Any company that has a quality management system, and is certified and/or accredited, needs to keep its suppliers under control. As well as the products and/or services they supply.
What should we consider when it comes to evaluation?
We must ensure that the processes, products, or services supplied externally do not adversely affect the capacity, quality and reliability of our final product or service. To ensure this, it is essential to identify the different types of suppliers.
- Product suppliers: This category includes suppliers that provide tangible products that directly affect the provision of the service offered by the organisation.
- Service suppliers: This category includes suppliers that supply the organisation.
The evaluation and approval process will depend on the outsourced product, process or service and the impact on the product/service offered by the organisation.
Criticality assessment
The assessment will depend on the product or service offered, as the priority is to ensure that they are suitable to deliver the required product or service. Therefore, the main thing is to assess their criticality with respect to our service/product. Here is a simple way to classify them:
- Critical (C): The product/service offered critically affects our regulatory compliance and may affect the quality of our product/service.
- Important (I): The product/service offered does not directly affect our regulatory compliance and the quality of our product/service. However, it does affect secondary processes in which its results could affect our product/service. Example, IT service provider.
- Non-critical (NC): The product/service offered does not directly affect our regulatory compliance and the quality of our product/service. However, it is necessary to keep it under control since its defect would cause investment of resources in extra quality management. Example, transport supplier.
Choice of supplier
For the selection of a suitable supplier the organisation shall consider the following requirements.
- Ensuring control of the products, processes or services supplied externally under the company’s quality and environmental management system.
- Definition of controls to be carried out on the supplier and the resulting outputs. As well as the controls performed by the supplier internally.
- Consideration of the potential impact of externally supplied processes, products, or services on the organization’s ability to meet applicable customer, legal, environmental, and regulatory requirements.
Approval or validation
After the choice of the supplier, the evaluation step remains depending on the criticality:
| CLASIFICATION | EVALUATION STEPS |
| CRITICAL | I. Approval questionnaire.
II. Quality certifications ISO9001, ISO14001, or similar… III. Product validation IV. On-site audit |
| IMPORTANT | I. Approval questionnaire.
II. Quality certifications ISO9001, ISO14001, or similar… III. Paper Audit |
| NON-CRITICAL | I. Approval questionnaire.
II. Quality certifications ISO9001, ISO14001, or similar… |
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