Suppliers and Purchasing Management

Stay on top of your procurement and spend data with full visibility to supplier performance

Gain complete insight of your procurement and spend performance, including total spend amount, supplier mix, supplier shipment and procurement accuracy and supplier demographics and scorecard. Easily share results throughout your organization with built-in dashboards, self-service queries, and a library of metrics and KPIs.

Plex enables you to perform ad hoc analysis on enterprise-wide purchasing and spend data, across multiple manufacturing locations, without any programming knowledge. Create a personalized view of purchasing and spend information that aligns with your business needs.

Manage all supplier quality related transactions in one central location

Define, track, and conduct internal and supplier quality audits, with custom-configured audit forms for a variety of checking tasks and projects. Issue and manage first-piece inspection packages for production part approval process (PPAP) to ensure suppliers are qualified for those parts.

View and print a combined set of documents, such as part submission warrants provided by a supplier, and also comply with AIAG for PPAP 4th Edition. Enforce the support of advanced product quality planning (APQP) discipline among suppliers to help ensure their production process product quality.

From consumables to raw materials, manage your complex procurement process.

Manage multiple supplier-specific records for each part. Apply the correct pricing to spot buys and recurring blanket releases by defining pricing, price breaks, and effective date ranges. Issue, track, and manage the lifecycle of requests for quotations (RFQs), and enable your team to request common items and services. You can even combine and add approved requisitions into new or existing purchase orders or RFQs. Create RFQs for parts, items, and services with different price points and specifications, and even link RFQs with an engineering change request (ECR) or a customer quote.

Plex enables you to rate supplier performance by tracking status, certification level, cost, problem history, quality performance, technology, and other attributes to compute a supplier scorecard. You can issue RFQs to suppliers based on their ratings, even at the detail line level. Commodity managers and buyers can use this scorecard and rating to configure rules for various transactions and buying conditions, even to compare RFQ responses for your sourcing decisions.

Track your purchasing from start to finish, while automating your buying processes

Create and maintain regular, blanket, and even one-time spot buy purchase orders and further control blanket PO release schedules via material requirements planning (MRP). Share purchase orders and release schedules with suppliers via built-in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), email, or even the integrated supplier portal. Use automated workflow for electronic review and approval of purchase orders, no matter where you are in the world.

Plan for the pickup and shipment of incoming goods, including auto-creation of accounts payable records, when material is received for a three-way match. Track supplier returns and warranties, even with lot/serialized part numbers.

Ensure quality for your subcontracted work

Optimize shipment of work-in-progress inventory quantity to subcontracts, based on lot or minimum quantity settings. Track outside inventory, including return due dates, by subcontractor and the receive processed inventory with integrated quality inspections. Account for the consumption of ingredients or components used by subcontractors, and also analyze their performance based on time and quality.

Create a more responsive supply chain with instant bi-directional communication and proactive collaboration

Configure secure, self-service access to your suppliers so they can view company policies, procedures, and engineering specifications to maintain their certifications and capabilities. Collaborate with suppliers on production readiness (supplier PPAP) and engineering change requests as well as quality concerns and ongoing improvements.

Automatically share purchase orders and releases with suppliers and allow them to view your forecasts, commit-to-delivery dates, Kanbans, and printable barcoded labels. Suppliers can also set up automated shipment notifications (including drop shipments). You can also enable suppliers to access invoice payment status, their scorecards, and any collaborative problem control with templates for 8D, 7-step, and more.