The following analysis breaks down the strength and weaknesses of Metalcraft’s on the basis of the different business functions that utilize the scorecard.
Buyers Strengths: Buyers come from many functional background including purchasing, engineering, quality and planning. This ensures that different team members consider various elements when buying products to ensure overall high standards.
Weaknesses: Buyers are compensated on the price reduction they can negotiate with suppliers. Selecting the lowest cost supplier is not a good incentive because buyers may then compromise on quality of products or even reliability of suppliers. There is a high turnover of buyers making it hard to build supplier relationships. There is high variation of quality within suppliers’ facilities making it hard to track supplier quality. Constantly changing standards over time “constricted the supplier base too much” (p. 7)
Plant Quality Engineers Strengths: Plant Quality Engineers were responsible for making sure that Metalcraft received high quality and defect free parts. This is important to ensure that Metalcraft is providing the automotive suppliers with the zero-defect parts they require
Weaknesses: Metalcraft received one million parts daily from 200 suppliers. The high volume could lead to quality engineers only using small sample sizes for different types of parts causing them to miss more faults. Quality problems due to supplier’s production process or during transit were discovered only on arrival for many parts. This causes more logistical and delivery problems since it is quite a late stage for problem detection. “Did not have detailed data and query functions that would be useful in evaluating and selecting suppliers” (p. 7) Engineers could not contact suppliers’ management team fast and directly in case of a problem.
Supplier Development Engineers Strengths: Since SD engineers were not situated on Metalcraft plants, the scorecard allowed them to monitor supplier performance on a daily basis and catch problems earlier.
Suppliers Strengths: “The scorecard helped suppliers guide internal improvement, monitor the health of their relationship with Metalcraft, and strengthen their competitive position in future bids for new business” (p. 8)
Weaknesses: Suppliers varied on their belief of the usefulness of the scorecard. Some believed that buyers selected suppliers they wanted rather than using the scorecard for decision making. Some didn’t think Metalcraft would take action on suppliers not performing well.Some believed the scorecard was too number driven and there needed to be a more through checking into issues before suppliers were penalized.
Other Strengths: “Many other employees at Metalcrft could potentially use, and some did use, the scorecard system on a casual basis” (p. 9) showing the usefulness of the scorecard across the organization.
Weaknesses: There is a lack of awareness of the terms and acronyms used in the supplier scorecard thereby making it difficult for everyone to use.
