Supply+chain+improvement

DNV has developed a significant position in supporting the automotive industry and has built a broad base of knowledge of the industry, industrial processes and control mechanisms. These skills represent valuable assets in the control and improvement of supplier capabilities.

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Purpose

To improve profitability and to reduce staffing levels, manufacturers and suppliers have moved design and production of vehicles, systems, components and parts to low cost countries.

This has lead to an increasingly complex value chain which is proving to be difficult to control. As a result, problems such as inconsistent delivery, development dates not being met and unacceptably high recall and warranty costs have arised.

Benefits

DNV is a reliable and acknowledged partner in your efforts to improve supplier capabilities. Our personnel can assess capabilities of existing or new suppliers, and advise on improving design, manufacturing and delivering processes for new and existing products.

Our assessments covers the entire process, and are aimed primarily at identifying and correcting problems at the supplier facility, but also to identify possible problems at the customer – supplier interface or even within the customer organisation.

DNV can also assist with the continuous development of suppliers to maintain and improve maturity and understanding of customer specific requirements and processes. DNV can consequently act as customer representative in releasing products for shipment.

The benefits of such an approach are that our customers do not necessarily have to develop a large pool of expertise in the area, and will therefore be able to maintain a flexible cost pattern. There would also be a reduction of workload for the customer as DNV gradually takes over parts of the supplier audit and development monitoring. Customer’s specialists would be able to focus on the control of the overall actions and other strategic tasks.

Results are placed directly into a customer specific supplier database to achieve a consolidated view across suppliers. This allows our customers to concentrate on the control and guidance.

Each problem would be subject to a “Root Cause Analysis” looking at both the system and process. Single quality issues will be analysed with a high-level perspective, learning generalised and transferred to other suppliers or projects as appropriate.

Following the identification of root causes and implementation of recommendations made for improvement, recall rates and warranty costs related to the products of a specific supplier will decrease.

Our methodology is flexible and will be customised and adapted to your specific environment, existing methodologies and requirements.

Features

  • Measurement of the suppliers ‘performance’, including APQP (Advanced product quality planning) and 8D evaluations

  • Classification of the suppliers, according to the analysis of their capability

  • Clear prioritisation of action plans depending on the classification of the supplier

  • Systematic follow-up of corrected and improved actions as well as far-reaching efficiency controls

Process

The evaluation of potential suppliers is based on methodologies such as the VDA 6.3 and financial ratings tools similar to those developed by the VDA. The data is collected from all supplier departments, including production and development. A standardised evaluation report will be prepared after sales.

Similar evaluations can be made of existing suppliers leading to consolidation of information for all suppliers and identification of critical situations. This will provide the possibility to identify critical suppliers and situations as well as design processes to resolve situations or to develop suppliers.

Supplier development features include:

  • Trouble shooting of critical situations, based on customer requests e.g. development of immature but strategic suppliers

  • Trouble shooting through production optimisation teams (a team of production specialists available for specific production optimisation projects e.g. the reduction of production times or trouble shooting to achieve specific objectives)

  • Regular follow-up assessments and coaching to develop the suppliers to a higher maturity level