IW Manufacturing Business Challenge: Discussion

[oddnystrom]

The Power of Competence Building
Without doubt, establishing relevant KPI's and procurement processes are essential in this context. I therefore support the general contents of Mr. Billington's article.
However, having worked with highly autonomous entities within a corporation (airline industry), I would suggest one more step - or rather a basis for the subsequent work. This platform is the Competence Building, not within the procurement organization per se, but in the line organization, both in management and for members of your local procurement teams.
The object of the competence building program will be to enable the participants to understand and contribute to the processes and mechanism of procurement. How often have you lost competitive advantage because of poor "procurement behavior"? This may be reflected in how the procurement needs og requirement specifications are defined, or how local management disregards the rules of your defined purchasing processes.
In our case, we defined a 6 months program for selected personnel throughout the organization. The main themes were:
- Professional Purchasing Processes,
- Specifications as a Competitive Edge,
- Market and Supplier Analysis,
- Negotiations,
- Contract and Supplier Management.
The final contents of such a programme must still be adapted to your own organization, and discussion cases should be familiar to the participants of such a programme.
The result in our case, however, was a closer adherence to the established procurement process.

Odd Nystrom