1ST Answer

Introduction: Companies having advanced functions of procurement often know

that there cannot be any limits to the value they would generate by emphasis on the
product price as well as the services they purchase. These organizations often
understand that when the purchasers and the suppliers want to cooperate, they often
find methods to unlock significant new sources of value benefitting them both.
Concept and Application:
Purchasers as well as suppliers often work together in order to develop innovative
new products, for instance, boosting of revenues as well as profits for both the
parties. They often take an integrated approach in order to ensure supply-chain
optimization, redesigning their processes together to reduce waste and redundant
efforts or even jointly purchasing raw materials. Or, they would be able to collaborate
in the forecast, planning as well as capacity management – thereby ensuring
improvement in the levels of service, elimination of risk and strengthening the supply
chain combination.
Following are the different kinds of supplier partnerships:
There are various kinds of supplier partnerships, and these may vary on the basis of
the level of collaboration between the involved parties. The three main kinds of
supplier partnerships are:
Strategic alliances: These partnerships are formed between companies having
complementary strengths and would be able to help each other to accomplish their
respective goals. For instance, a computer manufacturing company can form a
strategic alliance with a software company in order to develop new products.
Joint Ventures: These partnerships are formed when two or more companies can
come together in order to share resources and expertise in order to accomplish a
common goal. For instance, two companies can come together to establish a new
factory.
Contractual relationships: These relationships are less formal as compared to the
other two kinds of partnerships and usually involve one company hiring another
company to render products and services. For instance, a company may hire an
outside organization to design its website.
The Benefits of Supplier partnership management: When it comes to business, to
develop a strong relationship with the suppliers is important to success.
Management of supplier partnership refers to a process that enables the business to
achieve this goal. By working closely with suppliers and establishment of mutually
beneficial agreements, businesses are able to often improve their operations as well
as bottom line. Some of the benefits of supplier partnership management:
Cost Savings: Working with suppliers to establish a long-term agreement would
enable the business to secure low prices for materials as well as services. In
addition, by the help of streamlining the ordering as well as the delivery process,
businesses would be able to further lower their costs.
Improved quality: When businesses often have a good relationship with their
suppliers, they tend to receive products that are of high-quality as well as services. In
addition, suppliers often tend to be responsive to concerns of quality and work with a
business to resolve any challenges.
Increased efficiency: A partnership that is well-managed with suppliers often enable
the business to improve their overall efficiency. By establishing a clear
communication channel as well as procedure, businesses are able to avoid
disruptions in their supply chain and also ensure that their operations run in a
smooth manner.
Greater flexibility: A strong relationship with the suppliers often provide the business
with more leverage when it comes to negotiating the terms as well as conditions.
This rising flexibility would be able to be helpful in various situations, such as during
times of high demand or whenever unexpected changes occur.
Enhanced reputation: Companies having good reputation with their suppliers tend to
be viewed by potential consumers. This positive reputation would often lead to a rise
in the business opportunities and improved awareness of the brand.
The risks of supplier partnership management: When it comes to management of
supplier partnership, there are a few relevant risks that the companies have to be
aware of. One of the biggest risks is the potential for challenges of supplier finance.
If a supplier faces a financial difficulty, it can place the organization at risk if the
person is relying on them for products and services. It is important to have a
contingency plan in place in case the supplier is not able to fulfil their obligations.
Another important risk is the potential for a change in the marketplace that can
impact the relationship with the supplier. For instance, if there is any change in
technology making the products and services of the supplier obsolete, it can place
the company at a drawback. It is necessary to stay-up-to-date on the trends of the
market and ensure that one has a good understanding of how they can impact the
business.
Finally, there is always a chance of a human mistake when it is about management
of relationships between supplier. Even with the best intent, mistakes would happen
that can jeopardize the partnership. So, it is extremely important to have a process
and a system in place in order to avoid errors and make sure of smooth
communication between all the parties that are involved.
Conclusion: Management of supplier partnership is an important part of any
business as it would enable to make sure that there are efficient as well as effective
relationships between suppliers and consumers.
By understanding the needs of both the parties, management of supplier
partnerships often enables to reduce the costs, improve the satisfaction of the
consumers.
2nd Answer

