Many times it may makes sense to have a supplier be located on your site to provide services or support quickly and efficiently. You could even provide a separate area in a warehouse for the supplier to perform line side stocking of inventory and manage replenishment. The problem is what the supplier can do on that site may need to be controlled by your contract and the supplier employees are not your employees. When a supplier will be performing work on the buyer’s site or customer site or when you have a supplier set up an operation at your site you may want to place controls or restrictions on how they and their personnel conduct themselves and what activities they are allowed to perform. There are a number of reasons why you many want to impose such restrictions.
You may want to avoid potential problems between supplier personnel with your own employees, customers or others on the site. For example if a supplier employee is harassing any of your employees in any ways, you want the right to be able to remove them from the site.
You may want them to not create any security problems or risks to the site. You may need to control what areas they have access to and require that they sign individual non-disclosure agreements if they have access to areas that have sensitive data.
You may want to make sure that supplier personnel do not interfere with your operations.
You may want to place restriction on the supplier’s use of the premises such as prohibiting certain types of work from being done. You want them to only be using it for the purpose you intended.
You may want the supplier employees to follow your safety and site rules for things like smoking, parking, what may be carried into the building etc.
You may want the supplier employees to follow the same restrictions as your employees in terms of behavior. For example you wouldn’t want someone that is inappropriately dressed working there.
If a supplier employee becomes a problem, you may want to right to restrict their access and require another employee. If you don’t your company could potentially be liable for failing to act.
You may want to limit the types of activities the supplier and their employees are able to perform on your site for a variety of reasons. You may not want them running an activity out of your location that supports other customers. You wouldn’t want them conducting business on your site that would not be best for the corporate image you want to portray. You wouldn’t want them performing actions that could create safety risks to your employees or visitors or be conducting things that would be disruptive to your people or your operations such as creating obnoxious odors or sounds.
Many large companies develop guidelines that they make part of the suppliers agreements that make it clear what those suppliers and their employees are expected to meet for work performed on the buyer’s or the buyer’s customers premises. If your company doesn’t have such a guideline you need to document want you want the supplier and their employees to do or not to do and make that part of your agreement.
