Head of Supplier Management in medical technology (heart-lung machines, autotransfusion devices, centrifugal blood pump)
Time period:
2018/02 – 2018/10
Head of Supplier Management in Medical Technology
Area of responsibility: 3 professionally managed employees
Industry:
- Medical technology (heart lung machines, autotransfusion devices, centrifugal blood pump)
Turnover:
- 1 billion € (2018)
Employees:
- 130
Country:
- Germany
Task:
- Management of the QM supplier management
- Manage the supplier quality audit process, including establishing requirements, priorities, and determining audit frequency
- Analyze internally and externally collected supplier data (manufacturing processes and control) to identify trends and prevent potential issues
- Work directly with suppliers and create action plans to address process failures
- Participate in cross-functional teams to develop new products or make changes to existing products to meet customer requirements
- Management of supplier audits
Measures:
- Supplier audits and supplier qualifications incl. approval of new suppliers
- Support and further development of existing suppliers
- Processing of complaints
- Supplier visits in Europe
- Collaboration with purchasing and development to create long-term remedial actions (continuous improvement process)
- Statistical evaluations
- Presentation of monthly and quarterly management reviews
Successes:
- Successful takeover of dormant (6 months) supplier management and its set-up.
- Maintaining supplier management until permanent position is found.
- Familiarization with the permanent position
Special challenge:
- Due to the absence of the previous supplier managers, many tasks had been left undone. The prioritization of the individual activities was driven by the criteria of safety relevance, costs and target deadlines.
- Supervisor was responsible for all supplier managers throughout Europe, so there was no direct contact person or supervisor in the company on site
- Supervisor changed to another area after one week, which made communication even more difficult
