All in all, purchasing pros are quite happy with the performance of their suppliers.
Quality still reigns as the most important factor in supplier selection.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest score, quality considerations led all others with a cumulative score of 9.2. Delivery problems continue to lead the list of what buyers would most like to see suppliers improve, and by a margin that is growing from year to year. Many companies still do not have a standardized supplier-rating system in place. Most purchasing pros would rather buy from producers than distributors, usually for price reasons, but buyers report, ironically, that distributors perform better than producers. Most buyers have outsourced value-added tasks to suppliers, and nearly all of them report that suppliers perform these tasks either as well as or better than their own companies.