Purchasing Must Become Supply Management
In many companies, purchasing, perhaps more
than any other business function, is wedded to routine. Ignoring or accepting
countless economic and political disruptions to their supply of materials,
companies continue to negotiate annually with their established networks of
suppliers or sources. But many purchasing managers’ skills and outlooks were
formed 20 years ago in an era of relative stability, and they haven’t changed.
Now, however, no company can allow purchasing to lag behind other departments
in acknowledging and adjusting to worldwide environmental and economic changes.
Such an attitude is not only obsolete but also costly.
In this article, the author offers pragmatic
advice on how top management can recognize the extent of its own supply
weakness and treat it with a comprehensive strategy to manage supply. He leads
the reader step by step from the roots of the problem to the implementation of
a solution.
The stable way of business life many corporate
purchasing departments enjoy has been increasingly imperiled. Threats of
resource depletion and raw materials scarcity, political turbulence and
government intervention in supply markets, intensified competition, and
accelerating technological change have ended the days of no surprises. As
dozens of companies have already learned, supply and demand patterns can be
upset virtually overnight.
How can a company guard against disastrous
supply interruptions and cope with the changing economics and new opportunities
brought on by new technologies? What capabilities will a profitable
international business need to sustain itself in the face of strong
protectionist pressures? Almost every kind of manufacturer will have to answer
these questions. Some companies have already responded to the growing
pressures. For example:
·
Finding that purchasing outlays had increased in less than one
year from 40% to 70% of the cost of goods sold, one European
office-equipment manufacturer began to rely more heavily on American and
Japanese suppliers, revise its materials planning system to reduce in-process
inventories, and require its divisions to add people with electronics and
foreign language skills to their purchasing staffs.
·
Through contracts that include long-term shipping charters and
run to 1988 with suppliers in countries as distant as Brazil, the Japanese
steel industry has secured an 18% cost advantage over its chief U.S. and
European competitors.
·
Hoechst (the German petrochemical giant) has established ties to
Kuwait and DuPont recently acquired Conoco as part of their new acquisition
strategies. This reflects a long-term approach to supply security that other
chemical companies like Dow Chemical in the United States and BASF in Europe
have used to good advantage.
·
Cabot Corporation, faced with growing scarcity of chromium,
vanadium, niobium, titanium, and other metals critical to its operations, set
up a mineral resources division that developed an overall corporate supply
strategy and explored new options, ranging from the purchase of ore in the
ground to the start-up of joint ventures for primary metal processing. Cabot
also acquired a London-based trading company to supplement existing purchasing
skills with special trading expertise and access to the London metals market.
·
U.S. auto manufacturers who customarily relied on domestic
materials procurement are now reevaluating their supply schemes and broadening
their scope of potential suppliers. Ford not only manufactures parts of its
“world car,” Erika, in several foreign subsidiaries but also buys transmission
axles from its Japanese subsidiary, Toyo Kogyo. Chrysler, which was sourcing
1.7-liter Omni engines from Volkswagen as long ago as 1978, now buys 2.6-liter
engines from Mitsubishi. Predictions are that by 1990 the U.S. car industry
will source 35% to 40% of its parts and components from abroad; 15
years ago it sourced only 5% from other countries.
To ensure long-term availability of critical
materials and components at competitive cost, a host of manufacturers will have
to come to grips with the risks and complexities of global sourcing. Others
that already source on a global basis must learn to cope with uncertainties and
supply or price disruptions on an unprecedented scale. Instead of simply
monitoring current developments, management must learn to make things happen to
its own advantage. This calls for nothing less than a total change of perspective:
from purchasing (an operating function) to supply management (a strategic one).
Whenever a manufacturer must procure a volume
of critical items competitively under complex conditions, supply management is
relevant. The greater the uncertainty of supplier relationships, technological
developments, and/or physical availability of those items, the more important
supply management becomes.
