What we’re referring to here is the documentation used in the procurement process. The third P is a bit of a misnomer because there’s often very little actual paper used these days. Following the process properly is vital to the health of procurement. If it’s not, vendors may not get paid on time, purchases may be delayed, and your company's bottom line could be at stake. Your organization’s process must be followed to complete the procurement. If you’re purchasing a $750,000 hand-blown glass chandelier, you’ll need more approval than you would for the purchase of seven new Photoshop licenses. You should also remember that the cost and risk of the purchase will determine how many people are likely to be involved. For instance, if one of the key decision makers is your CFO, and he’ll be in Hawaii for the next two weeks, you’ll need to consider that anomaly into your procurement cycle. This may seem obvious, but as you create your procurement process, remember to account for the busy schedules and complexities of the people involved.

Your procurement process involves three main components. Make sure you’ve built in redundancy here you’ll likely be using a digital purchasing method, so it may benefit you to print out paper versions of documentation and store them in a secure place in case of a total electronic apocalypse. Keep for your recordsĪll steps above need to be documented for internal and external audits, so you’ll need a central location to store invoices, orders, and other accompanying documentation. Finance sends the payment over to the vendor in the preferred method of payment. PaymentĪfter you've received the goods or services, it’s time to pay your vendor. This is the last chance your organization has to change the request, so double-check both the invoice and the order for the correct items or services at the correct price. The vendor will also send over an order, which is another detailed description of the goods or services requested. The invoice will also give a deadline for payment, and you’ll need to submit payment before the deadline or else there may be a penalty (which is usually detailed in the invoice, as well). The invoice is a request for payment and gives a detailed breakdown of the cost. The vendor will then submit an invoice to the purchaser. If your company intends on ordering from this vendor long-term (or if your company relies on a lot of third-party suppliers in general), you may want to develop a supplier onboarding process to ensure both parties understand what's expected. That purchase order signals to the vendor that the purchase request has been approved and that they can proceed with the request. Quantity and description of item or service requiredĪfter the purchase request has been approved, the finance department will issue a purchase order to the vendor.You should provide purchasing with the following details: After you’ve identified the vendor and agreed on the details, you’ll need written approval from the department responsible for approving purchases.

Underlying the whole point of doing the exercise of creating a Process Flow Diagram, and will use those features sparingly and wisely.Now it’s time to get approval for the purchase. The Process Flow template can share data with your PFMEA, but hopefully you will honor and appreciate the core purpose

The human thoughts recorded in the one document should stimulate related (but not identical) thoughts in the other. The 'Sources of Variation' column of the Process Flow Diagram loosely correlates with the 'Potential Failure Mode' column of your PFMEA, and the desired 'Deliverables' column loosely correlates with the 'Function' column in the PFMEA,Īnd the 'Control Characteristics' column in the Control Plan. Then there should be only a loose correlation between the related columns in most of the related documents. If you're completing all of those related FMEA documents in the ways they were intended. If some failure mode, cause, or effect slips through unnoticed, then those related documents didn't serve their foundational purpose, did they? What was the point of quickly auto-populating all those related documents?

Sample process flow diagram