One Year Later: Supplier vs EPC Survey

One year ago today, we released our document control survey entitled Supplier vs EPC: Why is Vendor Documentation so Painful?

We surveyed 106 respondents – 45 process equipment supplier organizations and 61 EPCs – and asked them questions about their current document control processes to learn more about the difficulties each face.

In particular we wanted to learn about the difficulties they have with each other and how we could help both sides understand each other better.

Key findings in the survey included the following:

• 75% of EPCs use an EDMS system vs only 2% of suppliers
• 90% of suppliers use email to track transmittals vs 49% of EPCs
• 61% of EPCs cited aligning Supplier Document Requirements List (SDRL) codes to supplier submissions as a major issue
• 75% of suppliers reported payment holdbacks related to documentation

We also discussed a number of questions that Suppliers and EPCs often ask themselves in the course of doing documentation work:

Why are EPC’s so rigid in their requirements?

Who agrees with documentation holdbacks?

How much time does each side invest in document control?

If you haven’t had a chance to view the free PDF survey download, please do so now. It’s 12 pages in length and goes into great detail about the results while also providing tips on how you can get a better handle on document control.

If you’ve already downloaded the survey and found it useful, please let us know what you found most interesting and if you’ve had a chance to better the ways you handle document control work in your organization as a result.