Ironing out the specifics: better and clearer communication between suppliers and mills helps to avoid problems

Recycling Today, Oct, 2005 by Giles King

My journey started out about 15 years ago, in Portland, Ore. I had changed positions from a plant manager to an account rep for the region.

I can remember buying my first load that had a problem when it arrived at the mill. The weather was kind of bad in Oregon, and we were shipping the load to California. When the load arrived, the mill called and said there was a problem.

I said, "Well, what is it?" They said, "Well, it's covered in snow."

Of course, I wasn't expecting to hear that I had a snow-covered load. But they said the receiving dock had a great time--they had a snowball fight. At the time it was 90 degrees in California. I was surprised the snow survived.

My first response was that we didn't charge extra for it. The mill got a nice chuckle out of it and said there's still the moisture deduction coming. And I began to negotiate what that deduction would be and tried to plead my case again based on the entertainment value we supplied. Needless to say I got the full moisture deduction.

We've spent many years trying to get the specifics right. Secondary Fiber does use the Internet. We have continued to try to promote that and to provide ways to teach and train using the Internet.

INDIVIDUAL NEEDS. The main issue that our customers have always wanted was an understanding of their mill-specific grades. It could be groundwood levels or pressure-sensitive adhesives, which are a big issue now in office pack because of legislation like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that requires those documents to be destroyed. Certainly ink tolerance and types of inks [also vary by mill].

Qualifying samples have turned out to be one of the easiest ways to maintain a good relationship with a customer. Typically a one- or two-pound sample is what's required for lab tests.

We like to provide digital photos and have always tried to insist that digital photos not only establish quality of paper, but that they also establish the bale integrity. If the mill buyer has an opportunity to see how nicely they stack in someone's warehouse, they believe that they'll stack in theirs. Safety is always a big issue for the mills.

The supporting documentation is also important. [Mills] certainly want to know who the generators are. We do supply tags to our accounts. We like the mills knowing they came from us and the suppliers that generated them. They also need to know other information, like pickup addresses. The mills typically try to coordinate the transportation logistics themselves. Certainly, they also need the contact person at the account, phone and fax numbers. It's important that they be able to get on the phone and contact somebody if there's an emergency, if a truck is delayed or if additional loads are required.

Certainly accounting information for payables is al ways important to get correct: a contact person, established terms, etc.

LINES OF COMMUNICATION.

The suppliers have their own particular needs. They want to understand the material they're generating is actually mill-specific--[that] they have a grade the mill wants. And it's not just the PSI standards that we've discovered mill customers need, they may have some special requirements, like something less than a groundwood content in a PSI standard. They're also concerned about things like ultra violets and things like pressure-sensitive adhesives--that has been in the last nine months probably the No. 1 quality issue that we have faced on grades that we ship.

I really enjoy having a library of digital photos to send to our customers. When they're able to see loose and baled forms of raw materials, it answers a lot of questions.

Supporting documentation, again, is important for suppliers. They certainly want to understand they have a legitimate purchase order [and] what the pricing is. They're going to need manifests [and] release numbers so there is no confusion on who shipped a load, who needs to be paid and what the weight requirements are on a shipment.

You don't like to charge people back, so you try to make these requirements known and clear from the beginning.

I notice that I have received recently a number of mills' requirements to certify we've actually trained accounts on how to load a truck. They don't want to receive a load that is dangerous for their employees to unload.

Communicating what customers are expecting and what suppliers need to know in order to get the specifics right is really important.

The accounting information is absolutely important. Suppliers want to be paid for loads they shipped. They like to be paid in a timely manner, so they need to understand who to talk to in the receivables department and to establish net terms, etc.

We are always concerned about safety. Our mill customers, the suppliers, and unfortunately, a lot of us here do know about tragedies that have happened in the industry. Safety [and] loading diagrams are always important. A supplier certainly needs to understand those documents; they don't want to do everything right on processing, do everything right on testing, meet the customer specs and then have a miscommunication on how to load a truck and find that the load has been rejected by the mill. Such documents can easily be transmitted across the Internet.