Vendor Management Platform That Brought Order to 150+ Supplier Relationships for a Contract Manufacturer

A contract manufacturer serving aerospace and defense clients had grown its supplier base to over 150 active vendors — but its systems for managing those relationships had not kept pace. Supplier onboarding was manual and inconsistent, purchase order tracking lived in email threads, and compliance documentation was scattered across shared drives and filing cabinets. With defense contracts requiring strict traceability and audit readiness, the company was one failed audit away from losing its most valuable customer.

Client: A contract manufacturer serving aerospace and defense clients

Employee Size: 90 employees

Industry: Manufacturing

Services: - Custom Software Development - AI Automation & Workflow Design - Vendor Management Platform - Compliance & Documentation Systems

The company had been a trusted supplier to aerospace and defense OEMs for over 12 years. Over that time, the supply chain had grown organically — new suppliers were added project by project, often by different buyers, with no standardized process. The result was 150+ active supplier relationships managed through a combination of spreadsheets, email folders, and a shared drive with over 6,000 unorganized files.

Supplier onboarding was painfully slow. Bringing a new vendor into compliance required collecting certifications, insurance documents, quality system registrations, conflict mineral declarations, and ITAR compliance paperwork. The process took an average of 34 business days and required constant follow-up from the procurement team, who estimated they spent 12 hours per week chasing documents.

Purchase order management was equally fragmented. POs were created in QuickBooks, emailed to suppliers, and then tracked through inbox searches and manual spreadsheets. When production needed a status update on an open PO, they had to interrupt the buyer to search their email. Late deliveries were discovered only when parts failed to arrive, triggering reactive scrambles that disrupted production schedules.

Compliance was the highest-stakes problem. Defense contracts required full traceability of materials and suppliers, including proof that every vendor in the chain met specific certifications and regulatory requirements. During their most recent customer audit, the procurement team spent three full days assembling documentation that should have been immediately accessible. The auditor flagged 11 documentation gaps — none were actual compliance failures, but all were record-keeping failures that required corrective action plans.

Supplier performance was never formally measured. The company had no way to compare on-time delivery rates, quality rejection rates, or responsiveness across vendors. Sourcing decisions were based on relationships and habit rather than data. Leadership suspected that 15-20% of their suppliers were chronic underperformers but had no evidence to support that intuition.

JSG designed and built a centralized vendor management platform on the TMX engine that unified supplier onboarding, PO tracking, compliance management, and performance scoring into a single system purpose-built for the regulatory demands of aerospace and defense manufacturing.

Key Components

Supplier Onboarding Portal A structured onboarding workflow replaced the ad-hoc email process. New suppliers received a self-service portal where they uploaded required documents against a checklist tailored to their commodity type and compliance tier. The system tracked completion status, sent automated reminders, and flagged overdue items to the procurement team.

Purchase Order Tracking & Visibility All POs were managed within the platform with full lifecycle tracking — from creation and approval through acknowledgment, shipment, and receipt. Production teams could check PO status in real time without interrupting buyers. Automated alerts flagged POs at risk of late delivery based on acknowledgment delays or approaching due dates.

Compliance Documentation Vault A centralized, searchable document repository replaced the shared drive. Every supplier's certifications, insurance policies, regulatory filings, and audit records were stored with expiration tracking and automated renewal reminders. The system generated audit-ready compliance packages on demand.

AI-Powered Supplier Risk Scoring Azure OpenAI analyzed supplier data — delivery history, quality rejection rates, financial indicators, certification status, and communication responsiveness — to generate a composite risk score for each vendor. High-risk suppliers were flagged automatically, giving procurement early warning to diversify sourcing or escalate corrective actions before problems impacted production.

Automated Workflow Chains N8N orchestrated multi-step workflows including PO approval routing based on dollar thresholds and commodity type, onboarding task sequencing, compliance gap notifications, and quarterly performance review triggers. Zapier handled outbound supplier notifications, syncing PO confirmations and document requests to supplier email and portal accounts.

Spend Analytics Dashboard A spend analytics module provided visibility into purchasing patterns by supplier, commodity, and time period. Leadership could identify concentration risks, negotiate volume discounts with data, and track cost trends across their supply base.

## Quantifiable Impact

• 150+ suppliers consolidated into a single management platform with full compliance visibility
• Supplier onboarding time reduced from 34 business days to 9 business days (74% reduction)
• Procurement team reclaimed 12 hours/week previously spent chasing documents and PO status
• Compliance documentation assembly for audits reduced from 3 days to 2 hours
• Zero documentation gaps flagged in the first customer audit after implementation
• 22 suppliers identified as chronic underperformers through risk scoring — 8 replaced, 14 placed on corrective action plans
• Late PO deliveries reduced by 41% through proactive alert system

• Frontend: Next.js
• Backend: .NET API
• Platform: TMX (vendor management engine, compliance vault, PO lifecycle, role-based access)
• Cloud: Microsoft Azure
• Database: Azure SQL
• AI & Automation: Azure OpenAI (supplier risk scoring, compliance gap detection, spend pattern analysis)
• Workflow Orchestration: N8N (onboarding workflows, PO approval chains, compliance renewal reminders)
• Integration Automation: Zapier (supplier notification sync, external portal triggers)
• Integrations: QuickBooks (PO and invoice reconciliation), email parsing for supplier acknowledgments