TABLE OF CONTENTS Suppliers are obviously the lifeline of any manufacturing company. If the supplier s process links directly to the customer s, the opportunity for lean and flexible results exists. In some companies the objective is not just cheapest cost from suppliers, but instead lowest cost through the supply chain. This requires commitment to the cause of process linkage and handshakes on common goals. These goals can include flexible lead times within certain product families, inventory buffered in strategic points to offset process variation, and differing cost points depending on forecast information and accuracy. In the mid-1990s, AlliedSignal (pre-Honeywell) Transportation and Power Systems actually paid for training for its suppliers so that these suppliers could gain from learning techniques for executing a robust S&OP process. They were a pretty successful team under the direction of Bill Amelio at the time. Some of that success certainly was due to the commitment to the S&OP process and making sure they and their suppliers were on the same page every day of the week. Today, many companies are starting to understand that the goodness seen from an internal S&OP can be multiplied if extended into the supply chain network. It just makes sense and is the next natural step in lean evolution.
Usually suppliers are limited in the number of product families with which they are involved with a customer, although that is not necessarily always true. Whatever product families they are...
