By Lynn Christine

Scorecards are like profiles — although everyone has one, each is a little bit different. Just like eyes, nose and a mouth — most scorecards contain “case fill rate” and “schedule attainment.” However, are those eyes blue? Brown? Hazel? Do all customers define schedule attainment the same way? In a word — no.

Erin Holzgen, plant controller for Roskam Baking Co., Grand Rapids, Mich., sums it up very well: “It’s the same ideas, but how they go about getting to that actual metric or measurement is different, and with a different emphasis.”

As Hollis Bordeaux, vice president of compliance, regulatory affairs and client services for BestSweet Inc., Mooresville, N.C., says, “I’ve never seen two scorecards alike. It’s a big resource drain.”

Suppliers have to report requested metrics, as defined by each customer. Net, if a supplier has 50 customers, they likely have 50 different scorecards all containing different metrics with different calculation methods. Just thinking about the task of managing the process is overwhelming.

The industry now is beginning to discuss the benefit of harmonizing those metrics which are common — the “80 percent.” Member companies of the Oakland, N.J.-based Foundation for Strategic Sourcing (F4SS) currently are discussing how such harmonization might occur.

The process has been eye-opening, Holzgen says: “The most interesting thing is the openness of the discussion. We have both customers and suppliers talking about the willingness to share internal metrics and comparing those across the board. As it is with everything F4SS does, members are willing to say ‘There are savings if we can get everything on the table.’“

Key industry players see the benefits. Karen Kortendick, director of corporate quality/continuous improvement for The Strive Group, Chicago, sees harmonization’s advantage. “It aligns customers and suppliers to the same focus areas,” she says.

“If we can get to common names with common meanings (formulas) it should make reporting easier. Many are close now but there is that need to clarify meanings whenever you are talking across companies,” agrees Todd Logan, the F4SS team leader and business intelligence and analysis manager, global manufacturing alliances, for The Hershey Co., Hershey, Pa.

This initiative may not only help customer/supplier relationships, but also may help align complex, multi-category customer organizations. “It gives us something to benchmark against relative to our internal effort. That’s always a struggle,” says Anna Key Jesus, quality director of supplier quality for ConAgra Foods Inc., Omaha, Neb. “We have such diversity within our own company, it helps to have a standard approach.”

The F4SS Scorecard Harmonization Team, under Logan’s leadership, has nearly completed the effort, which is planned for presentation at this fall’s F4SS Innovation Conference in Orlando, Fla. Metrics have been divided into three categories: service, quality and cost. Recommendations will be presented to the membership for review and approval.

The final step is implementation, which can sometimes be the most challenging. Logan offers the customer perspective: “It may be difficult (to implement) at times. Many terms and their definitions have been used for a long time… but once you explain why we are trying to move to common terms, most people seem willing to give it a try.”

From a supplier’s point of view, Holzgen sees it as a relatively simple process. “When we start up a relationship, they ask the question: ‘How do you do this? How do you measure this?’ So, you can have a standard program in place. It’s there to build on immediately,” she says. “This is working how about if we try this?”

The F4SS’s Scorecard Harmonization Team intends to have detailed recommendations soon. Stay tuned for more here in the Raising the Bar section. And please go to www.cmpmag.com, click on the F4SS icon, and you’ll find even more information.