Supplier Scorecard Skill
A supplier review that ends with "keep monitoring" is a meeting, not a decision. This skill turns delivery, quality, responsiveness, and cost data into a weighted quarterly grade with trend direction — and forces one of three outcomes: escalate, develop, or exit. It also audits whether last quarter's corrective actions actually closed, because a supplier who commits and doesn't deliver is telling you something.
What This Skill Produces
- A weighted performance grade (0–100) across five dimensions with trend arrows vs. prior quarters
- Per-dimension evidence: OTIF %, PPM/defect rate, response metrics, cost behavior
- Corrective-action follow-through audit (committed vs. closed)
- A classification — Preferred / Approved / Conditional / Exit-candidate — and a recommended action path
- Talking points for the supplier business review
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- Supplier & spend — name, category, annual spend, share of category, single/dual-sourced
- Delivery data — OTIF % (on-time in-full) for the quarter, plus 2–3 prior quarters for trend
- Quality data — PPM or defect rate, customer complaints traced to this supplier, any stop-ships
- Responsiveness — quote turnaround, engineering-change response, escalation behavior
- Cost behavior — price changes vs. market/index, cost-reduction commitments delivered
- Open corrective actions — CAPAs/SCARs from prior reviews and their status
If history is missing, score the current quarter and label trends [no baseline — first scored quarter]. Infer reasonable dimension detail from a thin brief and label it [inferred].
Scoring Framework
Default weights (adjust for category — e.g., quality-critical items shift quality to 35%):
Grade = Σ(score × weight) × 20 → 0–100. Bands: ≥85 Preferred · 70–84 Approved · 55–69 Conditional (development plan required) · <55 Exit-candidate.
Trend arrows: ↑ improved ≥5 points vs. prior quarter, → within ±5, ↓ declined ≥5. A ↓ trend in Conditional triggers escalation even if the band hasn't changed yet.
Recommendation logic: score AND trajectory AND strategic dependence. A 60-score sole-source supplier gets a development plan with executive sponsorship; a 60-score supplier with two qualified alternates gets a requalification/exit timeline. Say which case applies.
Output Format
Supplier Scorecard: [supplier] — [quarter]
1. Summary — grade, band, trend, and the recommendation in two sentences.
2. Scorecard — table: Dimension | Weight | Metric this quarter | Prior quarter | Score (1–5) | Trend | Evidence.
3. Corrective-action audit — table: Action | Committed date | Status | Verified effective? Flag any repeat finding explicitly.
4. Cost detail — price moves vs. relevant index, savings pipeline status.
5. Recommendation — Escalate / Develop / Exit (or Maintain for Preferred), with the specific next step, owner, and review date. For Exit-candidates: transition risk, requalification lead time, and interim containment.
6. QBR talking points — 3–5 items: what to recognize, what to demand, what to decide.
Quality Checks
Anti-Patterns
Example Trigger Phrases
- "Review supplier performance."
- "Prepare a quarterly business review for a vendor."
- "Score a supplier on OTIF and quality."
- "Decide whether to escalate."
- "Exit a supplier."