Patent Application
20060095314
1. Field of Invention
The present invention is related to a method of processing information, and particularly to a method of approving a new supplier based on an evaluation report generated according to a total evaluation score obtained from a plurality of evaluation scores given by a plurality of evaluation staffs assigned by an electronic dealing system (EDS) corresponding to a plurality of evaluation items.
2. Related Art
In a manufacturing company, a new supplier providing a component used in its products often needs to be approved by the quality assurance department and the purchasing department. The quality assurance department selects a new supplier mainly based on the quality requirement for the component, while the purchasing department selects a new supplier based on the needed cost for the component. However, no matter how a new supplier is generated, all candidates for the new supplier must be subjected to an examination and evaluation process in each supplier-approval case so that it can be assured that the approved supplier meets all qualifications in production, quality assurance, environment protection and the like. Only after passing the examination and evaluation process, will the candidate become the approved supplier.
Generally, a supplier having passed an evaluation process is referred to as an AVL supplier. In a conventional process, when an new supplier desires to apply for an AVL supplier of a company, the new supplier have to fill out some application forms, i.e., application documents and examination documents, e.g., a license of the supplier, an ISO certificate, a company organization chart, a factory registration document, a quality assurance organization chart and the like in the application process. These written documents provided by the new supplier are generally sent to the company by mailing or expressage through a post office or the like, which is proved to be at a losing risk and not certain in the time reached at the company. Not only whether the company has received the documents can not be immediately ascertained, but also the written documents are hard to be maintained and stored.
When the application form from the new supplier is received, the company will assign a general evaluation staff to do a preliminary examination over qualifications of the new supplier. If necessary, the company even assigns evaluation staffs to the new supplier to make a further evaluation. Generally, the assigned evaluation staffs are from an assortment of departments, such as department of quality assurance, purchasing department, department of research and development, department of safety and sanitary and the like. These staffs from different departments are assigned to take care of different evaluation items over the new supplier according to their working contents, wherein the evaluation items may comprise management of quality assurance, management of business, management of research and development, management of environment and the like. After the evaluation process in the new supplier side is done, the evaluation staffs each have to give scores according to their evaluation results on an evaluation list. Since the evaluation list is needed to be transmitted among these evaluation staffs, it takes a relatively long time to obtain all the evaluation scores. Even worse, the evaluation list will be sometimes seriously delayed at some staff's hand and is not easy to be tracked and thus the whole scores may not be acquired in a short time.
Afterwards, an evaluation report has to be generated as a final evaluation result according to these evaluation scores in terms of the specific evaluation items. If it is the case that the supplier has an oversea company, then the company needs to have its staffs travel to the oversea company for the evaluation job and the related documents needs to be transmitted between two countries, which leads to a further longer processing time and thus a higher cost in obtaining the evaluation result.
In view of the fact that electronic operating and electronic business have been introduced into an enterprise or between several enterprises, it is envisaged that an approval process for a new supplier may be improved by such electronic methods. That is, the conventional application manner for being an AVL supplier of a company based on written documents may be improved by utilizing electronic versions of the prior written documents. As such, the time-consuming and document storage issues encountered in the prior application manner may be addressed. Through an operation on an electronic network, each of a plurality of evaluation staffs may input an evaluation score simultaneously on a web page and an electronic dealing system (EDS) may generate an evaluation report according the evaluation scores. In addition, the evaluation scores may be viewed by the supplier candidate at any time so that the whole evaluation process may be transparent to the new supplier. Further, the general evaluation staff may track the evaluation process by monitoring the web page provided by the EDS. When an evaluation item has not been inputted with a score, the EDS issues a notification to the evaluation staff corresponding thereto. Besides, a country-crossing evaluation job may be conducted with such EDS. For instance, assuming that a new supplier having a subsidiary in America desires to be put on the approved vendor list of a company, the company may assign evaluation staffs in its America branch to conduct the evaluation task and the staffs may transmit back their evaluation scores through the network. Then, the EDS generates a total score based on the weights and the evaluation scores corresponding to the evaluation items. Thus an evaluation result and an evaluation report are accomplished and the time spent in the evaluation process may be shorten.
To achieve the above-mentioned purpose, the present invention provides a method of approving a new supplier applied in an electronic dealing system (EDS). The method for approving a new supplier mainly comprises an application process and an evaluation process. In the application process, a new supplier logins on an EDS and then enters a first web page, having one or more application pages, provided by a company to which the new supplier desires to provide a component. Then, the new supplier fills out and submits a questionnaire presented in the web page and uploads examination documents with an electronic form to the EDS. The step of filling out the application forms comprises a plurality of sub-steps, and each sub-step thereof should be done. After the last sub-step is performed, the filled questionnaire is submitted to a new supplier terminal in the EDS. In the evaluation process, a general evaluation staff is assigned by the new supplier terminal to perform an examination of qualifications for the new supplier. In the examination of qualifications, the general evaluation staff examines if the submitted questionnaire has been properly filled and if the required electronic examination documents have been uploaded, such as application documents and examination documents, e.g., a license of the supplier, an ISO certificate, a factory registration document, a company organization chart, a quality assurance organization and the like. As a matter of fact, the evaluation task may be assigned to at least one staff for each evaluation item and the assignment may be decided based on a random assignment scheme, an in-shift assignment scheme, a geographical site-based scheme or the like. After the evaluation staffs finish their evaluation tasks towards the new supplier, they input their evaluation scores with respect to the particular evaluation items in the EDS. Successively, the EDS generates an evaluation report (qualified or disqualified) according to an evaluation result having a general comment based on a total score obtained according to the evaluation scores to the evaluation items and the corresponding weights.
