Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple suppliers for a given medical device component or medical device material? How does having multiple suppliers impact lean manufacturing principals?

Answer 1

There are various advantages and disadvantages for having multiple sources for any given product.

Advantages:

1. Variety: One of thr advantages that we can see having multiple sources to get our medican equipments from would be the variety considered. Every supplier have different offerings and services, thus we have a number of options available to make the right choice and thus make the right decision buying the right good for us.

2. Reduces Risk: Apart from variety, having a number of multiple suppliers gives us the power of risk avoiding situations. For example in medican industry, many a times urgent needs arrives and one of the supplier doesn't have the same thing you want. Thus, in the time of having multiple suppliers, you have options to select and thus it would also reduce your risk level and increase your speed or effectivity for getting a product.

Disadvantages:

1. Integration Problems: One major problem if having multiple sources is the integration and management problem. It is seen that many firms are not able to effectively handle various suppliers and get confused as handling, integrating and managing them becomes a harder task for supply chain.

2. Costly: Handling all the suppliers at one time would also increase your cost. You have to maintain good relationships with all of them which would have a direct positive impact on your cost.

The principle of Lean Manufacturing tells us about using the most effective and efficient design in our organisation to maintain the highest quality, improvement and quantity while reducing the costs to the minimal. As we can see, having a lot of sources for getting our resources supplied increases the cost and the integration problems, that would have a direct impact on our qualitative system. As the costs would increase because no. of suppliers are there, we would tend to increase our price as well that will directly beared up by the customers. On the other hand, if the effective integration process is not meet, the principle of Kaizen and Elimination of waste are are affected. But as the sides of a coin, apart from negative, positive consequences could also be achieved in the lean system. Having a variety and lower risks level also helps to reduce the waste and achieve the principle of Jidola which is how effectively the business is able to detect the mistakes and make qualitative improvements to achieve efficiency. Thus, it is right to say that having multiple suppliers can affect drastically the lean manufacturing principles.