Supplier Viability: The Key to Improving the Supply Chain Management Process

While supplier viability isn’t new to the business world, the increased incident rate of supplier shut down brought on by the recession this past year has made it a front-and-center supply chain issue. Because the economy is not making it easy to identify supplier viability’s greatest origin of risk, companies across many different industries and sectors have incurred more supply chain disruptions with detrimental consequences.

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In this Profit through Process podcast, Genna Weiss of Six Sigma IQ speaks with Lestie Carey and John Wilson, consultants and trainers for Monkey Mundos, a company focused on helping individuals and companies achieve success through training and business services. With expertise that spans the automotive, aerospace, bio-medical and education industries, Carey and Wilson discuss how you can improve your supply chain management process by describing a method that you can use to assess the financial and performance health of your supplier base more effectively in this uncertain economy and for the future.

You will learn about Monkey Mundos’s supplier viability method developed 12 years ago for an OEM that can identify "red" flags, which indicate a supplier approaching financial trouble. They show how this method—which does not require the need for financial experts—provides questions that will allow your organization to identify the pertinent information that can be missed by others, including providing tools that can determine the risk level, choice of options and consequences of working with particular suppliers. In addition, Carey and Wilson discuss who should participate in obtaining insight into the supplier viability process—which include the CEO, buyers and purchasing staff and quality management and control—and provide the first step in pursuing supplier viability.