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In these days of intense competition, custom designs, short product life time, and just-in-time (JIT) inventory, suppliers have become a vital part of any enterprise. The philosophy of total quality management (TQM) insist on making supplier a part of organization, by involving them from design stage to actual production through open communication and data interchange facilities, and integrating them in organization's management system.
In supplier management the trend, as we have seen, is toward JIT, one-part-one-supplier and supplier certification. These criteria ensure uniformity, timeliness, commitment, low product appraisal costs, and low inventory in pipeline. This philosophy requires dependence on each other and a major paradigm shift on part of both supplier and customer to get over the suspicion and low price/piece mentality, and work as partners.
This dependence also requires closer monitoring of suppliers to identify Best-of-best (Bob), to continue association with and give them more business opportunities and...