Culture Matters! Four Questions to Ask Your Next Metal Fabrication Supplier

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In the previous installment of our Smart Fabrication Sourcing series, we explained the importance of conducting an onsite visit to get a firsthand look at a supplier’s operation. How else can you truly know if they have the necessary capabilities and quality processes to produce consistently reliable results? It’s also an opportunity to get a feel for a supplier’s culture, which is an intangible variable that is too often overlooked. In this post, we’ll offer four key culture-related questions to help you uncover what makes a supplier’s organization, employees and processes tick.

If you look at your preferred supplier list, chances are they all have one thing in common: a heathy, thriving organizational culture that fosters high quality and successful processes. But how can you evaluate the culture of new suppliers? First, it’s important to conduct an onsite visit to get a feel for their day-to-day operation.

While you’re there — or at any other point in the evaluation process — don’t be afraid to ask pointed questions that will uncover their professional integrity. Sometimes it’s best to meet potential suppliers on neutral ground or an informal setting, such as over lunch or dinner. This provides an opportunity to speak candidly and to see their personality traits in real time.

Although company culture is a subjective, intangible metric, we believe it’s a key indicator of a successful partnership. In fact, we would recommend not making a final supplier decision until you’re sure that their core values align with yours.

For conversation starters, consider these four questions:

1. What are your values? Loyalty. Quality. Timeliness. Precision. Service. Adaptability. These are all characteristics that define an organization’s values. Don’t hesitate to ask them which values matter most to them, and then carefully consider their responses. Request additional clarifications as needed. Are they responding with hollow cliches or are they being honest and sincere? Your goal is to try to uncover how they would define the term “valued partner.”

2. What is your hiring process? Today’s labor market is tight, and qualified workers are hard to find. If a supplier is willing to cut corners in the hiring process, then they likely won’t be able to consistently deliver on their promises. Without the right staff, processes are more likely to break down — and you’ll be left to pick up the pieces. If a potential supplier is selective in their hiring processes — giving equal weight to attitude and skill level (which can be taught) — you’ll be more likely to experience high-quality, long-term results.

3. What is your employee turnover rate? Workforce stability is an essential metric in determining if a supplier can consistently deliver high-quality, on-time products. It’s completely within your right to ask a potential supplier what their employee turnover rate is, how long their current staff has been employed and how committed they are to fostering a thriving, healthy workplace environment. If they freely introduce their staff and employees to you, it’s a good indication that they have nothing to hide.

4. How do you handle unexpected problems? It’s inevitable that every supplier — regardless of their experience or capabilities — eventually will encounter problems. Equipment failures, supply chain issues, or any number of unforeseen issues will surely arise. What matters is how they will respond to these challenges. Try to uncover if they’re inclined to assume responsibility and take immediate steps to make things right. Or do they seem defensive, point fingers, make excuses and shift the blame? Ask them to describe their resolution process. Is it focused on protecting their reputation, or is it geared toward minimizing impacts to your operation?

At the end of the day, you should walk away with the confidence knowing that their culture and values align with yours.

In our next Smart Fabrication Sourcing post, we’ll share what you can do to get fast, accurate, and competitive quotes from your fabrication suppliers.

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Don’t Skip the Onsite Visit!

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With today’s supply chain complexities and economic uncertainties, sourcing a reliable metal fabrication supplier is more important ever. Choosing a partner that’s committed to your success, profitability and reputation adds predictability to your production schedule and takes one less worry out of the process. But how can you be sure that you’ve selected that partner? In this installment of our Smart Fabrication Sourcing series, we’ll explain why conducting an onsite visit is essential to ensuring success.

When it’s time to source a new supplier for an upcoming metal fabrication project, many manufacturers run through the familiar steps of a typical evaluation process. They often start with a simple web search, comparing capabilities and building a list of supplier prospects. Next steps often include sending out requests for quotes, scheduling introductory conference calls, negotiating on prices, and narrowing down the list down to the top candidates.

