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32 The PCB Magazine • August 2015 product is (i.e., if a product is going end-of- life, instead of negotiating PPV, the discussions could be about last-time buys [LTB]). To successfully manage the supply base, there has to be a regular cadence with the stakeholders from both companies driving continual improve- ment. Based upon the maturity of the relation- ship, interjecting a paired comparison process (PCP) into the business reviews is a very power- ful tool, but we can save that for another article. Williams: Fane, from an opera- tions perspective, you are only as good as your suppliers, so let's talk quality for a minute. As you know, I preach Lean Best Practices, and whether it's raw material or component level products, I feel improvement can always be made through this path. Would you agree? Friberg: I absolutely agree. We talked earlier about PPV. If in an effort to meet the PPV objectives, the supplier begins to choose lower qualities of raw materials and tries to modify their manufacturing process to make the part faster, quality will inevitably be impacted. The reason successful companies are adopting the Lean Six-Sigma approach is specifically to improve current processes and move towards achieving and sustaining reliability in a high-quality, cost- effective manufacturing process. Williams: We have talked about supplier perfor- mance metrics, but what about supplier develop- ment? Since the customer is paying (one way or an- other) for a supplier's inefficient processes, wouldn't it be in everyone's best interest for customers to take an active role in helping their suppliers get better? Friberg: That's a great point, Steve. As manufac- turing firms outsource more parts and services to focus on their own core competencies, they increase the expectation of their suppliers to de- liver innovative and quality products on time and at a competitive cost. So my recommenda- tion is to have the supplier scorecard as part of the normal quarterly business review with the customer. Since the customer most likely owns the drawing and specifications, their under- standing of the potential drawing changes via a three-way collaboration between the customer- provider-supplier, which yields easy-to-fix sup- plier problems that helps build momentum. In the healthcare industry, many times the sup- plier is specifically called out in the drawing, thus hindering proac- tive supplier development. When working on supplier development, the scorecard is a powerful proactive tool in clearly establishing the per- formance expectations that are going to be required (and measured) by the organiza- tion. In my own experience, when you approach the cus- tomer with a situation and indicate that you have some options, but really want to partner with them during the evaluation, they willingly and actively participate, thus fur- ther entrenching your organiza- tion as a business partner with that customer vs. a vendor. You've heard my take on vendors vs. sup- pliers: Suppliers are partners in the value chain; vendors sell hot dogs at Miller Park during the Brewers games. Williams: One of your guiding principles to opera- tional excellence is the formula: Cost * Quality * Delivery = Customer Experience Can you walk me through what this means and how companies can leverage this model in their or- ganizations? Friberg: The measure of an organization's repu- tation in the market is the customer experience (some companies utilize a net-promoter-index to try to gage this). In the aforementioned for- mula, it's critical to understand that these ele- ments are not additive but rather multiplicative. AN INTERvIEW WITH FANE FRIBERG continues FeAture As manufacturing firms outsource more parts and services to focus on their own core competencies, they increase the expectation of their suppliers to deliver innovative and quality products on time and at a competitive cost. " "