Rozprawy doktorskie na temat „Purchasing”

What is it like managing a purchasing office in China today? What are the purchasing structures to be considered? These are two fundamentals which this thesis aims to find out. What can be done to ease the process and avoid problems before they are actual problems are matters that will be discussed. The thesis is delimitated to the Chinese market and the effects and implications by working there. Further the research in the thesis is delimitated towards companies that are involved in trade and that have purchasing offices in China. A case study will guide the reader into the ways of doing purchasing in China. By going over several incidents that may occur when working in China the reader will through a case study form an opinion on what the situation may be like for many foreign purchasing offices existing in China today. Views from both Chinese and expatriated foreign staff will be given in the case. The case study will be focused on the implications occurring during an actual purchasing process. The data in this thesis comes from interviews at one of the major clothing chains in northern Europe and from selected articles relating to the industry. When analyzing the data provided by the selected company a hermeneutic perspective has been used. A deductive method has been used to derive empirical data that has been published in some form. The major conclusions is that a company need to come prepared, setting up an office takes time and routines that work at home doesn’t necessarily work in other unfamiliar locations. The structures necessary for the purchasing office may depend on factors such as size of the company and cultural values. Ways of improving the purchasing process may be to rely more on IT systems. Purchasing offices should have a certain degree of autonomy when doing purchasing in China. Having employees seeing the whole picture of the company may be important due to the head office often being far away. Reengineering jobs to become more multi dimensional, thus providing a greater understanding of the purchasing process for employees is one solution. Cultural issues are to reckon with and there are certain issues that must be resolved either by integrating different ideas or adaptation by locals and expatriated employees. As can be seen in the case of “Workplace Shanghai” there may be difficulties but they can be overcome as will be further assessed in this thesis.

Problem:The importance of purchasing is often neglected, and the possibilities for continuous improvements in order to reap advantages, such as cost reductions, are often overlooked. Furthermore, the subject of purchasing has not been explored to a large extent in academic research. Therefore, we found the subject to be of great interest and possibly containing opportunities for companies, including Saab Avitronics, to seize.

Purpose:The purpose of the thesis is to present recommendations after evaluating the purchasing organization and strategies regarding the strategic purchases within Saab Avitronics, Sweden.

Methodology:To receive a deeper understanding of the purchasing department, we found it necessary to use a qualitative method approach. Through a target-oriented selection we choose to do our empirical case study at Saab Avitronics. The empirical study consists of interviews with the selected respondents as well as written documents.

Analysis:The analysis is structured according to the theoretical framework; purchasing, purchasing objectives, purchasing organization, purchasing process and purchasing strategies.

Conclusions:The conclusions are the recommendations we have been able to suggest to Saab Avitronics in order to improve its purchasing function and increase the purchasing power. We find it appropriate for the business unit to rationalize and diversify its supply-base. Another recommendation is to remove the monetary range each purchaser can authorize purchases of.

Title: Efficient purchasing in an organization: the importance of qualified purchasing personnel (A case study of ABB, Västerås)

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to learn and present how ABB (Västerås) perceives the role of the purchasing function, and the importance of involving qualified purchasing personnel in the purchasing process. By evaluating their:

·           Level of participation in the overall corporate planning process,

·           Relationship to suppliers and other internal units,

·           Responsibilities toward the organization, for determining how they contribute to its efficiency

Method:  This thesis is a case study on ABB (Västerås). We have used a qualitative method to conduct the research. We have also obtained primary data through face-to-face interviews and secondary data by an extensive literature search using peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, search engines, and the MDH database.

Conclusion: Subsequent to our findings, we are of the opinion that there is a positive perception concerning the role of purchasing function and purchasing personnel in ABB. We assert this is due to the recognition that purchasing, contributes significantly to the organization’s profit, helps in making savings and reducing costs compared to what was obtainable a few decades ago. We have also found that there is also a realization on the part of management that the skills and knowledge of the purchasing personnel in devising strategies, coordinating with other internal functions, and dealing with suppliers etc. are major factors responsible for the benefits that purchasing provides to ABB (Västerås).

We have observed through our findings that the efficiency of the purchasing function in ABB is rooted in its purchasing personnel. In our opinion purchasing personnel high involvement in the corporate planning process in ABB, cooperation with top management, and liaison with other functional units are what makes purchasing efficient in the organization.

In recent years globalization has caused companies to internationalize the purchasing of material, products and services. By establishing supply-chains on foreign markets companies can buy products cheaper, which allows for the sustaining of competitiveness and the cutting of costs. One of the key aspects of purchasing is the interaction between the parties involved, the communication between buyer and supplier.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how communication between Swedish purchasers and Chinese suppliers affects the outcome of the trade and the buyer-supplier relationship. The research has adopted an inductive approach with some hints of deductive nature.

Problems in the purchasing process were identified by conducting pilot interviews. Based on these problems theories were reviewed and interpreted, followed by the collection of qualitative data through unstructured interviews with six companies in the manufacturing industry. The gathered material is presented in a cross-case analysis, accompanied by a discussion.

The findings indicate that communication between participants involved in the purchasing process affect both the outcome of the trade and the development of buyer-supplier relationships. How and why this affects trade is presented in models and through discussion. Suggestions for future research include a similar research from a HRM perspective.

By combining aspects of interaction and purchasing processes, this study has examined how communication affects purchasing on an international level. By so doing the results of this dissertation may be of interest to companies that purchase internationally or have plans to start doing so.

Background: To be competitive on the global market companies see a chance to achieve success by using suppliers that can offer them the lowest prices. Because of low wages China is one of those countries that can offer very competitive prices for purchasers in our part of the world. But is global sourcing for everyone? Global sourcing can be proven to be more costly than anticipated if the total cost of ownership is not considered.

Research questions: -Which costs do the investigated manufacturing companies consider in their estimation of costs when purchasing from China, and how do these estimations match up with the actual costing?

-What is the explanation of potential differences between the estimation of costs and the actual costing?

-How do the companies’ characteristics in terms of experience, size and product characteristic affect the formulation of the costing?

Purpose: This thesis will investigate what kind of costs companies take into consideration when doing their estimation of costs before initiating trade with China. Further the thesis will study how these estimations match up with the actual costing that can be seen afterwards and investigate what the explanation of potential variations could depend on. The thesis will also answer how the characteristics of the companies and the products affect the costing development.

Conclusions: The companies are mainly focusing on purchase price and costs for transportation in their estimation of costs and the match between the estimation of costs and the actual costing are good in terms of purchase price and costs for transportation. Other costs are mismatched or overlooked probably because of their complexity to estimate. Product characteristics are probably the main factor that affects the complexity and amount of time and effort companies spend on costing.

The majority of steel manufacturers within the United States have employed electric arc furnaces (EAFs), which melt raw materials, for the production of steel. The raw material used in EAFs is referred to as steel, or ferrous, scrap. There are many different grades of ferrous scrap, which are classified by the following attributes: size, density, and chemistry weight percentages of residual elements. Methods currently applied to assess the price of ferrous scrap employ qualitative measures. Furthermore, the largest unknown when procuring ferrous scrap is the chemistry weight percentages of residual elements. This attribute is the most critical to the steel manufacturer as it affects the quality of steel. The goal of the research conducted for this praxis was to create a pricing model that predicted the value-in-use price of ferrous scrap per supplier using a quantitative purchasing structure. The solution to this problem was attained through a pricing model. As this research was applied, the pricing models developed during this research are readily available for use within the steel industry. Results from the pricing models displayed a significant improvement in predicting the value-in-use ferrous scrap price over the current procurement process used by the steel manufacturer.