Suppliers and vendors are critical instruments in the development journey of every company. Getting the right supplier can help your business in avoiding product defects and ensuring quality. For those in manufacturing, suppliers and vendors help acquire raw materials for the products you make. For wholesalers and retailers, they deliver to you what you sell. What’s more, they also help to supply a business’s primary operational resources. However, good suppliers will even go further to be your source of industry trends.
That being said, if you’re not sure what to look out for in a good supplier or vendor, below are some tips to help you identify the right supplier for your company.
1. Think about regulatory compliance.
You should ensure your suppliers comply with industry regulations in both your jurisdiction and your manufacturers. Make sure you see to this to avoid run-ins with the law and industry regulatory bodies. Also, try to check if your supplier has a valid export license and business license. It’s also a great idea to ask your potential supplier for their previous test reports and certificates as evidence of their compliance.
You can also check for licenses in good manufacturing practices (GMP) for medical devices, food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals like a supplement manufacturer. If you’re in the industry, you can get quality dietary supplements from companies like Makers Nutrition. This includes tablets, capsules, powders, softgels, and gummies with full turnkey solutions for graphic design, contract manufacturing, order fulfillment, packaging, and customer service.
2. Don’t forget your production abilities.
While paying attention to expertise in the target market, you can’t leave out your manufactures abilities in the specific products you get from them. It’s critical to have a manufacturer who has excellent production capabilities in your supply chain.
Say, for example, you want to make sure the stretch wrap for your pallet wrapping machine is of the highest quality ‚Äî you might want to employ the services of a third-party agent in this case. The agent’s responsibility is to evaluate your supplier’s factory quality management systems and ascertain if they’re compliant with ISO 9001 or similar standards. If your prospective supplier resists third-party quality control, it’s a cause for worry.
3. Be an expert in your target market.
It’s vital to decide on your supplier carefully because a bad one can ruin your business entirely. You could be faced with inferior products, shipping delays, and dissatisfied customers. The right supplier is supposed to be well abreast with industry knowledge, legal requirements, standard operations, and product quality standards related to your business.
This way, they can work with little to no supervision and will most likely work proactively and make independent decisions to mess up large order batches. You should also find out if they’re industry-certified and whether or not they have a trustworthy system of sub-suppliers in terms of elements for your product type, raw materials, and production inputs.
4. Always provide good communication.
Communication is an essential tool in business operations. To have a good supply chain, you should be able to communicate effectively with your suppliers. You should probably find a supplier that has a primary point of contact that speaks English. If you’re not able to communicate with your supplier, the primary contact can help. That way, you can reach out to the contact for discussions on product specifications and other whole supply process elements.
All in all, with effective communication, accountability, and planning, you can avoid various supplier and vendor problems ranging from production delays to product deviation and nonconformities.
