Managing your suppliers can be a challenging experience. Since the services they provide are really an extension of your own organization, we want to make sure they perform at a high level.

1. How can we determine what is important to measure with regard to supplier performance? Is it cost savings, quality of service, product delivery times, or something else?

2. What types of things would you care about with regard to supplier performance, either as a supply manager for a company or hiring a contractor for your own home? What actions might you take if they did not perform according to your expectations?

3. Find and example of an organization that had supplier performance problems. What was the issue and where did they fall short? Did the organization have proper controls in place? Did they take any corrective action or did they just "ride it out"?

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