Supplier Scorecard KPIs
Quality, delivery, cost and responsiveness metrics.
1. Why it matters
A supplier scorecard replaces "I have a good feeling about them" with numbers you can compare, trend and act on. For a lighting importer the point is not to build a bureaucratic report — it is to catch a supplier sliding before it costs you a season, and to have an objective basis when you allocate volume or renegotiate price.
2. The four KPIs that matter
| KPI | How to measure | Healthy target |
|---|---|---|
| On-time delivery (OTD) | Orders shipped by confirmed date ÷ total | ≥ 95% |
| Quality (defect PPM) | Defective units per million received | < 5,000 PPM (0.5%) |
| Responsiveness | Avg hours to a substantive RFQ/issue reply | < 24 h business |
| Cost competitiveness | Landed price vs benchmark basket | Within ±5% of market |
3. Weight the score to your reality
A single blended score hides trade-offs, so weight the KPIs to what actually hurts you. A project importer with penalty clauses weights OTD heavily; a premium brand weights quality; a price-fighting distributor weights cost. Publish the weighting to the supplier — a supplier who knows OTD is 40% of their score will protect your ship dates.
- Project / penalty-driven: OTD 40 / Quality 30 / Cost 20 / Response 10.
- Premium brand: Quality 40 / OTD 25 / Response 20 / Cost 15.
- Volume distributor: Cost 35 / OTD 30 / Quality 25 / Response 10.
4. Review cadence and consequences
A scorecard with no consequence is theatre. Score every order, review quarterly, and tie the result to something real: an A-grade supplier gets more volume, longer terms and first look at new lines; a C-grade supplier gets a corrective-action request and a probation quarter before you dual-source. Share the card in the review so the conversation is about a trend line, not a single bad shipment.
5. Checklist
- Record OTD, defect PPM, response time and price on every order
- Set KPI weights that match your real cost of failure
- Publish the weighting so suppliers protect what you value
- Review quarterly on the trend, not a single shipment
- Tie grades to volume, terms and corrective action