IMPACT2016 Quarter 1

Risk Management in B2B Supply Chains

Presented by DQS Inc.

In a rapidly changing online commerce landscape it is inevitable that risk management in B2B transactions will be of considerable interest to all stakeholders and be an essential success factor. While the speed of transaction, data securi-ty, and access capture attention, for the right reasons, a key business aspect for cross- border transactions such as risk management remains in its infancy. Online marketplaces are seeing a rapid growth by providing visibility into a range of global suppliers and yet lack a mechanism to assess the risk in entering into a B2B relationship. Industry sectors

such as hospitality, retail, or services do benefit from user comments / evaluation of the value, reliability, quality of products and services and yet these rankings are a simple indicator of risk for the buyer – seller. However, risk evaluations in online industrial products B2B transactions are frequently based on the financial worthiness of the supplier (D&B ratings, credit history, etc.,) and it is less likely that the buyers have a clear visibility into the reliability, safety, process capabilities, or product risks of suppliers based on the limited information available online. There are solutions to this challenge. Brick-and-mortar locations have devised numerous ways to assess risk in B2B transactions including onsite assessments. With short lead times, limited corporate resources, and global sourcing enabled by online B2B transactions, the most successful enter-prises have relied on independent 3rd party onsite assessments for risk evaluation and improving their confidence levels in the B2B relationships. Industry ecosystems such as automotive and telecomm, maintain proprietary databases with limited outside access on the supply chain reliability. However, a large population of companies with similar indicators of risk controls, governance, and responsible business processes remain invisible to the online B2B marketplace. Such data and information is available and yet very tedious for buyers to search for a reliable supplier, especially for one that is probably in a different geography. As the nucleus of commerce moves further East into large markets such as China and India, it is necessary for enterprise risk in-dicators, trust, and transparency to be built into to online B2B platforms. Third party assessment results have been an integral part of corporate, industry, and regulatory oversight and the same can be adapted for the emerging market online B2B ecosystems such mfg.com or industrybuying.com or Alibaba.com.

Ganesh Rao, President & CEO

ISO 9001:2015 from DQS Malaysia

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The Label Printers

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ISO 9001:2015 from DQS Lebanon

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The Label Printers, Aurora, IL, started in business in 1967, manufacturing simple label constructions in a 1,000 square foot space, with 1 employee, serving the local Chicago market.

Today, the company has evolved into one of the 100 largest converters in the Unit-ed States. The Label Printers owns and operates two facilities in Aurora, Illinois, manufacturing and distributing labels and packaging products to thousands of cus-tomers in 25 countries around the world. The company’s quality systems are regis-tered to ISO 9001 and are backed up by their 99.6% Quality Acceptance Rating.

TLP is a member of NASPO International, CACP (Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy), TLMI (Tag and Label Man-ufacturers Institute) and the FTA (Flexog-

raphic Technical Association).

The Label Printers has been a leading cus-tom label and packaging manufacturer since 1967, serving a widely diverse cus-tomer base around the globe – ranging from Fortune 100 to start-up businesses and supplying industries as varied as wine, pharmaceutical, and electrical.

The company is the largest supplier of UL labels in the world, and chose to pursue ISO when UL was the Registrar, register-ing originally to ISO 9002:1994 in April of 1995. The company understood the long-term value of ISO registration to their business. TLP is proud to have maintained their registration through the updates to the ISO standard over the years and the continuing relationship with DQS.

On December 15, 2015, The Label Printers was presented with a plaque for 20 years of partnership and certification with DQS, Inc. for ISO 9001.

“We chose to pursue ISO with UL’s reg-istration services twenty years ago be-cause of our longstanding relationship with them, but also because we knew it was something that was going to become a requirement of many of our customers and a marketing tool for many prospective customers”, said Bill Kane, Chief Executive of The Label Printers. “It’s our pleasure to accept this award on behalf of all of our employees and to celebrate 20 years of ISO 9001 registration.”

Congratulations to The Label Printers!

