SM Thacker & Associates

Independent Best Practice Training & Consultancy

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Highlights of our full range of training courses / Workshops:

Lean & Agile Supply Chain / Inventory Modelling

Lean & Agile Manufacturing Planning & Control

Operations Management / Team Leader Training

Step Change Management / Business Process  Reengineering

Continuous Improvement

Procurement (Purchasing & Supplier Management)

IS / IT / e-commerce

Product Management / New Product Introduction  / Quality  Management

 

Bookmarks for this topic below:

Our full range of training

Relevant Training / Workshops

 

Relevant Training Course / In-house Workshop Highlights:

P01 Modern Procurement Practices

P02 Supplier Development

P03 Service Level Agreements

P04 Supplier Assurance (Getting the best from suppliers)

P05 Introduction to Procurement

P06 Introduction to Managing the Supply of Materials

Also see:

Lean & Agile Supply Chain / Inventory Modelling

Training Courses & Workshops to support

Procurement, Buying & Supplier Management

Our Training Philosophy and Approach

The following 6 training courses are available (linked to highlights below). They can be readily tailored to suit individual requirements for in-house workshops.

To discuss your consulting or training needs with one of our independent consultants or trainers please Contact Us

 

P01 Modern Procurement Practices

(1 day) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for:

All the purchasing team

Course Objectives:

 

Procurement has changed, from a narrow purchasing role, into a multifaceted role including: Integrating relationships; Design; Buying; Planning; Inbound Logistics; Commercial Administration; Supplier Performance Management; and last but not least, managing the process.

 

This overview course, promoting best procurement practice, and taking each of these eight roles in turn, will show you how to provide a low cost means of providing a highly effective procurement process to really add value to support your business.

 

Course Highlights:

This course will help you to:

  • Approach purchasing strategically and proactively (strategic sourcing) rather than responding to the latest crisis
  • Establish long term relationships with strategic partners
  • Identify categories to improve internal coordination of supply (category management overview)
  • Help to design your products & services collaboratively in conjunction with suppliers
  • Take a "whole supply chain planning & control view" to improve overall effectiveness
  • Operate Lean / Agile: "pull systems" (customer / supplier) to improve responsiveness, conserve cash and reduce working capital
  • Make sound Make vs. Buy and outsourcing decisions
  • Ensure supplier quality (Introduction to Supplier Quality Management (Supplier Quality Assurance (SQA), self certification)
  • Ensure supplier capacity (Introduction to Supplier Capacity Assurance (SCA))
  • Use more efficient payment methods
  • Buy better:
    • Understand your buying criteria and required service better ("SQAIRPAD" paired comparison)
    • Better personal time management
    • Manage supplier service (Overview of P03 Service Level Agreements)
    • Measures of Performance / reporting
  • Transform the purchasing function from a paper chasing, query processing, function into a function which adds real value to the business.

Examples of course participant's feedback:

  • "Very good criteria for evaluation of suppliers."
  • "Course content and real life examples were really useful."
  • "The small exercises enabled people to see how they could use the theory."
  • "Helped clarify things for me - The knowledge contained within the course and discussions were excellent."

 

P02 Supplier Development

(1 day) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for:

Purchasing and quality control staff new to this topic

Course Objectives:

 

A supplier is bound to act in, what they perceive to be, their own best interest. The trick of supplier development is to persuade suppliers that providing you with a better service is in their best interests even if, to them, you are a small customer, and then to motivate them to invest to improve their service for the benefit of all of their customers.

 

This detailed course, promoting best practice, and written in conjunction with P03 Service Level Agreements and P04 Supplier Assurance (below), will enable you to get better service from suppliers and engage them in a development process which helps you and them (A Win-Win situation).

 

Course Highlights

This course will help you to:

  • Plan for good performance
  • Monitor and control performance efficiently and effectively
    • Choose which suppliers you could, and should, try to develop and which you should forget or exit
    • Choose which supplies to focus on
    • Choose a suitable method and set up a low cost monitoring process that measures the correct things
      • Understand the advantages & disadvantages of each method
  • Persuade reluctant suppliers to develop
  • Help suppliers to improve
  • Implement a supplier development process
  • Manage the process

Examples of course participant's feedback:

  • "A good course which explains all the necessary methods and tools required to set up a supplier development process."
  • "Very detailed and fit for purpose. I will use the structure going forward."
  • "Every element can be used back in the workplace to ensure that all the bases are covered."
  • "The role-playing supplier development meeting was very revealing."

