Building Supplier Relationships, 1996 Engineering Conference Proceedings
William R. Thompson
Champion International Corporation
Building and maintaining Supplier relationships is essential to the success of a Capital Project. It is important for the Project Team to clearly define what the key points are in identifying what is likely to make potential Suppliers successful. These points need to be sustainable throughout the course of the project, and after the processes are turned over to Mill Operations. It is not cost effective for us, or our Suppliers, to have unrecognized goals or interests if we really share some common ground. The success of a project depends upon us developing relationships that foster attitudes of trust and respect that reflect the philosophy that we are mutual stakeholders in the project’s success. In reality a project is viewed in the broadest sense of either being a success or failure. If we interpret this to mean that our mutual success depends upon the performance of our respective companies to perform in a manner that meets our mutually agreed upon performance expectations we will in all likelihood be successful. This will provide a foundation to further our relationships in the future. We now expect our Suppliers to be team players with a desire to collaborate with us in identifying keys to success through teambuilding and interest based negotiation. The net effect is that working together we can avoid cost escalation, schedule overruns, and the possibility of claims at the conclusion of a project.