Do you usually encounter difficult vendors? How do you handle them especially with tight project deadlines?

You can manage difficult vendors by

- Being very specific in your RFQ document.

- Knowing about previous performance of the vendor

- Any known commitments of the same vendor other than yours (this will help you to weigh vendor's capabilities against their work load).

- Proper risk management  

1- Select the Right vendor through a proper vendor evaluation process

2- Select the proper type of contracts

3- Payments should be linked with on time delivery of activities/materials ...etc

4- Regular meetings with the vendor to discuss (Risk / Schedule/ Quality )

5- Existence of proper service level agreement and Escalation Matrix for the vendor

Yes many!! i dealt with many tough vendors ,best way to hadle them is by talking and agreeing (again & again) .Find one right person in the team ( suppliers) who is easy to work with and start convincing him/her.

Choose the right vendor, Some vendors will start source and stock the raw materials only we place the order with them. So place the order with the vendor one who has already stock in hand. So he could start the production immediately as soon as we place the order with them.

Dont dump the order in single go. Give in phased manner.

a lot of time we face issues from vendor side specially on tight delivery prog. 

we need to use our people management skills to get our work done. 

Yes, l have. Usually we need understand and coordination. We have too much different about nationality, about religions, about goals. So we need consider and coordination, we need seek common and serving difference with them together work for common goal. That's my work skill, hope it's useful for you.