 

P03 Service Level Agreements (SLA's)

(1 day) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for:

All functional specialists providing or receiving ongoing services to others, but particularly Purchasing and Sales staff new to this topic

Course Objectives:

 

It is no use couching a service level agreement in legal jargon and if it lands with a thud on your desk it will only be read when something has gone wrong.

Good service requires a commitment to the relationship, an agreed set of measurable objectives and a management process.

 

This detailed course, promoting best practice, and written in conjunction with P02 Supplier Development (above) and P04 Supplier Assurance (below), shows you how to:

  • Develop the relationship
  • Define your required performance comprehensively and unambiguously
  • Construct an agreement that includes the things you really ought to consider
  • Specify commercial aspects and future-proof the agreement
  • Implement and manage an agreement

Course Highlights

This course will help you to:

  • Understand why you need service level agreements as a customer or supplier of a service
  • Provide a vehicle for managing 3rd party service providers or as a supplier to manage customer expectations Note 2
  • Define the required service comprehensively and unambiguously
  • Decide if a service level agreement should be a contract or an agreement
  • Decide which contents a service level agreement should include, exclude and which aspects are optional Note 1
  • Measure supplier performance to improve it
  • Implement and operate a service level agreement
  • Deal with operational problems and permanently solve them

Note 1: This course includes a template and checklist for the construction of your SLA's.

Note 2: When run as a workshop with both supplier and customer involved, we have found that not only is the relationship and communication improved, but the resultant agreement is a sound basis for excellent service!

 

Examples of course participant's feedback:

  • "The whole course builds an SLA structure to work with. The provision of a template will ensure that no area gets left out."
  • "Fun, useful pointers especially for existing agreements. A detailed explanation of how to manage SLA's."
  • "Very engaging and very thorough. An in-depth review of all facets and steps necessary to create effective SLAs."
  • "Helped clarify SLA's for me - Also will make them more useful than the current documents we are working with."
  • "The content and structure of the day was excellent - The strength was the ability to link knowledge to my own working practice."

 

P04 Supplier Assurance (Getting the Best from Suppliers)

(1 day) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for:

Purchasing, planning and quality assurance practitioners

Course Objectives:

 

Solving supplier problems can only ever be second best to not having problems in the first place.

 

This overview course, promoting the best practices of proactive rather than reactive procurement and written in conjunction with P02 Supplier Development and P03 Service Level Agreements (above), will help you to:

  • Ensure good quality supplies & services
  • Ensure supplies & services are delivered on time in full, every time
  • Ensure that they are the minimum cost now and in the future

Course Highlights

This course will help you to:

  • Supplier Quality Assurance (SQA)
    • Understand the 6 steps to near-perfect quality and how to audit them
  • Supplier Capacity Assurance (SCA)
    • Understand the key characteristics of capacity management processes to ensure the correct capacity is available when needed and how to audit them
  • Supplier Productivity Assurance (SPA)
    • Understand the real difference between low cost and low selling price
    • Understand the 6 drivers of performance and 5 attributes of lean and agile resources and how to audit them
  • Use benchmarking to motivate suppliers to turn your findings into a "SMART" action plan
  • Provide a low cost way of assuring you will get great service from suppliers

Note: Includes our unique supplier audit starter pack to get you started quickly.

 

Examples of course participant's feedback:

  • "A well rounded day, covering in depth as enjoyably as possible what could have been very heavy going."
  • "A course full of knowledge - Very in depth. I will continually refer to this information."
  • "Very informative - Never a silence break - A good source of information to use as a starting point."
  • "The audit checklist is the key to good quality assurance."
  • "I can now see that planning is exactly the opposite of expediting."

 

P05 Introduction to Procurement

(3 days) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed as:

An introductory level course for all procurement practitioners and staff new to the role

Course Objectives:

 

Supplier relationship management requires a spectrum of roles and processes ranging from researching potential sources to payment administration. But it also includes being a good supplier of goods and services and maintaining good relationships with internal consumers of these resources.

