Vendor management

Set it up in your plant

Setting up Vendor management in your plant. Vendor management keeps your approved supplier list: who supplies you, what they prove (certificates, audits), the products you buy from them, how they deliver, and what they are asked to correct.

1. Install itIT

   On the plant's OpenCore MES server, in its plant folder: sign in once with a licence token from your account at suites.opencoremes.com (one token per installation: production, test, training), install the suite, then restart OpenCore MES (opencore-mes start, or the service that runs it). The start log then lists it.

   opencore-mes suite login

   opencore-mes suite install vendors

2. Try it on a test installation firstIT

   Install it on a test or training installation before production. There, load its sample records (Designer → From the suites → Load its sample records) and walk the screens with the people who will use them. Samples never go on production.

3. Prepare People & departmentsAdministrator

   The suite's designs give their roles to the groups engineering (buyers, until you add a purchasing group), quality (qualification, audits, decisions), production (goods in) and it (read only). Check those groups exist in People & departments with the right people (or rename them in the change, next step), and that each department that must approve has its representatives.

4. Take its designs through a changeDesigner

   Designer → From the suites → Start a change from it. The change holds vendors, certificates, purchased products, deliveries, audits and corrective action requests, the moves, the certificate-expiry and audit-due plans, and the suppliers screens. Change what differs in your plant before submitting (labels, fields, limits, screens). Run the fitness test: every transaction's scenarios run in a sandbox. Submit; a reviewer passes it; Quality approve it; it goes live as one change, all of it or none.

   • Nothing goes live until it is approved: the suite only offers its designs.
   • Once live they are your plant's own designs: they keep working if the suite is removed.
5. Enter your approved supplier listEngineering

   Create your vendors (contacts, terms, currency, risk, whether critical, the next audit) and their certificates with the certificate files (ISO 9001, IATF 16949, AS9100, ISO 13485, ISO 17025…), then the products you buy from each (your code, the vendor's and manufacturer's part numbers, price, lead time, minimum order, datasheet, safety data sheet). Vendors and products already approved before the system can be marked approved once, under the opening policies.

   • Once the lists are in, remove the opening policies (vnd_*-opening) through a change: from then on Quality qualifies vendors and approves products on their first article.
6. Qualify new vendors and productsQuality

   A new vendor is a prospect until Quality qualifies it (Suppliers → Qualify a vendor, signed), on a valid certificate or a passed audit. A new product is approved on its first article (Approve a product, signed, with the report).

7. Receive deliveriesProduction

   Goods in → Receive a delivery: how much came, how much was rejected, whether on time. A rejection raises a corrective action request to the vendor with its evidence. Nothing is received from a disqualified vendor or for a product not approved.

8. Keep vendors honestQuality

   Record each audit (it moves the vendor: passed, conditional or failed) and its next date; the plan asks Quality when an audit is due. Certificates expire on their date and make a critical vendor conditional until renewed. Answer and close corrective actions; the scorecard shows rejections and late deliveries by vendor.

9. Go liveQuality

   Review the list with purchasing, attach the certificates you hold, and set the next audits; train goods-in on the Goods in screen.

The same guide is in FLAMES once the suite is installed: Designer, From the suites, Set-up guide.