Original Date: 04/26/2004
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

United Defense, L.P. Armament Systems Division Aberdeen enhanced its Supplier Management system by creating a Supplier Review Board, resulting in greater control over its vendors.

In the past, the three Armament Systems Divisions (ASDs) of United Defense, L.P. (UDLP) independently managed a total of 370 suppliers, and each site had independent supplier quality processes. In 1999, UDLP ASD Aberdeen created a Supplier Review Board (SRB) to help streamline supplier management and supplier quality processes. The SRB’s purpose is to determine new suppliers, evaluate performance, and review underperformers. The board meets monthly to discuss quality, delivery, and other issues affected by suppliers who do not meet requirements. The results of the monthly evaluations are sent to the respective suppliers quarterly or monthly based on the scale of the supplier's business. The SRB allows for a preliminary procurement review to ensure that supplier capability and procurements by other ASDs are not affected. The review board also schedules on-site assessments of potential new suppliers to ensure they meet quality requirements. Corrective actions resulting from these reviews must be completed prior to the SRB’s approval of the supplier. The supplier list is used to monitor performance based on quality and delivery expectations, and also contains commodity codes designating supplier capabilities (e.g., process, material type, size of product, complexity [dimensional], single/sole-sourced).

With the implementation of the Supplier Management system, the UDLP ASDs reduced their suppliers from 370 to 240, nearly doubled the overall quantity of on-time deliveries since 2002, gained insight into their vendors' quality processes, improved communications with the suppliers, and improved the quality and timeliness of procurements.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.