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Are you a purchaser of commercial or industrial products or supplies?  Many medium and small-size customers report that Murphy's Law works overtime with certain suppliers. 

Perhaps after a purchasing program was underway, you have had a supplier interpret specifications differently (unfavorably to you, of course).

Perhaps you have had a supplier provide defective product, then demand extra money to correct the problem!

If you have experienced these kinds of difficulties, your experience is not unique.

First-tier suppliers to original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs") develop a certain business perspective and discipline though constant direct contact with those OEMs.  The suppliers become highly disciplined to certain behavior and "rules of the game" (although they frequently describe the purchasing practices of giant OEM customers as "brutal"). 

However, other parties in the supply chain operate several steps removed from the OEMs.  Some of your suppliers fall into this category!  Their distance from OEMs cause them to vary widely in their business mentality. 

A number of barriers exist to efficiently communicating your world-class expectations to OEM-distant suppliers:

• Even though you might include excellent "boilerplate" on the back of your purchase orders, some suppliers ignore customer boilerplate. 

• Some suppliers wage a "battle of the forms," to cancel your bidding requirements via their bid paperwork.

• You might send out "purchasing program books," but many suppliers file these away or just delegate the reading to their specialists.

• You might conduct surveys on your suppliers, but still fail to hold frank two-way discussions, in which both of you predict and prevent the classic difficulties.

• Your suppliers may have experienced other customers who sent them additional requirements AFTER their price agreements.  Thus feeling cheated, some suppliers habitually "misunderstand" to recover from their perceived disadvantage.

• Some people assume that QS-9000 or ISO-9000 registration will eliminate misunderstandings.  This is not a safe thing to assume!

• Some managers ignore the "battle of the forms" and all the other barriers to understanding because, they say, it can all be resolved in a court of law!  However, working out supplier misunderstandings in court is inefficient, to say the least!

Misunderstandings fall into patterns and categories.  You can use the Customer-Supplier Principles articles as a troubleshooting list for prevention.

Consider each principle in our series.  See if you find yourself recognizing your own "pet peeves" or chronic supplier relations "hot buttons!"

Here and there where applicable, we also point out consumer situations that parallel our commercial and industrial examples!