knew that the Supplier Association was for them. They took away the ten-
point checklist and with Paul Morris started to plan their campaign.
Trico’s supplier association
The concept agreed, a name had to be agreed for the forthcoming Supplier
Association. Paul happened to mention in passing that there was already a
Trico Supplier Association in existence. Jim and David were rather sur-
prised, so Paul explained that the name Trico, as the firm who invented the
car windscreen wiper, had been genericized in Japan so that in Japan Trico
meant window wiper. As a result, due to the widespread use of Supplier
Associations in Japan, another wiper maker had called their group the
Trico Supplier Association. Undaunted, Jim suggested that the group
needed a more unique name anyway. After some discussion the name
‘Trico Quest Supplier Association’ was chosen, with Quest being used as
the group would be used to achieve Quality and Excellence through
Supplier Teamwork. All that was required now was to develop an imple-
mentation strategy.
At this stage David gave Jim and Paul full authority to go ahead in doing
this with his support for whatever they felt was the right approach. The
approach, however, should be directed by the existing Trico mission state-
ment:
It is the policy of Trico to provide products and services that give total cus-
tomer satisfaction. Customers are those who buy our products, our suppli-
ers, our staff and all those with whom we have contact.
We will treat each other with respect and strive for excellence in all we
do to provide a high level of service to all customers – internal and external.
We will maintain a culture based on continuous improvement in all we do
and will train and fully involve every employee.Like most mission statements, it contained an ideal that was difficult to
match, one that was near impossible without a process to help. Jim and
Paul set about developing such a plan, at least for the supplier relation-
ships. This was critical, as around half of Trico’s costs of sales were due to
bought-in products from their suppliers. After several meetings in the
autumn of 1994 a simple Gantt chart was produced to control this process
(Figure 3.1.2).
The first part of the process was to develop a strategy and implementa-
tion plan. Issues here included areas such as which suppliers to invite, how
many meetings to have, what to focus on, how to benchmark. Drawing on
Paul’s experience of helping to set up many other Supplier Associations,
Jim put together a strategy document. This 21-page document explained
The supplier and alliance market domain 185