Hereinafter, the preferred embodiments according to the present invention will be described in detail as follows with reference to the accompanying drawings.
The invention will become more fully understood from the detailed description given hereinbelow illustration only, and thus are not limitative of the present invention, and wherein:
Next, a method of approving a new supplier of a preferred embodiment according to the present invention will be described in the following. When the logining information is obtained, the new supplier may login the EDS to apply for an actual supplier (AVL) through a process embedded in the EDS. In the embodiment, the new supplier first fills out and submits a questionnaire and then uploads a plurality of electronic examination documents as required (step 110). In the filling of the questionnaire, a multiple of steps are included and each corresponds to a field among a plurality of fields in the questionnaire. Only after all the fields appeared in the questionnaire are filled, will the next step be proceeded. The electronic examination documents (or with an enclosure attached) needed to be uploaded comprises an electronic examination document (or along with some certifications), such as a license of the supplier, an ISO certificate, a factory registration document, a company organization chart, a quality assurance organization chart and the like.
In the method of approving a new supplier, after the new supplier submits the required questionnaire, the EDS produces an application number which is later passed to a new supplier terminal (typically an administrator of the department of quality assurance). According to the application number, the new supplier terminal enters a staff-assignment web page and the EDS presets an evaluation staff and transmits the application number to the general evaluation staff (step 120), wherein the presetting of the general evaluation staff may be based on a random assignment, an in-shift assignment or the like. Alternatively, a general evaluation staff may be chosen from an employee library built in the company and then the chosen general evaluation staff is added to a staff candidate list (a pre-choosing step). In addition, the new supplier terminal may also change the staff candidate list, i.e., add or delete a staff candidate in the list (a re-choosing step).
Next, the general evaluation staff makes an evaluation over qualifications of the new supplier. First, the evaluation staff logins the EDS to check up if all fields in the submitted questionnaire have been filled out and if the required examination documents have been uploaded. After the checking operation, a step of clicking an icon “qualified” icon or an icon “disqualified” is executed according to the checking result. If the icon “qualified” is clicked, the general comment terminal may enter a staff assignment related webpage (same as step 120), in which the general comment terminal assigns at least one staff to each evaluation item among all the evaluation items (step 130) and in which staffs from different departments may be assigned to different evaluation items according to the relationship of their working contents and the evaluation items.
Thereafter, the general evaluation staffs go to the factory of the new supplier in person to make evaluations each based on their assigned evaluation items. After the evaluation-in-person is finished, each evaluation score corresponding to the corresponding evaluation item is inputted into the EDS through the evaluation terminal therein. In an actual practice, each of the evaluation scores is inputted into a corresponding field in a list provided by the EDS according to a serial number of the evaluation task. Since the limit of authority for each evaluation staff is predetermined in the EDS, the evaluation staffs may not input or change the evaluation scores in evaluation items they have not been assigned to. In addition, each field in the list should be inputted with a proper value and each evaluation item is designated a weight.
In the case where the new supplier has an oversea subsidiary, the company may not assign staffs to the oversea subsidiary for evaluation tasks but may otherwise assign staffs in the branch in the same country to conduct these evaluation tasks. Similarly, the staffs assigned in that country input their corresponding evaluation scores. Therefore, the purpose of a country-crossing evaluation process may be achieved.
The evaluation scores may be monitored or tracked by any evaluation staff to see if all evaluation scores have been inputted. If any evaluation score is not presented in the list, any of the other evaluation staffs may send a message, such as in an email form, prompting the relevant evaluation staff to input his evaluation score as soon as possible.
In response to all the evaluation scores received, the EDS generates an evaluation report based on a total score according to the evaluation scores and their corresponding weights to determine if the new supplier is qualified (step 140). Based on the total score, the new supplier may be given an evaluation grade, such as grade A, grade B and grade C, or a ranking, which is also included in the evaluation report.
FIGS. 3A-B show a schematic diagram of a questionnaire used in the method of approving a new supplier according to the present invention. As shown in
For example, if the current step is “Step 2”, the “Step 1” shown in the indicator window 61 is displayed as green color, then the “Step 2” is displayed as red color and the “step 3” is displayed as blue color. In this case, the display window 62 shows at the same time a frame to be inputted corresponding to the “Step 2” in the indicator window 61. In the frame of the display window 62, there also includes an icon “to the Next Step” icon. The icon “to the Next Step” may be clicked successfully only after every field in the current frame of the display window 62 is inputted. As shown in
When any step in the indicator window 61 is needed to be corrected, the “Step 1” (the finished step) in the indicator window 61 may be clicked and then it turns from green to red and the web page corresponding to the “Step 1” is displayed in the display window 62. At this time, all the fields previously inputted corresponding to the “Step 1” will be presented and the presented contents in these fields may be corrected. However, if the “Step 4” in the indicator window 62 is clicked (the unfinished step), no reaction will occur in the current frame since each step should be executed in an order.
In addition, the fields in the display window 62 are classified as a main field group and a check-up field group with different colors. If any main field or check-up field, such as a field of email, telephone number or the like is not properly inputted, the icon “to the Next Step” may not be clicked and a message block will show to inform the manipulator, e.g. the new supplier, to input pertinent information. In the indicator window 61, the web page corresponding to the last step presents an icon “Finish” rather than the icon “to the Next Step” mentioned above. Upon the icon “Finish” is clicked, the whole information in the fields is stored in a database in the EDS. The new supplier may not change or modify the information inputted prior to an evaluation report generated.
While the preferred embodiments of the present invention have been set forth for the purpose of disclosure, modifications of the disclosed embodiments of the present invention as well as other embodiments thereof may occur to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the appended claims are intended to cover all embodiments which do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present invention.
