Chrysler gives top suppliers kudos--and more!
By Staff -- Purchasing, 2/12/1998
In an ongoing effort to promote continuous improvement in its supply chain, Chrysler Corp. recently recognized 18 of its suppliers with the company's highest honor: The Platinum Pentastar Award.The coveted Award, modeled after Chrysler's familiar pentastar logo, has for more than a decade been given to the top-performing suppliers in each of seven categories: cost reduction, customer support (both to Chrysler and its end customers), delivery, price, quality, technology, and warranty.
Chrysler measures and compares supplier performance in these areas on an ongoing basis. Pentastar contenders are determined by rolling all the metrics into an overall performance score. Chrysler's procurement and supply group taps engineering, manufacturing, and other functions for input on the leading Pentastar candidates. Award winners are revealed each December; however, suppliers can get real-time status reports on how Chrysler views their performance by logging onto a password-protected site on the World Wide Web.
Winners of the Pentastar, which for 1997 included a record nine production-based suppliers, receive more than just a plaque and a pat on the back. Tom Stallkamp, the new president of Chrysler, says the Award figures heavily into deciding which suppliers will receive future business.
"You need to reward the top performing suppliers with more business and take [business] away from those suppliers who are not setting as high a standard," says Stallkamp, who was recently promoted from executive vice president of procurement and supply. He says Chrysler's procurement team uses the Pentastar Awards ceremony to drive this point home.
All 150 of Chrysler's largest suppliers attend the Awards ceremony each year. "In front of that audience we recognize the 25 or so winners and hold them up as excellent companies, and behavior we want other suppliers to emulate," says Stallkamp. "Then we say to everyone that our job as Chrysler is to reward the winners with more business."
That certainly gets suppliers' attention!
While the Platinum Pentastar salutes suppliers with the best overall performance, Chrysler has more recently begun to recognize suppliers that are top performers in one of seven categories: continuous improvement, delivery, extended enterprise, quality, score (Chrysler's Supplier Cost Reduction Effort), special supplier development, and technology. This year, seven suppliers took home the prestigious Role Model Award.
Award winners won't be able to rest on their laurels, though. Chrysler's goal is continuous improvement and the criteria for the awards are adjusted accordingly. "We keep adding more and more to our rating system," says Stallkamp.
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