OEMs, contract manufacturers, and strategic component suppliers are faced with tight margins, aggressive deadlines, and pressures to keep liabilities to a minimum. That is why many companies feel it is important to capture and document the details of their working relationship in a contract. Most contracts, however, lack the practical substance that makes them useful for the operational personnel who execute them. Created and implemented correctly, these agreements must outline key business and legal parameters that drive the right behaviors, define accountabilities, and ensure that both sides take the right steps to mitigate the risks in the extended supply chain. Symphony can help you negotiate effective agreements with contract manufacturers, component suppliers, and customers, addressing important terms like inventory liability, supply flexibility, pricing, warranty and epidemic failures, quality, termination rights, RoHS compliance, performance metrics, and other areas of mutual value.
Examples of services we can provide:
Symphony worked with our management team to define our sourcing strategy, develop an action plan, and execute it to completion. The outsourcing contracts they negotiated drastically reduced our risk in a dynamic environment.” – Jeff Jarvis, Former Chief Operating Officer, Com21, Inc.
“As a consumer products company, TiVo relies on speed and flexibility throughout its supply chain to meet consumer demand. Symphony helped TiVo develop a cost model of the supply chain, isolate opportunities for improving performance, and formulate and execute an outsourcing strategy to optimize that supply chain. The result was a supply chain architecture that reduced our total cost of ownership and more importantly, our inventory exposure while improving our flexibility and speed in product delivery. Their expertise in outsourcing and contract negotiations allowed us to create contracts that significantly reduce our inventory liability and enhance supply flexibility.” – Karen Hensey, Director of Manufacturing Operations, TiVo