Gerard Pearce07.24.08
Supply Chain Survival: Managing GMP, FDA and an Increasingly Complex Supply Chain
Gerard Pearce
Of all the FDA warning letters recorded between October 2005 through October 2007 that relate to manufacturing and quality, nearly 20% cited problems with supplier controls. Discussions with hundreds of large healthcare companies during this period also have shown supplier quality management to be a universal challenge.
Warning letters are only one symptom of the stresses on the supplier quality function. Regulatory, commercial and consumer pressures are underlying factors that can make stakeholders feel as if managing the supplier quality function is more than a matter of business— it’s a matter of survival.
Contributing Factors
The two factors that impact the situation more than any others are resources and change. And in most cases, these two are related—that is, resources become imbalanced due to a change in the environment.
From a resource standpoint, many companies find it physically impossible to provide “care and feeding” for all the suppliers in their base. Often, the supply base becomes enlarged over time—slowly through redundancy or obsolescence and quickly through mergers or acquisitions. Even with the most up-to-date supply bases, the resources available to audit, monitor and manage all of the suppliers can be stretched to the limit.
From a change standpoint, the supplier quality function is vulnerable from several directions. Internally, commercial pressures will not allow a team to expand with its supply base if the production outcome remains the same. If anything, there is constant pressure to reduce resources. Externally, suppliers merge, diverge, move and rename. Lower-cost sources emerge—usually in other parts of the world. Although less expensive from a product or materials cost, these offshore suppliers require more resources due to time, distance, language, visibility and regulatory factors. Also, as supply quantities fluctuate, resources often are wasted on suppliers who are inactive or rarely used.
In any case, all the companies examined have faced such challenges as their supply chains expand, diversify and become more complex, while available resources remain static or, worse, shrink.
Strategies for Survival
Of all the large healthcare companies interviewed, the leaders in supply quality management shared several common initiatives, from strategic to tactical. All of these activities contribute to reducing the cost of quality, either through reduced cost of compliance, elimination of non-value activity, reduced scrap or increased efficiency through supplier development. The following recommendations are based on these common initiatives:
• Define and align strategic and business goals. Supplier quality management will struggle unless it is considered part of a company’s strategic direction. By combining business drivers (eg, fewer and better suppliers) with regulatory obligations, it is possible to achieve compliance that adds value. A good environment for misalignment is when “Purchasing” and “Quality” operate in isolation.
• Focus your limited resources. Focusing resources comes from knowing your supply base (see above). Although best practice dictates that you should focus your efforts on strategic supply partners, many industry leaders set aside a significant portion of their resources to handle their worst performing suppliers—ie, those with the greatest potential for improvement. Direct your team on strategic activities and eliminate non-value-adding activity, such as frequent “short-hop” travel on routine supplier audits. Companies that outsourced these activities claim to have nearly doubled the availability of their team members.
• Standardize your methodology and tools. Multi-dimensional companies, out of necessity, sometimes breed isolated supplier quality management functions. By gaining consensus on ways to measure and manage suppliers, resources and results can be shared across the organization. This develops a powerful and value-adding synergy between teams. Visibility between these teams is critical to this synergy and should be a central theme to any standardization effort. It is important to evaluate practices across the board, and implement a “best of breed” process—companies that don’t follow this route risk losing valuable insights and support of all stakeholders.
• Squeeze more out of your audit program. Best practice companies demand value from their audit programs—not just compliance. Consistent with the move to fewer and better suppliers, audits should be used to gauge a supplier’s strategic compatibility and potential for long-term partnership. Your audit process also should include a significant amount of upfront “housekeeping” to keep your supply base lean. Even something as simple as confirming a supplier’s name, address and current status prior to scheduling any activity provides benefits across the organization.
• Share more responsibility with your suppliers. Manual exchanges with suppliers are a burden on both parties. The most efficient way to collect critical data is by capturing it once, at the source. That source is your suppliers, and ideally they provide performance information into a collaborative environment that you can both access and use as a basis for strategic decisions. While some companies have introduced a supplier portal to facilitate purchasing transactions, few have taken it to the level of sharing quality data. This includes multi-aspect supplier scorecards, self-audits and exchanges of everything from certificates of compliance to corrective actions. Obviously, appropriate controls, checks and balances must be in place for verification, and a commitment is required on all sides. However, suppliers that embrace this concept of taking responsibility for data collection at the source will find it to be a win-win scenario. They improve, they see more business and you see better quality—and a reduced cost of quality.
• Outsource necessary, but non-critical tasks. If your supplier quality team is large enough to audit all of your suppliers and focus on supplier development with your strategic partners, then you are in the minority. Most successful companies focus their resources on the best—and the worst—suppliers, while using an objective third party to absorb the balance, or any exceptions. When used on demand, and under the banner of your own audit methodology, a third party makes an effective and necessary extension of your organization.
• Foster and use your business intelligence. There is no excuse for not automating all of your data exchange and collection activities. Aside from the obvious efficiency benefits, every advance in this area opens doors to capabilities not feasible under the current order. Take the electronic capture of audit results, for example. These data can be made available to all stakeholders across the company. The results can be linked with any related corrective action or follow-up (or history), and may be combined with other results to answer questions such as, “Who are my riskiest suppliers?” and “What are typical problem areas for suppliers of a particular commodity?” The best companies share these data with suppliers, using the information to drive action and improvement.
* * *
Ultimately, the principles of successful supplier quality management within the healthcare industry are no different from other industries—regulated or not. Survival comes from adapting your resources to change, or as H.G. Wells put it: “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.”