13 Managing Suppliers

A supplier is a company that provides compliance information about parts that are used in the company's manufacturing process. The supplier firm may or may not actually make or sell the parts about which they furnish compliance information.

Besides creating objects to represent supplier firms, a compliance manager creates objects to represent employees of the supplier: these have been called "contact users," and are now called "declaration recipients" in the PG&C context.

When you create a declaration, you assign it to a supplier who is requested to provide compliance information. The supplier's declaration recipient uses the PG&C Supplier Guide to learn to work in Agile Web Client and to complete the declaration. Later the compliance manager evaluates the data received from the supplier and releases the declaration.

The compliance manager may create Supplier Groups that can be leveraged by users with the appropriate roles.

Note:

There has been a relaxing of the original constraints to suppliers on declarations. These are detailed in the Note in Using the Create Wizard.

For more information about suppliers, also see and the PG&C Supplier Guide.

13.1 Attributes in Suppliers

As with other Agile objects, information about the supplier is displayed on a series of tabs. Each tab contains information about, or related to, that supplier.

By default, the General Info tab contains the fields listed in the following table. Agile administrators can add custom class and subclass fields to the General Info tab.

Field	Description
Name	Name of the supplier
Supplier Type	Indicates the supplier subclass; configurable by the administrator.
Lifecycle Phase	Supplier is Active or Inactive
Number	Supplier number assigned to the supplier when you create it
DUNs	Industry-standard Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number
Display Name	Display name
Description	Text that describes the supplier; maximum length is set by Agile administrator
Web Supplier	Indicates if this supplier logs in to Web Client (Yes, which is then called "Web Supplier," or No, which is then called "non-Web Supplier"). PLM now allows declarations to name either kind of supplier: a Web Supplier must have at least one associated declaration recipient (see next section); a non-Web Supplier may be named in the declaration with no associated declaration recipients. However, it is still recommended that a declaration name a Web Supplier: PG&C carries and publishes the most useful information if a Web Supplier - with associated declaration recipients - is named; for example, those declaration recipients receive notifications. Note that there is no requirement that a declaration must have a supplier. Ensure the administrator has made the field 'not required'.
Corporate Currency	Default currency for this corporation
Address	Address
Geography	(This may have been set up by the administrator.)
City	City
Region / Province / State	(This may have been set up by the administrator.)
Country / Area	Country
Postal/Zip Code	Postal or ZIP code
Phone	Phone number
Fax	Fax number
URL	URL for supplier Web site
Maximum number of Contact Users	Maximum number of contact users you can create for this supplier
Maximum Number of Licensed Contact Users	Maximum number of supplier users you can assign Concurrent user licenses
Maximum Number of Named Contact Users	Maximum number of supplier users that can be assigned a Named user license
Default RFQ Recipient	Contact user in the PCM solution, main recipient of RFQs
Default Declaration Recipient	Contact user in the PG&C solution, main recipient of declarations

13.1.1 Buttons on the General Info tab

The General Info tab contains the following buttons:

Edit - appears when the General Info tab is not in edit mode. To edit the General Info tab, click Edit.
Save - appears when the General Info tab is in edit mode. To save the changes that you made to the tab while it was in edit mode, click Save.
Cancel - appears when the General Info tab is in edit mode. To undo the changes that you made to the tab while it was in edit mode, click Cancel.

The following sections describe additional tabs.

13.2 Creating Compliance Suppliers

Even if your administrator has created suppliers and declaration recipients, you may have to create more.

13.2.1 Supplier Types

There are several "out-of-the-box" supplier types in Agile PLM, but these were tailored for RFQs and the sourcing process. Your administrator may have created another Supplier subclass for your company's PG&C work, or may have reconfigured and renamed one of the existing supplier types. If you are going to create suppliers to provide compliance information in support of your company's manufacturing process, there must be at least one predefined "compliance-oriented" subclass that you and other compliance managers can select.

Note:

"Web Supplier" is an attribute on General Information tab of a supplier, not a supplier type (subclass). See the Description of Web Supplier in the table in "Attributes in Suppliers."

13.2.2 Supplier Lifecycle Phases

The lifecycle phase of the supplier can be either Active or Inactive.

Status	Description
Active	The supplier is currently active and able to receive declaration requests/RFIs.
Inactive	The supplier is currently not active, and cannot be included in new RFIs.

