We discussed the advantage of moving some parts of your assembly back to North America in our previous blog, Thinking of Moving Production Onshores? Adding Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud to your Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) gives your company a central location for all your shared data with partners, customers, vendors and more having full access.
This blog will focus on the importance of vendor and performance management and how vendor management is critical for any companies profitability, deliverability, and overall quality of your parts or tools.
Vendor Qualification and Management
Manufacturing companies go through a whole vetting process to validate their primary and secondary vendors. Some companies could have multiple vendors delivering the same parts, where some vendors might only have one unique part with only one vendor. The process of qualifying vendors becomes critical for manufacturers so that they know their first versus secondary vendor to have a consistent supply chain process. Once you start moving your schedule around, you may be in a situation where maybe a vendor can’t react as quickly as another. You need to be able to quickly look in your system and go, “Maybe vendor B can accommodate more than vendor A.”
On the other side, it’s critical to keep your vendor accountable. The vendor’s responsibility should include deliveries, part quality, and inspection.
Manufacturers shouldn’t be waiting for a truck to pull up, only to realize there’s a quality problem while unloading. Quality checks and inspections should always be done at the vendor’s location. It’s important to take into account some critical questions about your vendor like:
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- Are their quality checks good?
- Have they implemented correct action for defective protects?
- What is their on-time delivery?
- What is their competitive pricing?
Manufacturing Cloud and Vendor Management
Having a system like Salesforce that supports vendor management and performance is critical.
Manufacturing Cloud gives you the ability to have a centralized location that allows you to collect and see all your data at a 360-degree view. Everyone in your company and partner ecosystem can all be on the same page regarding sales agreements, vendor management, analytical data, tracking, and more.
Manufacturing Cloud allows you to understand the quality of all your crucial metrics regarding vendor management and performance. With real-time reports, you’ll be able to have the data proving which vendor is standing out among the others.
Tracking in Salesforce helps manufacturers stay up to date in real-time. For example, if a defect occurs on the floor or in the field, you can instantly track the return material. When tracking is managed via Salesforce, the trickle-down effect gives you the ability to make sure your vendors communicate and react with your changes.
ERP’s aren’t designed to do this, but you have the flexibility inside Salesforce to keep everyone on the same page in real-time.
Corrao Group’s Manufacturing and Salesforce experience
Since 2008, Corrao Group has helped manufacturers utilize Salesforce to create an automated closed-loop system for channel-centric manufacturing. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,100 Salesforce projects. Implementing Salesforce without a detailed and customized plan can lead to wasted time and money spent on small fixes along its lifecycle. With a trusted Salesforce partner like us, we can help you maximize your investment. For more information, please visit our website.
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