Supplier Evaluation
Supplier evaluation is a structured way of scoring how well each supplier performs on quality, cost, delivery and reliability, so you can decide who to keep, develop or drop.
A short chain of steps runs from setting scoring criteria through to feeding the results back and agreeing changes with the supplier.
Reach for this when…
- A supplier's quality has slipped and you are relying on memory, not evidence.
- You are choosing between two suppliers and the decision keeps stalling.
- You need to justify to the board why a long-standing supplier is being dropped.
How to run it
- List the suppliers who matter most to your output.
- Set criteria: quality, cost, delivery, responsiveness, financial stability.
- Score each supplier against the criteria with real data, not impressions.
- Rank suppliers and flag anyone below an agreed threshold.
- Feed the scores back to the supplier and agree what changes.
A worked example
Situation. Efua Mensah runs a garment finishing workshop in Accra, Ghana, and had kept the same fabric supplier for six years out of loyalty.
Applied. She built a simple scorecard covering on-time delivery, defect rate and price stability, and scored her three fabric suppliers over one quarter.
Result. Her long-standing supplier came last on delivery. She moved half the volume to a second supplier and cut late shipments by more than half.
The catch
The scores are only as good as the data behind them, and quality data is often missing until you start collecting it. The scorecard also tends to favour big, established suppliers who can produce paperwork, over smaller ones who might actually serve you better. Use it to open a conversation with the supplier, not just to rank them.
A supplier that scores badly on price but saves you from stockouts may be worth more than the scorecard shows.