13.2.3 Creating a Compliance Supplier

To create a supplier:

Click the Create New drop-down button to activate the menu.
Click the Suppliers link.
In the Create New Suppliers dialog, click the drop-down arrow next to the Type: field and select an appropriate supplier type. The default types are: Broker, Component Manufacturer, Contract Manufacturer, Distributor, and Manufacturer Representative.

Remember, the administrator may have changed the out-of-box names and created other supplier types for compliance-specific work.
There are several required fields. Specify a unique supplier Name.

In the Number field, an identifying number for the declaration is automatically generated. Accept or modify this identification.

Select appropriate settings for Lifecycle Phase (Active, Inactive), Web Supplier (Yes, No), and Corporate Currency (choose from list).

Note:
If a supplier is not active (that is, if Lifecycle Phase is set to Inactive), this supplier cannot be added to a declaration

"Web Supplier" nominally indicates if a supplier logs in to Web Client to provide compliance information.

Also enter a value for Maximum Number of Contact Users. This number should be known to you in conjunction with the number of licenses purchased by your company that can be distributed over all your Supplier users.
Click Continue to bring up the Add Contact Users dialog, that is, declaration recipients.

Click the Search to add icon to add existing supplier users in the Users Search dialog.

Or click the Create to add icon to create a new supplier user object that will be added to the Supplier.

Click to select supplier users that you want to add, and hit Enter; or you can double-click a supplier user to add it. You may run additional searches after this, too.
Click Save. The new supplier object appears with the General Info tab selected.
After the supplier is created, it can be modified at any time. This task continues with steps to add appropriate objects.

Open the supplier, click Edit: to add information and populate enabled fields under the various tabs.
Enter general information, including flex field details.
Click the other tabs to add additional information about the supplier. However, note that the default tabs - RFx Routing, Manufacturers, Commodities, and PSRs - have more to do with the PCM solution (unless the administrator has renamed and reconfigured these tabs).
If you want to add attachments, click the Attachments tab. Now choose from the Add menu Files, URLs, or By Search, and navigate to the desired file or URL. When you are finished adding attachments, click Finish.
When your modifications are complete, click Save.

13.3 Creating and Adding Contact Users

The Contact Users tab defines which users can log in to Agile PLM to represent a compliance supplier. Supplier contact users - now called "declaration recipients" - have restricted privileges to the Agile PLM system that allow them to respond to RFIs.

An important setting for any declaration recipient is the Response Edit Mode user preference. This field controls which user interface in Web Client that the contact user sees. When creating a new supplier user, the default setting for Response Edit Mode is Basic; this means the supplier user will see the "Basic Supplier Interface" when they log in to Web Client. (See the PG&C Supplier Guide.)

If a supplier's contact user were to change the setting of Response Edit Mode from Basic to Advanced mode (specifically Advanced Table Edit or Advanced Wizard Edit), he is prompted to log out and log back in; when he logs in to Web Client, he will see the normal user interface, constrained by his assigned privileges.

The PG&C Supplier Guide urges supplier users to let the setting to Response Edit Mode remain as it was set by you (or the administrator). If the supplier user in the above situation does log in to Web Client (Advanced mode), he has to click the My User Profile link and change Response Edit Mode field back to Basic, followed by logging out and logging back in to Web Client (Basic mode).

Declaration recipients who work frequently with your compliance requests may be required to create declarations, and you may want your administrator to assign additional roles and privileges to enable them to work more effectively in Web Client (Advanced mode).

To add an existing supplier user or create a new supplier user that is associated with a supplier:

Open a supplier and click the Contact Users tab.

Click Add. Click the Search to add icon to add existing supplier users in the Users Search dialog.

Or click the Create to add icon to create a new supplier user object to add to the Supplier.

Click to select supplier users that you want to add, and hit Enter; or you can double-click a supplier user to add it. You may run additional searches after this, too.

Note: Named Users can be added to the Contact Users tab only if the Maximum Number of Named Contact Users field has been set to other than 0 (or blank) on the General Info tab of the supplier. Otherwise, only users with a Restricted user license can be assigned to a supplier.:

If there are no supplier user(s) for this supplier, you have to create them. That process begins in the Navigation Pane: click the Tools and Settings button > click Address Book > Users tab > Add button.

Note:
See the chapter, 'Users' in Agile PLM Administrator Guide for the Create Users process. Ensure you have the required roles and privileges or contact your administrator.
When you have completed the process of adding users, click Save.