Supplier qualification that does not exist only on paper

An ISO 9001 certificate attests that a company runs and documents a quality management system. It says nothing about whether that company can deliver your part, in your tolerance class, in your quantity, on time. That confusion stands at the beginning of many failed awards.

Audit reports show it plainly: the most frequent findings are not the absence of processes but the gap between the documented and the lived process. A procedure that only collects documents never finds that gap.

First: capacity against utilisation. A machine park is a snapshot; what matters is free capacity in the relevant window. We ask for utilisation and order book and update the figure annually.

Second: certificates in the original, with expiry date and scope. Scope is the point at which many pieces of evidence turn out not to fit — what is certified is frequently a different site or a different process from the one required.

Third: at least two reference customers who confirm. Not a reference list but a conversation about delivery reliability and how complaints are handled. References without counter-confirmation do not count with us.

Fourth: gauge capability. Whoever guarantees tolerances has to show they can measure them. A cg/cgk record on the relevant characteristic is cheaper than the first complaint.

A sound qualification procedure narrows the field of providers, and that is the purpose. A few quotes from demonstrably suitable companies lead to a faster and more reliable decision than a broad field in which some cannot carry the order anyway.

The effort therefore moves forward: more work in qualification, considerably less in rework, escalation and re-tendering. Comparative figures of our own we will publish only once enough supported awards exist to evidence them.