Today we welcome Tiffany Thayer, Senior Buyer at ControlTek, also known as the “Secret Agent of Quality.” Tiffany worked in accounting and sales before transferring to the direct materials procurement industry, where she has been for nearly eight years. She loves process improvement and bringing lean manufacturing practices into the front office side of business. Tune in as Sarah and Tiffany unpack how to better secure supply. They delve deep into the of the international chip processing plants and export portals being shut down last year in the latest episode of What The Duck?Show Highlights The Secret Agent of Quality Holding the line and maintaining a profit Sales is transferrable to procurement Moving on to purchasing from sales and accountingFinding Control(Tek) Becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt Process improvement focused on efficiency Electronic chip shortageImproving supplier relationships MOMENTS TO DUCK AROUNDTIFFANY: Mutually Beneficial Suppler Relationships“I really take a team approach to my strategy as a buyer and I'm trying to  work in alignment with my suppliers I don't want to squeeze out one of my suppliers to the point that they're unprofitable have to reestablish the job with a new supplier that takes time it's not efficient So my goal is always to be mutually beneficial where if the supplier can give us better pricing to help us and help the customer then I want to go ahead and try and give them the most information that they can such as longer forecasting, locked-in, bonded, scheduled POs” TIFFANY: Explaining the “Iceberg of Inventory”“I'm trying to strengthen the relationship with my program managers because I the more communication I can get down to our customers something I was working on today was doing a long lead time for them So if our customers have the correct lead times in their systems their ERP should be forecasting letting them know how far in advance to place orders with us and then on our side we're able to go off a few things. I would say it's about 25% historic you know have we ran this job for several years? What's the standard run rate? 50% is based on the booked sales orders and about 25% of it I would just call magic.” Connect with Tiffany and learn what she’s been duckin’ around with:Tiffany Thayer | ControlTek Connect with Sarah and find out more about what the duck she’s up to:LinkedIn | Twitter | SourceDay | SourceDay.com Had fun with the podcast? Leave us a like, share our content, and subscribe! See you soon on the next episode of What The Duck?!