Try not to generalize your vendor relationships. Instead, take a very close look at the extent to which each vendor meets customer needs. The vendor is a know-how carrier and thus needs to advise as well; not only do suitable vendors need to cooperate, they must actively work to compensate for any possible deficits the customer may have. One example is the 13485 or 9001 certification “Communicating with Customers” – what exactly does that mean? What is important to remember here is that: a supply relationship cannot be entered into until all aspects involved in the delivery of the product have been bilaterally coordinated.

Identification and traceability, including for the identification of potentially illegal products. All of these expectations are directly related to product labeling. The completion of article master data, definition of attributes for labeling, or the preparation of data for uploading into the EUDAMED database are the challenges all manufacturers and vendors now face. Now is the time to address these tasks, which are often underestimated.

Traditional “efficiency killers” in warehouses are established processes from the category “we have always done it that way”: long distances, unnecessary search times, manual activities, uncoordinated processes or lack of support from the employed software, quickly add up to significant losses. Companies need to prepare for re-start now and increase the efficiency of their intralogistics through short, effective projects and savings in the two-digit percentage range.

Purchasers often have a hard time working in a dynamic vendor relationship. In this case, vendor monitoring is the perfect tool. The key to using it is “less is more”; i.e., only defining and monitoring criteria that are truly important! Criteria should be defined using the traffic light system and vendor relationships rated as green, yellow or red on a regular basis. Tolerances can be adjusted up or down depending on how significant a vendor is.

Something is delegated every time an order is placed. But – what exactly is that? Responsibility? Authority? Companies often fail to set any or simply set insufficient boundaries here and transfer responsibility for this task to the vendor. While this approach gives a manufacturer a sense of security, in reality, it holds considerable hidden risk. After all, it is the manufacturer who remains responsible for the medical product!

Failing to define clear tasks or responsibilities in quality assurance agreements makes vendor management like flying blind and you can be guaranteed a rough landing. Bearing the potential impact on the ability to satisfy legal requirements, safety aspects or service aspects in mind, manufacturers must thus see their due diligence obligations as a responsibility. Furthermore, they must demonstrate that they are systematically upholding their obligations at all times.

der in Anspruch genommenen Services und Planungssicherheit durch inhaltlich und zeitlich eindeutig definierte und bepreiste Servicepakete, die flexibel kombiniert werden können;

durch Standardisierungs- und Pooling-Effekte, Entlastung besonders knapper und teurer Humanressourcen sowie Vermeidung von Reise- und Präsenzkosten.