 

This detailed introductory course,  is aimed at all procurement / purchasing practitioners and staff new to the role, who are primarily purchasing and managing the supply of services and in a conventional buying role rather than purchasing and managing materials. (Contains complementary content to P06 Introduction to Managing the Supply of Materials (Foundation Course) below). It will help you to:

  • Buy effectively
  • Measure the purchasing function’s effectiveness
  • Conduct competitive comparisons
  • Contribute to product / service design
  • Select suppliers objectively
  • Negotiate effectively
  • Develop suppliers’ performance
  • Establish service level agreements
  • Make a financial case for your proposals

Course Highlights

The course covers the following topics:
  • Day 1:
    • Module 1: Introduction
    • Module 2: Preparation
    • Module 3: Performance Measurement
    • Module 4: Supplier Research (understanding what & where to source)
    • Module 5: The Design Process (exploiting the suppliers expertise to improve your products and services)
  • Day 2
    • Module 6: Supplier Selection (buying criteria & objective competitive comparison)
    • Module 7: Evaluating Proposals (understanding selling tactics)
    • Module 8: Contract Negotiation (understanding buying tactics)
    • Module 9: Supplier Development (Introduction to P02 Supplier Development above)
  • Day 3:

Examples of course participant's feedback:

  • "I found the practical sessions helped + fun. Its good to have breakout sessions to answer questions too."
  • "Helped me understand the broader issues of Purchasing. I can now see the linking of Commercial to Purchasing - Looking at things from the customer's viewpoint and the impacts this has."
  • "Explains some of our current supply issues. A good course that anyone who is involved should attend. Thank you!"
  • "When I put this into practice I think it will stand out."

 

P06 Introduction to Managing the Supply of Materials

(2 days) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed as:

An introductory level course for all purchasing practitioners handling the supply of materials and staff new to the role

Course Objectives:

 

Everyone else's problems and delays, end up in the buying office. The Purchasing department are at the cusp of where reality meets the aspirations of product and project delivery. This course aims to change the question asked by purchasing people of suppliers from "when is the earliest you can get it here" to "lets discuss an holistic way that we (us and our suppliers) can mutually help our businesses", and allow you time to negotiate.

 

This detailed introductory course, is aimed at all procurement practitioners and staff new to the role , and expeditors, who are primarily purchasing and managing the supply of materials rather than purchasing and managing services. (Contains complementary content to P05 Introduction to Procurement above)

If your buying office activity is currently dominated by: paperwork; orders within lead-time; shortages / expediting; complaints and invoice queries, this course will show you how to avoid these problems and create a proactive, high performance, procurement service to your internal customers, encompassing an introduction to all of the 8 procurement roles needed for efficient and effective procurement of materials, namely:

  1. Integrating relationships
  2. Design
  3. Buying
  4. Planning
  5. Inbound Logistics
  6. Commercial Administration
  7. Supplier Performance Management
  8. Managing the process

Course Highlights

This course will show you how to:

  • Manage your time
  • Organise procurement and create proactive rather than reactive processes
  • Communicate effectively with suppliers
  • Contribute effectively to the product design process and coordinate product changes
  • Take out product cost
  • Minimise a product recall
  • Make better Make vs. Buy decisions
  • Plan accurately in a timely way to coordinate materials supply Just In Time and minimise expediting
  • Manage sub-contractors
  • Preserve cash
  • Attack lead-time
  • Develop an Inventory Strategy to minimise inventory whilst maximising customer service
  • Calculate Max / Min stock levels correctly
  • Manage seasonal demand
  • Minimise inbound logistics and payment administration costs
  • Improve stock accuracy
  • Specify your buying criteria objectively
  • Conduct competitive comparisons between suppliers
  • Manage supplier performance and drive improvement
  • Create your Personal Action Plan
  • Implement your proposals

Note: Contains introductory content from a number of our courses.

 

Examples of course participant's feedback:

  •  "Being new to purchasing, this is an appropriate course for my needs."
  • "Gave me a greater understanding of how to analyse and eliminate the problems we face."
  • "Explained things as a whole - I.e. How certain things impact other areas. I now have a better understanding of how everything fits in."
  • "A good tool for stock control. Stock variation and reorder point calculation were really useful."
  • "I have an action plan to go away and implement."

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Bookmarks for this topic above:

Our full range of training

Relevant Training / Workshops

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To discuss your consulting or training needs with one of our independent consultants or trainers please Contact Us

Home Page Public Training Course Schedules Over 150 Best Practice Articles Expert Systems / Tools This Month's Features / News About Us Your Question / Contact Us

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Whilst great care has been taken to provide relevant, accurate, practical, advice based on our considerable process design and development experience, this will almost certainly require interpretation into the context of your unique business. Please be careful in doing so and if in doubt seek expert advice. We would welcome your feedback!

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