Supplier management is a fundamental part of a company’s governance and has a direct impact on company performance, quality and environmental responsibility. Effective supplier management helps ensure quality and environmental performance, as well as maintaining good business relationships and trust between companies and their suppliers.
ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 are international standards that help organizations implement effective quality and environmental management systems.
This article addresses the requirements for supplier management within these standards, provides practical advice, and highlights common mistakes companies make.
What do you need to control when purchasing?
ISO 9001:2015 clause 8.4 means you retain responsibility for quality when a supplier performs part of the work. You need to be able to explain why a supplier is suitable and how you detect when deliveries no longer meet expectations. Keep the assessment and resulting decisions so the next buyer does not have to start again.
ISO 14001:2015 clause 8.1 connects purchasing to your environmental requirements. The person buying transport or materials needs to know which requirements to set for your environmental ambitions to affect the delivery. The important environmental issues depend partly on your environmental aspects and what you can control or influence in the delivery. A life cycle perspective also considers what happens before and after your own use, such as raw material extraction and disposal.
A practical approach is to:
- Decide what could make a supplier unsuitable before comparing quotations. For a critical material, consistent quality and delivery capability may matter more than the lowest price.
- Make relevant quality and environmental requirements clear in the order. Ask the supplier to confirm points that could otherwise be misunderstood.
- Track actual results, such as replacement deliveries, delays and waste, and decide when a fresh assessment is needed.
- Choose follow-up methods according to risk. A conversation, questionnaire or site visit are possible methods, not compulsory steps for every supplier.
- Use recurring problems to agree on improvements, then check whether they helped.
Start with a delivery that could go wrong
Choose a supplier whose delay would stop a customer order. Review the latest delivery: did the right material arrive on time, was extra work needed, and who handled the problem? Use the result when discussing the next order with the supplier.
For environmental questions, you could investigate whether packaging can be reused and what a change would mean for transport damage and waste. These are practical examples, not a requirements checklist from the standards.
Common mistakes and consequences
Avoid these mistakes to ensure effective supplier management:
- Non-factual risk assessment of suppliers and inadequate supplier evaluations, which can lead to lost sales and bad reputation due to, for example, delayed deliveries, additional work to deal with deviations and bad reputation caused by the supplier’s substandard environmental performance.
- No system to track and analyze supplier performance which can negatively affect customer satisfaction and reputation.
- Lack of communication and cooperation with suppliers on quality and environmental issues, which can increase environmental impact, cause non-compliance with environmental legislation and damage the company’s reputation.
Conclusion
Supplier management is a critical component of quality- and environmental management system. By rigorously complying with ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 supplier management requirements and implementing effective processes for evaluating, selecting, monitoring and improving the quality and environmental performance of suppliers, organizations can improve their competitiveness and reduce risk.
To avoid common mistakes, it is important to prioritize communication and cooperation with suppliers, as well as to have a clear documentation and follow-up of supplier assessments and supplier performance.
Take the plunge today and start improving your supplier management to create a more sustainable and competitive business.
