Vendor Quality Assurance

Businesses are obliged to meet many responsibilities in terms of the products and services they introduce into their operations. These include ensuring one’s suppliers meet expectations for essential elements including;

  • Quality systems
  • HACCP Programme Certification
  • Contract Conditions
  • Legislation
  • Insurance conditions
  • Supply Agreements

Managing and administering the safety and quality of suppliers’ products and services, and ensuring expectations are always achieved can be a massive but essential task. It has always been expensive, time consuming and technical. As organisations battle for efficiencies, the ‘risk Vs resources’ equation is often unbalanced and sees this function being either poorly performed or significantly expensive.

HACCP Australia now operates a third party VQA Administration scheme on behalf of our client organisations. We handle the compliance of suppliers in key expectations and manage corrective action requests and close-outs.  

The scheme does not require participating companies to have identical VQA expectations and protocols, although there are often similarities. HACCP Australia will typically advise our clients and or assist with the development of their documented expectations and protocols using ‘worlds’ best practice’ as a basis.

The financial benefits of the programme are realized where common functions are performed and interpreted by HACCP Australia for a number of clients across a number of suppliers. In the simplest example, rather than conduct 2 separate supplier audits for two clients, conduct one audit and interpret the information for each of the client companies. In most cases, those audits need not be conducted by HACCP Australia so additional savings are made through the whole system.
 
Consider the complexities of information flow of 5 organisations purchasing from 5 suppliers below;
The costs in this model are significant for both the buyer and the supplier. The HACCP Australia VQA administration model streamlines and removes complexity and cost from a task; Consider the model below.

A large number of internationally known organisations use this service in sectors including Retail, Quick Service Restaurants, Catering, Facilities Management and Insurance.

Some clients utilize a purpose developed web-based platform for the information transfers supplied and developed by iCiX (International Compliance Information Exchange). The VQA Administration programme can use this or other alternatives for information transfer which best suit your business.

The issues typically managed through this programme include;

  • Audit Review and analysis
  • Product Specifications
  • Corrective Actions
  • Security Information
  • Certification review
  • Insurance documentation
  • Reporting and trend analysis
  • Close outs
  • Product Receipt Protocols
  • Licences and permits
  • Record Maintenance
  • Supplier and risk profiling

Vendor Quality Assurance is a function that can be easily shared by like minded organisations without any loss of competitive advantage or confidentiality. It is clear that third party specialist administration of this function can offer significant economies and efficiencies whilst maintaining or improving the supply quality risk profile.