the period which the contract will be under way.
Control is there other C that is evaluated from the supplier. It assesses if the supplier has control over its policies, procedures, processes and supply chain and what the supplier will do in order to ensure that it delivers to the client reliably and consistently. Cost is another key factor to consider while evaluating a potential supplier. The cost of the supplier is established and compared with the price of other suppliers. The cost of the supply should be favorable and within the budget of the organization.
Consistency is also considered when evaluating a supplier. The supplier is assessed to establish whether there will be consistency in the provision of quality goods and services. The suppliers under consistency are asked about their approach and are required to carry out a demonstration and testing of the product where applicable and necessary. The supplier’s culture is another factor considered in evaluation. Knowing about the culture of the supplier helps to get a better understanding of the party the organization is dealing with. For example is the supplier’s main focus on providing quality goods and services or the main focus is in meeting the client’s deadline CITATION Fol12 \l 1033 (Folinas & Dimitris, 2012).
The other C considered is clean. This evaluates the supplier’s effort and commitment to observance of environmental regulations and laws, ethical practices and sustainability. The supplier is also evaluated to establish how their organization treat its members of staff as well as members of the society, that is how do they practice their corporate social responsibility. The last C to be considered is communication. It establishes whether the supplier’s proposed method of communication corresponds to the one preferred by the organization.
Obtaining the correct information from the supplier can sometimes be delicate due to the resources and time that are committed to the whole process. The process also involves personnel from the buying firm. The process of process appraisal is always resource intensive and costly and can create a blockage between the customer and the supplier especially in case where the data needed to carry out evaluation is not easy obtain or readily available.
Despite all the above challenges and resources used up, the benefits realized from the supplier appraisal evaluation are many. The advantages are that through evaluation poor suppliers are wiped out before a contract is entered into, the firm is able to identify the supplier’s weaknesses and put the necessary programs in place to handle them, the customer relations and levels are well secured and finally both the supplier and the firm gets a better understanding of each other hence fostering a good rapport leverage. Generally supplier appraisal evaluation helps get rid of improper suppliers, unworkable delivery schedules as well as substandard goods CITATION Mar06 \l 1033 (Day, 2006).
The process of supplier evaluation is faced with a number of different challenges. One of them is the incidence of scandals. This is where the supplier gave falsified information about themselves for example faking the experience that the suppliers have been in operation. This may mislead the organization into awarding such suppliers a tender only to realize later that the suppliers do not have the required experience to carry out the business of supplying. An example of such an instance is what happened in US where the government entered into a contract with a supplier who had lied about their informa...