General Management

The traditional approach to understanding the Customer-Supplier Relationship is to measure and assess the organisational interfaces. Our experience is that this method does not represent the true state of the relationship. An individual's perceptions are what really matter, as relationships are coloured by what people believe to be true and not necessarily what is true. In this way perception becomes reality!

We believe that this issue is critical to improving supply chain operations. We have successfully developed and implemented a powerful new tool for diagnosing problems within the interface between customers and their suppliers. In this way a true understanding is gained of the status of the relationship rather than what is perceived to be the reality.

This approach was successfully utilised in a recent assignment involving a major European aircraft manufacturer and one of its principal suppliers. Our 360-degree process, based on strong ethical principles to maximise validity of data gathered, delivered key metrics of the state of relationships across a wide range of dimensions and addressed such issues as Communications, Culture, Process Improvement and Working Together. In addition, the data developed through the process formed an invaluable basis for a campaign of improvement, correcting false perceptions and dealing with the real issues.