Evaluating Supplier Performance and Managing Supplier Relationships

Evaluating the performance of your suppliers and maintaining mutually fulfilling relationships with them are essential activities in supplier relationship management. There are many types of supplier-related problems that you may have to deal with, and effective purchasing personnel use key performance criteria to analyze and track their suppliers' performance.

Analysis of supplier performance can help you ensure that your company is getting the best value and service from suppliers, and detect areas in which corrective action needs to be taken. Effective performance feedback is a key component of long-term supplier partnerships. This course presents strategies for monitoring performance and maintaining productive long-term supplier relationships. It also outlines several types of supplier performance issues and offers ways to handle them.

• Recommend how a buyer could establish a strong relationship with a new supplier.
• Recognize characteristics of a strategic alliance between a buyer and supplier.
• Use a supplier evaluation scorecard to determine whether a given supplier's performance is acceptable.
• Match types of non-compliance issues with corresponding strategies for handling them.
• Determine the best method for delivering performance feedback to a supplier in a given example.
• Recognize guidelines for delivering performance feedback to a supplier.