Role
Supplier evaluation
Who fills in your supplier evaluation questionnaire? If it is the supplier themselves, you are evaluating a declaration rather than reality - and you learn the difference at the first nonconformity.
Intro call
Four questions we would start with
Who supplies the data for a supplier evaluation?
If it is the supplier being evaluated, the evaluation says how they see themselves. The hard data - delivery reliability, complaints, conformity of deliveries - sits with you, and it should carry the most weight.
How do you know a supplier's certificates are still valid?
A certificate sent in at qualification expires quietly. If nobody watches the dates, some of your suppliers are working on documents that went out of date years ago.
How long does qualifying a new supplier take?
If it is several weeks, then at an urgent need there is a workaround - buying from an unqualified supplier with a promise to complete the documents later, which rarely happens.
Where does information about a quality complaint go?
If it goes to the quality department and stays there, then at the periodic evaluation the supplier comes out well, because nobody set their deliveries against the complaints they caused.
We take over the collecting, you keep the evaluation
Gathering supplier data from your systems, watching document validity and preparing the periodic evaluation can be taken off the desk. The evaluation itself, the decision about the relationship and the conversation with the supplier stay with a person.
- The evaluation rests first on your own data. - Reliability, conformity of deliveries, complaints - those are facts from your systems. The supplier's declarations are a supplement, not the basis.
- A decision about a supplier always goes through a person. - Suspension or removal has operational and commercial consequences. The system shows the picture, a person decides.
- A document has a date, and the date has a reminder. - That removes a whole class of problems that today surface at an audit.
Scope
What can be taken off supplier evaluation
Nineteen example tasks. Each one has a human approval point. Below is a selection, and the scope we fit to your process.
Qualifying a new supplier
- The list of required documents and their status
- Taking in and reading the documents sent by the supplier
- Verifying the company's registration data
- The list of qualification steps with dates (decision to approve: the specialist)
- A signal when suppliers are used despite unfinished qualification
Documents and certificates
- A register of documents with their expiry dates
- Reminders before expiry, to you and to the supplier
- Detecting out-of-date documents in an active relationship
- The scope of certification against what you actually buy
Periodic evaluation
- Gathering the hard data: reliability, conformity, complaints
- The results against the agreed criteria (final evaluation: the specialist)
- Comparing suppliers of similar scope
- Pointing out suppliers with a worsening trend
- Material for the annual conversation with a supplier
Complaints and decisions
- Linking a quality complaint to a specific delivery and supplier
- A register of corrective actions with dates (judgement of effectiveness: the specialist)
- Pointing out problems that recur despite corrective actions
- The history of the relationship as material for a suspension decision (decision: the specialist)
- A summary of what a given supplier's nonconformities cost
A day's work
Today
- You assemble the periodic evaluation from questionnaires and what purchasing remembers
- You watch certificate expiry dates in a spreadsheet, or not at all
- Quality complaints live separately from the supplier evaluation
- Qualifying a new supplier is an exchange of emails over several weeks
- You do not know what a given supplier's nonconformities cost you
- At an audit you hunt for documents through folders
With AI assistance
- The evaluation is built from your hard data, the questionnaire only supplements it
- Expiring documents remind themselves, the supplier too
- A complaint is linked to a delivery and visible in the evaluation
- Qualification has a list of steps and statuses, so it can be sped up
- The cost of nonconformities is calculated against the supplier
- The full set of documents for an audit is ready
- Objective evaluation
the evaluation rests on facts from your systems
hard data carries more weight than the declaration of the party being evaluated
- Current documents
you do not work with suppliers on expired certificates
the dates have reminders rather than memory
- Time to qualify
fewer purchases from unqualified suppliers
qualification stops being so slow that it gets worked around
- A record of supplier decisions
it is known on what basis a relationship was suspended
the history and the reasoning are recorded with the decision
We start with the documents, because it is the simplest and most urgent area.
- Step 1
A register of documents with dates
What you have, what has expired, what is missing. The first review usually reveals a few suppliers working on documents from years ago.
- Step 2
Hard data for the evaluation
Delivery reliability and conformity from your systems. It changes the character of the evaluation before anybody fills in a questionnaire.
- Step 3
Linking complaints to the supplier
Quality complaints enter the picture of the supplier. That usually changes the ranking most.
- Step 4
Qualification and decisions
The qualification process with steps and dates, and a register of decisions. Last, because it needs the criteria settled in the earlier steps.
Common questions
Questions that come up at the first meeting
Are fewer people enough for supplier evaluation now?
In most companies supplier evaluation is not done by too many people - it is done once a year, because there are no hands for more often. Taking over the data collection changes not the headcount but the frequency: the evaluation stops being an event and becomes a picture you can look at before a conversation about terms.
Does this fall under the AI Act?
Supplier evaluation is not a high-risk use and the AI Act does not classify it as one - including where the supplier is a sole trader. With such suppliers, though, article 22 of the GDPR applies: an evaluation affecting their economic situation cannot be made solely by automated means, and the criteria have to be known. That is why the decision to exclude stays with a person.
Still have a question that is not here? Book a call
Next step
How many of your active suppliers have out-of-date documents today?
We will show you what a supplier evaluation looks like when it rests on data from your systems and the document dates watch themselves.