President Trump’s first few months have been immersed in controversy, and the term “impeachment” often comes up. Apparently, some people seem serious about that. Former Speaker Boehner recently noted that impeachment is a political process, not a legal one, which sounds useful to keep in mind.
It’s not a business procedure either, but we found an intriguing and very short piece in the 5/23/17 Next Level Purchasing Association’s blog that recommended creating a contingency plan for “impeaching” an “incumbent” supplier that’s not performing. Obviously, this is an imperfect analogy, but replacing an existing supplier is certainly something that arises more often than we’re sure you procurement professionals would like.
We are constantly on the lookout for articles that speak to the relationship between OEM procurement professionals (or others seeking manufacturing services outside the company) and seller, so this one caught our attention for several reasons.
The primary one is that despite the fact that suppliers will occasionally fail and that for very many reasons, the procurement professional presumably selects vendors that will NOT fail, at least not for a considerable period of time. And, we also presume (based on lots of experience) that one “impeachment” plan is to retain some record of the “runners up” during the selection process.
More importantly (to us, anyway) is that Proficient Sourcing works to be that contingency plan. We maintain, and continuously update our supplier contacts in order to be able to recommend one or more to meet whatever the manufacturing need is. Such recommendations are available at any time without obligation or cost to you.
After all, the “runner up” list may or not be valid after the passage of time. The causes of failure of the #1 supplier may also affect others. Since suppliers are mostly job shops, they will move on and become involved with new projects, products, and customers. Hence, they may no longer be available under the original terms when your situation arises, as just one example.
If you do check out the article’s link below, consider the effort required to maintain the contingency plan ingredients the author recommends. One example is the ramping up question. To deal with that you would need to be in possession of capacity and schedule availability details of a supplier you are apparently NOT doing business with. Just how does that work?
Times and circumstances are always changing, and with that, the relationship between buyer and seller may also be in flux. We are in full agreement with the articles’ point that the wise buyer needs to be prepared for a supplier failure. However, keeping accurate track of alternative circumstances cannot be accomplished without an extraordinary amount of work.
So if your contingency plan proves inadequate, we have a suggestion. Call Proficient Sourcing (513) 489-5252: we’d like to be your contingency plan and have been working very hard to earn your consideration.