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2016 Quarter 1

(from left to right) Brad McGuire, DQS Inc. VP of Core Services and IT; Gina Ries, The Label Printers Quality Assurance Manager; Diane Nehring, The Lable Printers Director of Special Proj-ects; and Ganesh Rao, DQS Inc. President and CEO.

1. The Label Printers opened their doors in 1967, with 1 employee.

2. The company is the largest supplier of UL labels in the world, and one of the 100 largest converters in the United States.

3. The company has won TLMI’s Eugene Singer Award for Best Managed Company - Medium Category - for the 6th time in a row, in their 6th year of eligibility.

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The Label Printers Celebrates 20 Years of ISO Registration and Nearly 50 Years in Business

Following the articles we were able to share with our customers from DQS Argentina and DQS Taiwan, we are now proud to present an arti-cle by Soong KV from DQS Malaysia.

Changes of this latest version of ISO 9001 compare to its previous version year 2008 are significant and accommodate to cur-rent management system trends. Previous focus in identifying core processes and ensuring effectiveness of these process-es so as to achieve customer satisfaction, are now talking about the assessing and evaluating the risks and also opportuni-ties of key processes in the context of each organization. The organization is now required to determine those interested parties who are relevant to the manage-ment system and identify the needs and expectations of these interested parties.

Top management in any organization is always the key factor to drive to success. This new version therefore emphasizes active involvement and participation of top management to ensure effective im-plementation & maintenance of quality management system. This is clearly de-scribed in clause 5 Leadership in the new Standard. Also a significant change from previous clause of 5 Management com-mitment and responsibility, the position of Management representative has been

removed from this revised Standard. The roles & responsibilities of MR are now part of clause 5.3 of the revised Standard.

In clause 6 Planning, Risk based think-ing or Risk analysis is in-troduced in year 2015 ver-sion. This may not be new for some organizations es-pecially those ISO 13485, ISO/TS 16949, AS 9100, etc. certified organizations who has implemented risk management using FMEA, ISO 14971 etc. tool, but it is definitely a very significant change in the development of ISO 9001:2015. There is no requirement to have a specific tool nor meth-od to determine the risks. However, the organization is expected to demonstrate how the risks and oppor-

tunities in all identified processes are an-alyzed and evaluated. In association with these identified risks and opportunities, the management shall plan relevant ac-tions to address these risks and oppor-tunities as well as how to integrate and implement these actions into the pro-cesses and evaluate effectiveness of these actions. As per previous versions, quali-ty objective remains as it is and now the 4W1H approach is introduced to plan the achievement of set quality objectives.

Previous clause of 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 & 4.2 are now restructured and rephrased in clause 7 Support. Document and record are now redefined as Documented Infor-mation. Clause 7.6 Calibration of 2008 version is now addressed in Clause 7.1.5 Monitoring & Measuring Resources.

Previous clauses of 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 & 7.5 are now addressed in Clause 8 Operation. The revision of this 2015 Standard does not allowed any of the requirements/clauses to be excluded. Nevertheless, some of the el-ements in clause 8 may be not applicable

to certain organization business nature.

Clauses 9 & 10 of this revised ISO 9001 are basically clause 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 & 5.6 of 2008 version. Management Review is now under clause 9 Performance Evaluation which reflects the nature of this require-ment as CHECK activity in PDCA cycle. The review inputs have been expanded to ensure items to measure effectiveness of quality management system, such as achievement of quality objectives, per-formance of external providers, customer satisfaction & feedback from interested parties etc., will be reviewed effectively.

With all these changes, thorough an in-depth readiness review for our existing certified clients towards smooth transition of ISO 9001:2015 is deemed necessary. Explaining to the client about this onsite readiness review will be a challenge ahead considering other certification bodies are basically reluctant to practice so. Never-theless, as a preferred certification part-ner, DQS’s approach towards upgrading to this ISO 9001:2015 shall be valued. This is very much similar to patient and doc-tor kind of scenario. Doctors will never diagnose nor prescribe “Offsite”. He/she for sure will see the patient face-to-face (“Onsite”) to ensure clear and unambig-uous information obtained to support his diagnosis and prescription. Hence DQS’s on-site readiness review for our certi-fied clients towards the transition of re-vised ISO 9001 serves the same purpose.

