SUPPLIERS, TOO
Ritz-Carlton is now working with its suppliers for quality management. The firm has developed supplier certification, by which the company not only measures how often suppliers meet specifications on time, but how well they improve their cycle time from order to delivery. "If they don't have the willingness to do that we can no longer do business with them," Mene warned. "We want to see which suppliers are best able to meet our quantity needs, and which will meet our quality needs by doing an internal assessment or by applying for the Baldrige award themselves."
The internal assessment involves a rigorous 100-question internal audit of suppliers' capabilities, plus a survey of the people who use their products and services, including purchasing agents, accounting personnel, sales persons, and hotel guests, who also rate the quality of those suppliers' products and services. Ritz-Carlton ranks the suppliers based on a score developed from the supplier audits and user surveys. The goal is to get suppliers to advance through a certification program to become a fully integrated partner.
"Most of our suppliers are already involved in this approach and they're happy to share with us their capabilities, but we have all sorts of other suppliers showing up and saying, 'Look at me, look at what I can do.' So I think the response to our program has been good," Mene said.