Tools to Assist in Building Deep Supplier Relationships
Liker and Choi highlight the value of intensifying the relationship with suppliers in their article. And Nelson provides a specific case study on Delphi in his article. GP Deltapoint has enjoyed success using a trio of tools to help in this kind of work.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) provides an actionable link between customer needs and internal processes. This tool is often deployed to help you deepen the relationship with your own customers, but it works equally as well as an aid when working with suppliers. Your needs are translated into specific product and service capabilities at your supplier which can in turn be translated into internal process capabilities there. This numerical linking is similar to the "transfer function" concept in Design for Six Sigma (DFSS).
Value Stream Mapping is a method for highlighting waste in any value stream, but particularly between suppliers and their customers. VSM workshops that extend over two or three days can be enormous aids in uncovering issues, misunderstandings and sources of wasted time and effort. At the end of such workshops it is not unusual to have cut processing time by more than half and improved process throughput by more than 100%. Remember that processes involving paper and white collar work are just as susceptible to this kind of improvement as are product and parts flows.
Rapid Improvement Workshops are similar in function to Value Stream Mapping exercises. They are often called Kaizen improvement as mentioned in the last point of the Liker article. Both Kaizen and Value Stream Mapping drive waste out of systems but VSM relies more on the visualization of a process (and is somewhat akin to Brown-Paper exercises in that regard). In practice too, VSM follow-up and closure may occur over one to three months. Rapid Improvement typically incorporates analysis (that may have been conducted in advance of a workshop); almost to the degree that a Six Sigma project would incorporate. Also, in practice, a Rapid Improvement workshop drives heavily for actual change in a process in real time over three to five intense days.
No matter which tool you apply, the results will be less waste and improved value; measured from the standpoint of customers.
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