Reliability of suppliers
Statement 9
Suppliers are not accessed on their reliability capabilities
57% of the participants agreed with this statement. And accept it! Suppliers are usually chosen by purchasing department <ST12 Purchasing and reliability>. A lot of standard components can be delivered by more suppliers. Often there is a preferred first supplier and a second supplier, just in case. The choice of a certain supplier is not always clear. Most of the time cost price and delivery time. In 57% of the cases reliability is not a requirement. And that can be dangerous.
Each product is as strong as the weakest link! That can be anything. A resistor, a capacitor, a switch, a connector, a relay, just name it. Each defective component can fail the function of a product. The consequences can be nothing at all up to a planecrash. The more important that component, the more severe the consequences and the more reliability capabilities of the supplier are of importance.
In 57% these capabilities are not audited. One trusts completely on the stories of the supplier. Often commercial stories.
"We make the best quality", but yes, that is not what we want to know. We need reliability data.
"Our products are state of the art". What art?
"The failure rate of our product is 0,1 ppm.
But they can not prove it. "Well, err, it is in the spec"
"And how did you test it?". Silence.
Or a famous one: "we had never complaints". But later it pointed out they had complaints but did not want to tell. Of course not. It could frighten potential customers
"But we are ISO certificated". Right. See <ST03 ISO, Black belt, 6 sigma>
Let us make a long story short. The reliability of the final product depends on the reliability of all parts involved from all suppliers. But their financial responsibilities are limited.
The more important a part, the more important a reliability check. A good FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) can be helpful
Anyone can give examples where their product failed caused by a bad part from one of their suppliers. And in a company a lot of suppliers are involved.
Be aware that eventually all products will die. Also that is known with the suppliers. Maybe not with the sales man but data is internally available. If they want it to share with you is a matter of trust and good relationship