Introduction: The result-oriented goals of performance excellence are designed to

achieve improved value to customers apart from improving the organizational
capability. These are derived from the following set of core values and concepts.
1) Focus on Customer driven quality
2) Leadership that addresses core values and encourages employees to give excellent
performance
3) Continuous process of learning and improvement
4) Participation of employees to ensure development in every aspect of business
operations
5) Prompt response to change and results
6) Design for quality and prevention of deficiencies
7) Long-range view of the future to sustain & compete
8) Corporate responsibility and citizenship
9) Result orientation

The core of TQM is to achieve the business excellence. The results indicate the
progress of the business. If they are not noted down regularly, it will be difficult to
maintain the energy, dedication and motivation and need to achieve high performance
standards. Also the results recorded must be constant with the organisation‘s
improving performance. This needs a basic understanding of how constant and/or
continuous excellent organisational results are obtained. Customers think that quality
has been indicated to be directly related with profitability. There is a strong link
between TQM approach and superior financial performance according to many
studies.

Monitoring helps to perform efficiently and effectively. It helps you to set things right
and gives less room for error. However, monitoring does not mean micro level
management. Monitoring is to check against a checklist to see whether execution is
as per the plan. It is also important that the tasks are measured. It is essential for the
organisations to measure the success of their programs and operations. This
information determines the extent of goal fulfilment and
creates profitable demonstration data when applying for funding or recruiting new
program partners. Leadership must guide program measurement. 4As Stephanie Bell-
Rose, founding President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation writes, “acceptance must
come from senior management, staff, founders, and board members, alike”.

Measuring performance helps to determine the effectiveness of plan execution,

provides data for future reference, and identifies the gaps in plan and execution. To
maximise your knowledge and performance measures, use these changes:
● Focus your measures also on outcomes and not just processes or inputs.
● Set progressive but realistic benchmarks for multi-year projects which provide
an evidence for improvement.
● Use measures which express social impact.
● Employ measures that also examine financial, internal management, and
organisational growth.

The execution of strategy is usually challenging and always critical to an organization’s

success. Organizations providing consistently excellent execution consistently come
out as better than their peer organization. In order to drive strategy execution and
improvement in performance, executives in various industries should prefer using a
strategic performance measurement (SPM). SPM is an approach making a company’s
strategic goals more transparent to line executives and renders an on-going
mechanism in order to measure progress toward these goals through simple and
intuitive measurements of performance. SPM creates a common language among all
the departments of organization so they can interact in a transparent and an effective
way, thus enabling to break down silos. SPM consists of four elements: (1) aligning
and cascading strategic objectives down to daily operational objectives; (2) developing
balanced scorecards to report; (3) To make reporting easier and to focus on “metrics
that are of relevance”; and (4) To test and validate decisions pertaining to operations
and business strategies.

SPM is not just another set of financial performance metrics nor should it suffer the
fate of just another management fad. SPM has been successfully implemented by
many large public companies and has evolved to become the management system
used to implement and manage significant change in these organizations. The reason
for this is that the components of a successful SPM implementation lead the company
into examining and changing the way it builds top management consensus,
communicates with employees and other company stakeholders, fosters employee
and functional strategic alignment, fosters management leadership, and leads to new
employee motivation and reward systems. In other words, it is used by many top
leaders of companies as cornerstone of a comprehensive management system.

SPM weds strategic planning with performance management in a living system that
renders guidance for employee’s work while enabling to innovate and adjust in course
to generate better results in a more efficient way. SPM involves elements of strategic
planning and connects them to measures of performance, productivity considerations,
and on-going processes to gauge progress, improve practice, and exceed
expectations. The SPM process needs a considerable time by people who are busy,
but this time spent to organize the people and their work returns efficiencies in time
saved down the road. SPM engages everyone in the agency in a process drawing on
the expertise of each individual and amplifies the advantages of that individual’s
competency to the company.

Conclusion: The greatest investment in time is to move to performance management

is in the beginning to set the purpose and direction for the organization. Often, much
of this work on vision, mission, values, and goals has been done before, but a
reconsideration of each of these elements is worthwhile. It is less likely that the agency
has conducted a thorough examination of its functions and structures before
organizing people to most productively do their work. SPM includes processes for
functional and structural analysis that lead to more enlightened personnel decisions.

Finally, SPM puts in place an on-going process of units, Collaborating Teams, and
coordinating teams efficiently managing the work and finding better ways to achieve
organizational ends. The time taken for these groups to “work on the work” is valuable
time that keeps the work on track and aimed at the most significant outcomes.
3rd Answer

3a.

