I’ve long been frustrated, both as an auditor and as a consultant, by the unique exemption most organizations extend to distributors. It’s a common practice for purchasing personnel to excuse distributors from the vendor qualification requirements they apply to most of the other companies they do business with.

The defeatist notion that prevails is that distributors are impotent go-betweens, with no appreciable influence on the product. Many distributors perpetuate this view by implying, either deliberately or inadvertently, that if the manufacturers they represent are ISO 9001-registered, then the blessing somehow rubs off on them as well. Conversely, if there’s a problem with a product or the manner in which it is delivered, the fault lies not with the distributor but with the manufacturer. What ends up happening is a shell game in which no one is accountable.

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