How do human relationships impact supplier management in the medical device field? Today you’ll hear from Taylor Brown, a Medical Device Guru and Manager of Onboarding and Implementation for Greenlight Guru, and Maxime Rochon, the Director of Quality Assurance and Clinical Affairs for Puzzle Medical. In this episode you’ll hear about why building supplier relationships is so important and some of the best practices for those relationships. Listen to the episode to hear how Taylor and Maxime are thinking about whether and how human relationships make things easier, tips for new companies establishing beginning relationships, and social capital in relation to suppliers.  Some of the highlights of this episode include:Recommendations for employing the human side of supply and managementWhether not knowing the people involved make transactions easierTips and tricks for establishing human relationships in businessBest practices tips for companies beginning relationships at the beginningIf it’s helpful to know the relationship between a company you have a relationship with and another department who also has a relationship with themSuppliers and social capitalMemorable quotes from this episode:“I saw on Instagram or Buzzfeed or something that you can hire a Karen to be your customer service representative.” – Taylor Brown “In general, I would say you need people who can be both friendly and stuff like that, but keep their professionalism at the same time.” – Maxime Rochon “If I’m looking for a supplier, what is that supplier going to do for me specifically?” – Taylor Brown “We were taking the product the final mile for this manufacturing company who spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars – that person in the van better be the right person in the van. You just can’t pick any distribution company off the street. –Taylor Brown. Links:Maxime’s LinkedIn Puzzle Medical Taylor’s LinkedIn Etienne Nichols LinkedIn Greenlight Guru Academy MedTech Excellence Community Greenlight Guru