Introduction: If the consumer would pay for quality, he or she cannot afford to
provide inferior products or services. Quality control would refer to any process that
would make sure whatever is being sold meets a desired standard.

Concept and Application:

There are many methods of quality control, and some of them are specific to the
industry. A quality control procedure that would work for a steelmaker may not apply
to any chain of fast-food or a newspaper.

Quality control benchmarks: Quality control needs the specific metric one is going to
make use of in order to judge quality. In manufacturing, for instance, one has several
possible benchmarks:

Failure rate

Frequency of defect

Does manufacturing come in under budget and also under time

Is the process reliable

If electronics are made, how often do they crash.

For consumer phone service, the benchmark may involve how long the consumer
gets put on hold, how quickly the call would get answered and how many times the
employee has to transfer someone in order to resolve the issue.

Planning Process: Once the individual knows the benchmark that they wish to
achieve, they can plan the steps of quality control process.

How many units would be tested from each batch.

Based on the test, how many units fail? How many consumer calls go to voicemail.
How many consumers would order ship late.

Is your quality assurance program working, or do you need to upgrade it.

What changes does one have to make to make sure things don’t drop back to a
subpar level as soon as one would concentrate on some other challenge.

Once the quality control procedure is implemented, how can the results be reviewed.
How can the initial results be improved.
Limits on quality control: Like any other business project, a quality control program
may run up against the limits:

How many resources can be devoted to the steps of quality control

How much time can be devoted to product or testing of operations.

Does one have an expertise available in house, or does one need to bring in an
expert?

How frequently can one afford to make test.

How can one archive the information so that is it available to the ones needing to
review it.

A good program would balance the push for a better quality against the demands on
the resources of the company.

Type of quality control:

There is no shortage of different methods of quality control, though they are not used
universally. Sampling material is an effective procedure of quality control for a
manufacturing company, but it doesn’t do much good if one is evaluating a consumer
help desk.

One can measure the output of manufacturing, whether it is ceramic or asphalt for
construction of road. The kind of quality control can involve testing the defects,
durability, weight and chemical composition.

One can smell and taste food as well as evaluate it for how attractive it would look.

One can make use of questionnaires or interviews in order to evaluate the service
quality provided by the company to consumers.

For medical supplies, the methods of quality control involve checking of the packets,
whether the pack is intact, whether the chemical composition has been verified by a
pharmacist and if all the required documents are available.

Quality control examples: Suppose one is offering a line of supplements, and one
wants to assure the consumers that they are top quality with no contaminants. The
program of quality assurance would work in order to see if the manufacturing lives up
to that, and then you make use of methods of quality control in order to check the
performance. The lab that makes supplements sends samples for testing. Once
packed, the team would check that boxes have all important information visible.
Conclusion: So, it can be concluded that it is important to ensure that quality control
is maintained in every product and there are various parameters on the basis of
which it is decided if the lot is acceptable or not.

3b.

Introduction: Operating characteristic curve: It refers to a comparison procedure to

the procedure acceptance sampling for an attribute. This process is utilized in order
to view graphically the probability of the lot being accepted versus the lot proportion
that is defective.

Concept and Application:

For a given sample size as well as acceptance number. Plots having multiple curves
for multiple sample size or multiple acceptance numbers can be generated with the
use of this process.
Parameters used to make an OC curve:
Lot Size (IN)
Mention the total number of units in the lot subject to inspection of quality.
If the lot size is constant, it is important to select infinite for the lot size.
In this case, the binomial distribution is used in order to calculate.
If the lot size is set to any value apart from infinite, then distribution of
hypergeometric would be used in the calculations.
Sample Size: This refers to the number of elements from the lot that would be
randomly sampled as well as examined.
Acceptance Number (C) This cut-off value refers to the largest number of non-
conforming defective items from the sample of size n for which the lot must be
accepted.
3. Acceptance Number: This cut-off value refers to the largest number of non-
conforming or items that are defective from the sample of size n for which the lot
must still be accepted.
The acceptance number must be less than the sample size.
Proportion defective range:
It refers to the series of values for the lot proportion defective. The probability of
acceptance would drop down to 0 long before the proportion defective would reach
1.
Conclusion: So, it can be concluded that all the four parameters would have to be
fulfilled in order to ensure that the items meet the quality standards prescribed by the
company.