2016 Quarter 1

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The New ISO 9001:2015 Standard from DQS Malaysia

We are thrilled to be able to share with you the below article written by Edward Gris-som, General Manager at DQS Lebanon. In the article Grissmon shares a conver-sation he had with one of their customers about transitioning to ISO 9001:2015 and shows the evolving opinion the customers can have about it when they are more in-formed about how it effects them.

“What happened to ‘Say what you do, and do what you say’? I have a million things to juggle, and I don’t have time to re-work our manual”. This was Jamil’s response to our conversation regarding the new ISO standard 9001:2015. His response is typical among our customers. Jamil is the owner and general manager of a suc-cessful family owned SME and aspires to greater growth. He appreciates the benefits that come with ISO certification; howev-er, at times he feels the requirements go beyond what he really needs. He was not convinced that he would actually benefit from having to update his QMS in order to comply with the new standard.

He listened as I explained the process ISO goes through in order to review and update one of its standards. We discussed market changes worldwide, changes in custom-er expectations, technological advances, changes in sector specific requirements and new organizational knowledge. Jamil said it was interesting. We further the dis-cussed the process of the review, modifica-

tion and approval of the new standard—including the amount of time and money invested, the type of experts that partici-pate and the sources of input which comes from varying markets around the world. Jamil was impressed. However, he still was not convinced. His mood did change, however, as we began to discuss some of the details in the actual standard. The real value for him and his company began to become clearer: The new standard pro-vides understanding, tools and vocabulary that moves his decision making process and his company’s control of its work from the intuitive to the analytical.

Jamil did not really understand my expla-nation of “Understanding the Context of the Organization”, until he realized that he had considered external and inter-nal issues when he took over as General Manager from his father. Office and fac-tory space are found only at a premium in our area. Inevitably, the most practical location for his business is the one that he inherited from his dad. He would have preferred to have rented a new space and built a factory from scratch, but given the company’s history, that was not possible. He said that the company name goes back a long time, and customers feel comfort-able knowing that his products and service have a long history. He added that had he moved to a new space, he also would have faced unwanted issues with his top

managers’ commitment to the company. We expanded this discussion to incorpo-rate other internal issues that Jamil had thought relevant but had never consid-ered such as updating equipment, the role of tradition regarding his brand and the challenge of increasing his work force with younger, more open-minded employees. Suddenly, understanding the context of his understanding by realizing internal is-sues he had already considered wasn’t so foreign. We experienced the same pattern regarding external issues. Immediately, he began to complain about the political deadlock in our country—there has been no trash service for 3 months. Although, trash is being picked up in his area, the government hasn’t resolved the issue. The government hasn’t appointed a president in the past year. As a result, government contracts are held up and sometimes pay-ment is slow. His list continued.

As he mentioned his problems with mu-nicipalities, we naturally began talking about interested parties. When he has looked over the standard himself, he ad-mitted that he didn’t see any value in making his intertied parties. “I already know them.” Of course, the municipalities would be one, and I know what they want”, he said. However, after considering exter-nal issues, a light went on in his thinking. “But, that does make me think about a big problem we have. Invoices.--and not just from the municipalities. Sometimes we have outstanding invoices for months now. Folks are slower to pay because it is taking time for them to get paid. They pay, but we need to nudge them a little.

Truthfully, sometimes we do the same thing. We have to put payment off for a week or two. Then we kind of forget. We will pay, but other things come up”. He barely finished the sentence when he looked at the QMR in his office, “We re-ally do need a new procedure for tracking and assuring timely payment of invoices. We really didn’t need a strong procedure before. But, honestly, now we do”.

For the rest of the article, go to latest news section on www.dqsus.com.

2016 Quarter 1

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An ISO 9001:2015 Customer Conversation with DQS Lebanon