Competence of Supplier Quality Professional

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What competence you are expected to be a good Supplier Quality Professional?

Probably you have been working in the Supplier Quality field for a couple of years and you are very familiar with what are you doing, but it still maybe not enough to show your full potentials. As each company only defines the responsibility of a position to its real needs – you could be a boss to control everything if you leave your current position and create your own business, but if you do not, then you are one important "screw" to your company machine.

I have been working in different big companies as well and I personally saw different companies give different names to same positions and also may give same names to different responsibility jobs. So do not care too much about the position tittles.

To have a better understanding about the "extra" responsibility of a Supplier Quality Professional, once I have searched the job descriptions in LinkedIn using keywords as most of the descriptions there usually are quite long, explicit, and prioritized, though I have a broader view but it's still not enough – I can understand 60% to 80% responsibilities are the same and others depend on the setting of each organization. It's very similar to our commodities. Each plant produces the similar function products but still there are some differences. One example is that Coca-cola and Pepsi tastes similar, another one is that power rechargers are different around the world but function is exactly the same – I understand there have been some people trying to standardize them and by far I already see big progress.

Another good way is to look for answers from Standards or Association, where all the good mindset, ideas and methodology are gathered. As defined in the ASQ for Certified Supplier Quality Professional (CSQP)(full introduction), following competence are required:

I Supplier Strategy

A. Supply Chain Vision/Mission

B. Supplier Lifecycle Management

C. Supply Chain Cost Analysis

D. Supplier Agreements or Contracts

E. Deployment of Strategy and Expectations

II Risk Management

A. Strategy

B. Analysis and Mitigation

III Supplier Selection and Part Qualification

A. Product/Service Requirements Definition

B. Supplier Selection Planning

C. Part, Process, and Service Qualification

IV Supplier Performance Monitoring and Improvement

A. Supplier Performance Monitoring

B. Assess Nonconforming Product/ Process/Service

C. Supplier Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA)

V Supplier Quality Management

A. Supplier Quality Monitoring

B. Teams and Team Processes

C. Compliance With Requirement and Supplier Categorization

VI Relationship Management

A. Supplier Onboarding

B. Communication

C. Leadership and Collaboration

VII Business Governance, Ethics, and Compliance

A. Code of Ethics

B. Compliance

C. Confidentiality

You will see it's not so easy to be a good professional

In the book of (THE IRON MAN: Elon Musk's Quest to Forge a Fantastic Future)《硅谷钢铁侠》by Ashlee Vance (阿什利•万斯), it's suggested one important factor to be more successful is Depth of Knowledge and Cross-boundary Learning. The depth of knowledge means focus of one narrow field and to be a professional person in that area, and method is reading and consulting the top professionals. Cross-boundary learning means thinking out of the box to create new cognition and provide source of innovation, and experience of Musk is to research the core concept of different areas and connect them to the real world.

I agree the points, and in addition, very often I think the value of a person depends on the capability of him/her, either in depth or cross-boundary width. For example, you will be valued more than a Certified Supplier Quality Professional if you are a Certified Lean 6 Sigma Black Belt (in depth), and more if you can use different languages to understand and adopt those methodologies, than just speak one language. In real world, those new era farmers who can use Internet to sell their own goods earn more than the traditional ones in old age.

The degree of professional depends on how far you want to go.

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