You use off-shore suppliers, and work with them on a regular basis. You know that it’s important to keep up the ‘personal touch’ throughout the chain, but you also know how costly and time-consuming that can be…
If you use off-shore suppliers, or have an off-shore facility, you are aware how difficult it is to justify a visit to their location for a ‘minor’ event –

–>provide training to your suppliers on Root Cause/Corrective Action, SPC, or other quality tools courses;

–> closure of a nonconformance or corrective action you’ve issued to them;

–> a quality or environmental audit; supplier certification of a new product;

–> to verify that changed procedures have been implemented;

–> characterization of a new process;

–> qualification of remote personnel;

–> tracking down a yield issue;

–> ensuring changes are being done throughout the supply chain;

and more…

The travel expense of these trips, in addition to the overhead and salary costs to send one of your personnel, makes these trips prohibitive on a frequent basis.
Responding to customer requests, The McDonald Consulting Group developed a service to answer your needs - scheduled trips to Asia to investigate our clients’ unique problems or issues for you. The McDonald Consulting Group can save on costs vs. sending over an employee.

The McDonald Consulting Group employs experienced professionals to work hand-in-hand with your personnel to understand the issues. We sign confidentiality agreements with each client to ensure that we are protecting your assets. Our 5 step process includes:

1) Consultation with each client individually to understand exactly what you’d like us to address while there; and to understand current and previous issues you may have had with EACH supplier. This in-depth pre-trip interview is the tool to highlight areas and review past actions and performance, and typically take 90-120 minutes/supplier. This is done in person or via phone with your personnel, approximately 4-7 weeks prior to the trip.

2) We agree on a layout of a remote visit schedule, including an agenda that will be sent to each supplier/remote facility. There should be no surprises when we get there; our hosts should know why we are coming and what information and data we are looking for. If we have multiple requests to visit the same supplier, we will treat each meeting as unique (no information from customer A is covered or reported on to customer B).

3) Visit to accomplish agenda and gather information. We can also provide an objective set of eyes to provide evaluation of undocumented requests from you, such as “how is contamination control in the facility?” or “are they really following protocol for ESD?” “How is the supply chain working?”

4) We will leave a report with each supplier in the form of a formal facility visit report, which details both the positive areas and areas where we note nonconformance, noncompliance, or findings; we also document opportunities for improvement to provide information for their continual improvement efforts; and note best practices in the facility. This report is sent to the remote facility and to you immediately after the site visit.

5) Finally, we provide a more detailed customer debrief to you, detailing who we met, what we saw, and capturing our observations. This report also details important info that is outside the scope of the formal report visit, and is your “boots on the ground” intelligence report.

We have the ability to devote time to your unique issues, and work with your engineering, environmental, quality, safety/health, and production personnel to address your concerns at these remote locations, acting as your agent at the supplier or remote facility site.

Let the McDonald Consulting Group help you conserve you time and money. By combining trips for more than one client, we are able to save on travel expenses (both fiscal and time); more importantly, we perform a comprehensive investigation of your concern while freeing up your personnel from exhausting travel and remote location support, allowing them to work on other issues while the one in question is being handled remotely for you.

Contact us today for more information or to reserve your project for our upcoming trip: info@mcdcg.com. Our next trips are planned for January, 2008 - Seoul and Singapore [fully booked - taking no more clients in 1/08]; May 2008 (to Shanghai and Shenzhen; third location TBD based on customer demand); July 2008 (3 Locations: TBD based on customer demand - not Beijing![Olympic Games]); September 2008 (Shenzhen, Taiwan, and Shanghai) [fully booked - taking no more clients in 9/08]; new dates added - November 2008 (locations TBD).
5 Reasons to Choose The McDonald Consulting Group (McDCG) for your Supply Chain/Remote Facility Needs:
More Efficient – You Keep Your Resources Close to Home
Cost Effective – Low Overhead Costs
Dedicated Personnel - Assigned to Meet Your Unique Requirements
Customized Solutions – Tailored Services to Meet Your Needs
Great Value and Customer Service – 100% Customer Satisfaction