In most cases, manufacturers looking for new suppliers are up against tight production deadlines. In their haste, they often shortcut the evaluation process, settling for the first supplier that offers a low price and promises they have the right capabilities. But without taking the time to fully vet the potential supplier by meeting them in person, they are taking a great risk.

They’ll often realize their error too late — when that new supplier has either missed the production deadline or delivered products that don’t conform to the requirements. This mistake is not only costly, but it can put your production behind schedule for days, weeks, or even months.

From our experience, if you want to ensure that a supplier’s capabilities, culture, and commitment to delivering quality parts align with your company’s expectations; before awarding the bid, take the time to schedule an onsite visit to a supplier’s production facility.

If you’re sourcing precision-fabricated metal parts from a new supplier, conducting an onsite visit gives you the assurance that they’re capable of delivering on-time, on-budget and at quality.

Without conducting an onsite visit, how can you really know if a supplier’s facilities are equipped with the necessary technical capabilities, stringent process and quality controls, and specialized experience to produce your parts consistently? Can you really trust that their production process operation operates as efficiently as the pictures on their website might indicate?

Suppliers who care about winning your business will welcome this opportunity to meet you in person and prove that they have the specific capabilities you need. In fact, if they’re not willing to offer an onsite visit, it may be a red flag that they may have something to hide.

By gaining an inside look at a supplier’s operation, you’re able to meet their sales and production teams in person, take a personalized tour of their facilities and walk away with much clearer picture of their capabilities — and the assurance knowing that that they can meet your specific production timelines and/or fabrication requirements.

When visiting a supplier’s facility, be sure to look for these key process and quality indicators:

  • Review their systems and learn how they monitor quality metrics.
  • Understand their processes and watch how information flows through the operation.
  • See samples of their work and verify proof of their past successes.

An onsite visit gives you the insight that you simply can’t get from browsing a website, reading a brochure, or reviewing an equipment list. At the end of the visit, you should have no doubt about a supplier’s capabilities — and that their definition of quality and commitment meets your standards.

In the next post of our Smart Fabrication Sourcing series, we’ll review four key questions to ask during an onsite supplier evaluation.

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New Series! Smart Fabrication Sourcing – Tips and Best Practices

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Have you ever worked with a metal fabrication supplier that didn’t quite meet your expectations? Or worse, completely dropped the ball and botched your production process? Whose fault was it? Did the supplier not perform the work as quoted? Or did you leave gray areas in the quote that they misinterpreted?

With today’s supply chain complexities, selecting the right metal fabrication supplier is more important than ever. Manufacturers need to do everything possible to limit production disruptions and minimize the potential for a variety of unpredictable setbacks. A successful supplier partnership can make the difference between success and failure, profit and loss, frustration and peace of mind.

Through the years, we’ve learned what it takes to become that reliable, high-quality metal fabrication partner that manufacturers are looking for. Today, we’re launching a Smart Fabrication Sourcing series to share some of our tips and best practices for getting the results your company needs to be successful.

Whether you’re sourcing a new supplier or working with an existing partner, there’s a lot that can and will go wrong if you’re not paying attention to every detail. Although there’s usually plenty of blame to go around, in many instances these problems could have been avoided altogether.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but wouldn’t it have been nice if your fabrication partner would have uncovered these issues before it disrupted your production schedule? In our 25+ years of being a supplier to OEMs and tier one manufacturers, we’ve been called in to pick up the pieces many times after another supplier has dropped the ball. Some examples include:

  • Front-end quoting miscommunications that led to back-end production mistakes.
  • Small finishing or assembly details that got overlooked in the rush of compressed timelines that cause big problems at launch.
  • Incomplete or faulty parts from a supplier that misrepresented their capabilities.

So, if you’re looking for ways to get your sourced metal fabrication products right the first time, our new Smart Fabrication Sourcing series will deliver the proven tips and best practices you need to be successful. From supplier evaluation and quoting to capabilities and culture to quality processes and fabrication strategies, we’ll explore all the key considerations for building strong fabrication supplier partnerships that will give you the predictable, high-quality results you want.

Next week, in our first post of this series, we’ll explore the critical importance of the Onsite Visit.

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