Supplier Quality Management Based On Lean Six Sigma Methods

Economic globalization and international competition are getting intensified nowdays. In order to survive, develop and grow in more competitive market environment, enterprises must use advantage of external resources to develop own core competence competitive power. The competition between enterprises is gradually transforming to the competition between supply chains. Continuous improvement on supply chain management and supplier quality become the key factor to success.In this paper, author took 0 company, the leading company of elevator industry, as the object of study, to analyze characteristics of industry, as well as supplier quality issues in O company, and then came out with solutions based on Lean Six Sigma methodology.The paper consisted of 5 chapters with following logic frame. In first chapter, the background of study and importance of supplier quality management were introduced. In second chapter, author briefed the major theories involved in the paper, including supply chain management and supplier quality management. In the following charter 3, O company's issues were analyzed. First of all, authored reviewed elevator industry background and O company's strategy / organization / operations, then analyzed current process and practice of supplier quality management. The defects and issues of supplier quality process were pointed out at the meantime, which included unclear criteria of supplier quality, non-standard procedure of supplier quality management, as well as missing the section of supplier quality improvement activities. In order to resolve all of these issues, author developed the improvement plan of supplier quality based on DMAIC cycle of Lean Six Sigma. The plan consisted of 15 individual steps and relevant supporting Lean Six Sigma tools, including Value Stream Mapping, Measure System Analysis, Kaizen, etc. In the fourth chapter, author described the implementation of improvement plan and the practice of joint events with suppliers, and conducted summary & analysis. In the fifth chapter, author reviewed the achievement and significance of this study, and also pointed out the direction forward of this study based on limitations review.Author pointed out that this study had enlightenment effects to evelator enterprises, and also China entities could take this study as the example of continuous improvement on quality.