G&P is proud to announce that it has been awarded a CIPS (Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply) award in conjunction with JLR for the Best Supplier Relationship Management.

 

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has redefined its position in customer satisfaction surveys and enhanced the quality of its products thanks to an innovative partnership with a key supplier. By completely re-evaluating the way it deals with quality control and suppliers, Jaguar took top spot in 2012 JD Power Survey for customer satisfaction and Land Rover has raced up the chart.

 

In 2008, the survey put Jaguar at nine and Land Rover at 34 for quality, described by JLR’s “clearly an unsatisfactory situation” for premium brand and “something had to change”.

 

Component quality was identified as the issue – for some suppliers the proportion of rejected parts was as high as 65 percent – and some finished vehicles were being put into ‘containment’ due to faulty components. This had knock-on effects, including delayed customer shipments, production line stoppages costing £2,000 per minute and the risk that faulty parts could make their way into completed vehicles.

 

At the time, JLR was working with 16 different suppliers across three factories to undertake parts rework and containment, resulting in differing quality regimes and an inability to share data across the company. There was no single view of any give supplier’s quality history, which made preventative action impossible.

 

A new director of quality was appointed, who identified that improvements could be made to the inspection process concerning incoming material. The Inbound Material Project was established to improve the quality of vehicles and the company’s approach to managing the quality of incoming components from suppliers.

 

The 16 suppliers dealing with quality control were reduced to just one – Gobel & Partner (G&P) – which saw it as an opportunity to implement innovations and boost investment in its Qtrak quality management system, which totals £2 million to date.

 

This evolved into a partnership between JLR and G&P. Through Qtrak, they could finally identify the suppliers causing the most problems and target their parts more effectively. Those with a recurrent history of rejected parts were subject to a more rigorous inspection regime.

 

G&P’s aim is to ensure no faulty part ever arrives at JLR production facilities and it now works on the premises of high risk suppliers to review quality processes. The company is also working at JLR’s new plant in China to ensure that the right quality approach is in place from the beginning.

 

Over six years, the relationship between the firms has evolved from a traditional adversarial situation, where G&P was treated as one of a number of commodity suppliers, to one where the two are working to the same goal of “bringing premium quality to premium brands”.

 

Judges’ comments

 

“The relationship between JLR and G&P brought significant business benefit from quality improvement, better supplier relationships and dedication to a long-term programme”