The basics of high-performance supplier certification.

Certification of supplier generally means that the supplier provides acceptable quality, on-time delivery at the lowest cost. Companies have devised numerous methods, criteria, formats, and approaches to certifying suppliers. Many of these are too complicated, not understandable, administratively difficult, or fail to be objective. If you have struggled with how to fashion a supplier certification program and how to have suppliers effectively embrace your program, this article is for you. It describes how to reduce the requirements to simple one-page format; details; three basic measures of performance that deal with quality, delivery, and cost; and provides several measurement-driven improvement actions. Supplier certification provides a simple, objective, mutually beneficial method of achieving high-quality, on-time delivery at the lowest cost.