I have not had direct experience with vendor selection; however, having more than one apple in the basket is more beneficial than harmful. Securing at least three vendors creates a safety net if you need supplies. Relying on one vendor puts you at risk for product delivery delays if your supplier is on backorder.
I agree that having multiple vendors as backup is a wise risk management decision. Hopefully, everything goes perfectly according to plan but when things change or fail it is important to have a backup plan to switch vendors and mitigate as much damage to the project timelines and budget.
I made the decision to have a backup. I believe it's a bad practice only to have one source for anything, especially something critical that belongs to your device. From past experiences, many issues arise and people rush to get deliverables done to ensure a manufacturing line does not go down, and stop producing products. One of the key aspects of this is to always ensure you have stock of every item you need. If the supplier gives you part x and now because their machine is down, they can no longer provide you part x and now you run the risk of your manufacturing line going down. This is the main reason why I made the decision to have a backup; yes, it may take longer, but it's better in the long run, in case something happens.
Having multiple vendors is always a good plan in case the main backup vendor can not fully their side of the contract. For this weeks simulation, I chose to only go with one alternative vendor as to save time on the project since I didn't want to have longer delays for testing and increase the cost of the project as a whole. In my opinion, I felt that altering the specifications required for the coating to include another type of coating with a different material and lower wettability percentage was not worth the extra time for testing while there was a match that was so similar to the original coating. Sometime if there is too much variability, it is hard to provide enough evidence to support it and it could lead to a failure of the project.
It is good to have multiple vendors in hand because if something goes wrong in the manufacturing of the product we can reach out and ask for more raw materials from the different vendors so we can continue with the production of goods. The manufacturing of the product needs to be changed into a different batch number. It is important to have various options in case there is a shortage from one vendor, and our entire project gets delayed for not having enough raw materials available.
For this simulation I chose to only select one backup vendor. This was an attempt to minimize the time, cost, and any changes to the design specification needed for the addition of back up vendors. Many prior posts mentioned that it is best practice to have multiple back up vendors, but in this scenario one was the best option. This was due to the fact that there was one back up vendor that was very closely related to the current vendor, while the other two differed too greatly. If multiple back ups were to be selected, too many changes to the design specification would have been unethical in this scenario. This mini-simulation was a good demonstration showing that this question is dependent on how closely backups emulate the current design specifications. The more back up vendors that closely following current design specification the more back up vendors that could be selected. Are there any other factors besides time, cost, and design specifications when selecting a back up vendor?
I decided to choose to have one backup vendor at first. I thought our company in the mini simulation was running out the budget. So I only chose one supplier besides Conmodics. The surface agent AND provides is most close to the Conmodics provides. In my opinion, choosing a supplier that offers a coating agent most close to the last one can save a lot of time in changing DSD. If the company can't make the DSD change in time, the board should consider if they need to give up this project or not. But in this simulation, if the company has enough budget and time, preparing as many backup suppliers as possible benefits the project.
I took the decision of choosing one vendor backup instead of multiple. In the project provided, there were certain specifications that the coating needed for it to work on the catheter. Even though there were multiple vendors available that met the evaluation criteria, it would have cost the company extra money and time to source the coatings from all the vendors and test them during the validation and verification phase. In addition, because some of these vendors did not meet the specifications, it would cost the company even more time and money to adjust the product so that multiple materials could be used. For example, if the specification required the polysaccharide to be hyaluron, but another vendor was using glycogen, it would just add more items to research and test. Having one backup vendor who uses hyaluron, even at a different percentage, gives the team more variables they can control to produce a safe and efficient product. Since the project was on the right track for completion, it just seemed more safe to have one backup instead of multiple.
I think it's best to have as many backup options for when worse comes to worst similar to the sim from last week where an unplanned cytotoxicity problem got in the way of business. We had to find an alternative so that we wouldn't lose business and part of finding alternatives is having backup vendors. So when it comes to dealing with vendors for a specific project I believe there needs to be a balance to utilize time and money efficiently, but having connections for when unexpected inconveniences occur is crucial.
For this question, I originally decided to go with one vendor. My thinking was that it would not be worth the time and money to acquire two vendors, especially when my chosen vendor was already such a good fit. However, upon further research and consideration, I realized that having a backup vendor could provide valuable insurance in case of unexpected issues or delays with the primary vendor and could ultimately save time and money in the long run. I can see why both decisions are valid.
With every cytotoxicity testing that was performed and failed, we learned that the marketing manager was too fast to accept the coating from the company that didn't properly prepare their solution. We also couldn't figure out the factors that determine the cytotoxicity level of each lab. If the manager was more patient, then they would have known to look into the coating solution to make sure that it meets standards. Overall, this project simulation highlighted the importance of proper planning and coordination, risk management, and thorough investigation and validation procedures in ensuring the success of a product.
In this simulation my decision was to go with more than one vendor. SOP in this simulation indicated that any vendor that makes a component that is essential to the product's concept and function cannot be sole-sourced. The coating is an essential part of the product as it makes it possible for it to work and without it it cannot and that is why I decided it was important to go with at least one more seller. Additionally, the second seller's product I chose had similar specifications and requirements to the original coating solution from the first seller.
I can speak about vendors and how vendor choices are made. I currently work at a multinational pharmaceutical company, and usually they are have a primary vendor that they solely work for to purchase materials from. As part of the negotiation process, the SS&P team is usually responsible for negotiating the best possible deal from the supplier rep in terms of MOQ, pricing, customizability of the product, and setting the quality standard for an item. That last bit is even more pertinent when the supplier is making a custom item for the company, in which then the specifications and quality validation has to be made on both the vendor and receiving side. Depending on what the material is for, they may be able to purchase multiple lots from a vendor at a time, or one lot from multiple vendors to ensure a stock that would be more than likely to be immune from supply chain or quality disruptions. On the other hand, creating a complex supply chain process would make the organization and logistics of managing everything super complicated.
For the mini-SIM, I opted to have one alternative vendor. This choice was the more financially favorable option and delayed the project less; however, there was more risk with having only one alternative vendor. Yet, I justified taking on this risk based on the fact that the original coating surface was meeting specs during testing procedures, indicating that there is little to no need for the alternative vendor in the first place.
I think it depends. It really depends on your overall business strategy. In this case, it might be better to get more options. However, this is only possible if you have the budget.
In the simulation I chose to go with multiple vendors because as my peers have stated it gives the security and freedom to continue with the project without fear of a vendor dropping or not being able to provide the necessary materials. While we agree that using multiple vendors increases the time it takes to validate the sources, it ultimately saves you time and money later on if you only had one vendor who was unable to do their job. In a sense you can call it insurance on your project being able to continue in case of anything going wrong.
