How do you approach building healthy, long-term relationships with suppliers?

1. Partnership in sharing "workload volumes"
2. Being clear vs the expectations - setting KPIs, reviewing them periodically, implementing corrective actions
3. Implementing actions on both sides in order to find opportunities for cost saving and then sharing the benefits from this implementations
4. Working on long term relationships  in order to allow investments on the supplier side

Just to mention few core values.

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) is key for maintaining a healthy vendor base. We should treat all vendors as their “customers of choice” instead of vice versa. Creating long-term relationships with vendors can certainly improve performance and costs. Several successful ways to develop those relationships include paying on time, maintaining communication, providing feedback, and having a quarterly business review. Other elements that may require a little more effort include providing forecasts to allow the vendor to plan better, giving your vendor an opportunity for their Executives to do a “meet/greet” with your Executive, and constantly negotiating “in good faith.” Also, if things “go wrong,” allow your vendor to be part of the solution (don’t just blame them).  If your company can, become a “reference” for your vendor. Overall, if you adopt this mentality and do the right thing, everything else falls into place when building those relationships.