How Biovation manages Supplier Quality on Unifize
Jesse Kolstad delves into the challenges of juggling multiple suppliers at Biovation Labs. He candidly shares the complications of dealing with myriad versions of similar products, like green tea extracts. With Unifize, Jesse found a way to seamlessly consolidate suppliers, bringing clarity to ingredient and inventory management, and ensuring quality standards are met consistently.
Transcript

[00:00 - 00:11]
Unifize helped me consolidate my suppliers right away and really get my arms around what who we bought from, what we bought and what the specs were.



[00:11 - 00:37]
Because I saw frankly quickly that we had 16 different versions of a green tea extract with is the example and the specs were within a percentage or two of each other, but they just kept creating new SKUs and new SKUs and it makes supplier management hard. It makes ingredient management hard, it makes warehouse and inventory management hard. And so right away, just getting all the suppliers in and then what do they what do we buy from them?



[00:37 - 00:40]
And that was week one, month one.



[00:40 - 00:46]
Unifize helps me with supplier management because I can have multiple suppliers for a single ingredient.



[00:47 - 01:06]
I hate to keep going back to it, but let's take B12 because it's an easy example. I may have four or five different suppliers because it's a common ingredient, but Unifize puts the ingredient all in one place. The specification all in one place. And I collaborate with my customers, with my formulators, with my product development teams of what they want that ingredient to do, and then making the best decision based on.



[01:06 - 01:31]
All right, here's the five suppliers and I've started housing costs. I've started housing minimum quantities, I've started housing lead times, you know, things that most inventory management systems will actually offer you. But having the quality lens to look through because people treat quality as though it's separate but equal as part of an organization. But I look at it more as I'm here to support.



[01:31 - 02:32]
The analogy I use often is if my sister, she works in stage management. Well, they're not the front of the house. When you go to see a play, when you go to see a show, you see the actors, but they're they would just be weirdos talking on stage if there weren't set design costume design, stage management and Unifize really has given me the ability to sort of be the stage manager of the show, which the show is the finished product and having and helped everybody align with quality as a supportive function as opposed to being forced to on everyone because of the regulation and every company I've started at, I start climbing that hill immediately of, okay, I get it, Quality is not a revenue generator. You have to do it. And most people see us as the problem. Not solvers, but the problem creators, even though we don't create it. And I help transition us to we're here to help. We're the solvers, we're here.



[02:32 - 02:50]
Let's let's fix this, let's keep it fixed and let's truly be the continuous improvement arm that I believe quality is meant to be and Unifize has been invaluable in helping through the collaboration to drive that point home across my entire organization from the top down



[02:50 - 03:10]
So I would love to be able to collaborate directly with my suppliers, just like my customers. Having that that back and forth with with my customer is obvious right there, my customer. But having that upward back and forth to my supplier also saying, Hey, supplier X, I'm seeing a failure in your material. Can you help me?



[03:10 - 03:27]
Let's collaborate and tell me what you've seen. Is this, you know, unique to my lab that I'm sending it to? Is this unique to my use of it? Is this it, or are you actually seeing, you know, multiple of your customers complaining about this failure?



[03:27 - 03:43]
I think that if you're in a regulated industry, if you're a supplier, I would love if every one of my suppliers and my customers was in Unifize because and I know for a fact they'd all love it too, because these these tasks that the mundane is gone.



[03:43 - 03:55]
And it's just by doing your job, your job is done. And I know that sounds oversimplified, but it's true that you don't have to work at doing all these tasks. They just happen because you're in the system.

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Transcript

But what we've known from what I experience was, is we were able to get there with the system. We still there with the system. The system has what is needed to provide us what we're looking for, because every company, admittedly, is trying to get compliant. If we educate people, if we get people the education that they need and to get over the fear factor, I think 90% of those things can be resolved because most people will go to what they're most familiar with.What I worked with from a different company, but they're not willing to sit down and look at what the demographics are saying. People are into social media now. People are moving fast into fast paced world. But technologies are still antiquated. So there's a disconnect here, right? So while we're moving at a fast pace at home with dragging at work, so why can't we continue that speed while we at work?If your supplier has issues and you're not informed on time, you want to have an alternate supplier in place. If your suppliers are not qualified, you may not know that that needs to happen. And so when you have an integrated system that speaks to itself and is giving you all this data, you literally have the pulse of the organization in your hands as an executive at a money bound access.

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