Diagnosing
the Case
A company’s need for a supply strategy depends
on two factors: (1) the strategic importance of purchasing in terms of the
value added by product line, the percentage of raw materials in total costs and
their impact on profitability, and so on; and (2) the complexity of the supply
market gauged by supply scarcity, pace of technology and/or materials
substitution, entry barriers, logistics cost or complexity, and monopoly or
oligopoly conditions (see Exhibit I). By assessing the company’s situation in
terms of these two variables, top management and senior purchasing executives
can determine the type of supply strategy the company needs both to exploit its
purchasing power vis-à-vis important suppliers and to reduce its risks to an
acceptable minimum. Attractive new options, or serious vulnerabilities, or
both, may come to light as the assessment explores questions like these:
Exhibit I Stages of Purchasing Sophistication
1. Is the company making
good use of opportunities for concerted action among different divisions and/or
subsidiaries? Combining the supply requirements of different divisions
can increase the corporation’s total buying clout. One international transportation
company was buying three kinds of fuel separately: bunker oil for shipping, jet
fuel for airfreight, and gasoline for trucks. Only after consolidating and
combining these volumes at the corporate level could the company bring its true
bargaining weight to bear.
2. Can the company avoid
anticipated supply bottlenecks and interruptions? When
an automotive parts maker analyzed its sintered metal components supply market,
from which it had been sourcing for years, it discovered that political
instability was jeopardizing its supply. The company’s top management promptly
ordered a change in purchasing policy to build up alternative domestic sources.
3. How much risk is
acceptable? Vendor mix, extent of contractual coverage, regional spread
of supply sources, and availability of scarce materials all contribute to the
company’s supply risk profile. A company can often take action to lessen
unacceptable risk. For example, a company that meets annual materials
requirements exclusively through long-term contracts may achieve substantial
savings through the use of “evergreen” contracts (annual agreements) that
include a rollover option. Conversely, a manufacturer that relies solely on
spot purchases may do well to mix spot purchases and supply contracts.
4. What make-or-buy
policies will give the best balance between cost and flexibility?If the
company covers a large percentage of its supplies from sources it owns, it will
be in a much better negotiating position to cover the remainder of its outside
requirements than its less-integrated competitors. Dow Chemical, BASF, and
DuPont have all reduced their supply vulnerability through backward integration
in response to long-term considerations. On the other hand, the company may
find it more profitable to source outside if key suppliers have chronic
overcapacity.
5 To what extent might
cooperation with suppliers or even competitors strengthen long-term supply
relationships or capitalize on shared resources? Italy’s
Alfa Romeo and Japan’s Nissan share the production of certain critical car
components that they could not produce cost-effectively on their own. General
Motors is increasingly involving suppliers early in the design process in order
to ensure better quality, lower cost, and “just in time” production.
Shaping
the Supply Strategy
To minimize their supply vulnerabilities and
make the most of their potential buying power, a number of European companies
have successfully used a four-stage approach to devise strategies. The approach
has given them a simple but effective framework for collecting marketing and
corporate data, forecasting future supply scenarios, and identifying available
purchasing options as well as for developing individual supply strategies for
critical items and materials.
Following this approach, the company first
classifies all its purchased materials or components in terms of profit impact
and supply risk. Next it analyzes the supply market for these materials. Then
it determines its overall strategic supply position. Finally, it develops
materials strategies and action plans.
Phase
1: Classification
The profit impact of a given supply item can
be defined in terms of the volume purchased, percentage of total purchase cost,
or impact on product quality or business growth. Supply risk is assessed in
terms of availability, number of suppliers, competitive demand, make-or-buy
opportunities, and storage risks and substitution possibilities. Using these
criteria, the company sorts out all its purchased items into the categories
shown in Exhibit II: strategic (high profit impact, high supply risk),
bottleneck (low profit impact, high supply risk), leverage (high profit impact,
low supply risk), and noncritical (low profit impact, low supply risk).
Exhibit II Classifying Purchasing Materials
Requirements
Each of these four categories requires a
distinctive purchasing approach, whose complexity is in proportion to the
strategic implications. The company may need to support supply decisions of
strategic items with a large battery of analytic techniques, including market
analysis, risk analysis, computer simulation and optimization models, price
forecasting, and various other kinds of microeconomic analysis. Decisions about
bottleneck items may require specific market analysis and decision models for
resolution, while vendor and value analysis, price forecasting models, and
decision models may come into play on issues affecting leverage materials.
Where noncritical items are concerned, simple market analyses, decision
policies, and inventory optimization models will normally suffice. As companies
like Akzo, the giant Dutch chemical producer, have found, this classification
permits a more differentiated and hence better focused approach to the analysis
of supply market data.
Shifts in supply or demand patterns can alter
a material’s strategic category. In many companies over the past few years, for
example, coal has graduated from noncritical to strategic. Therefore, any
purchasing portfolio classification calls for regular updating.
Phase
2: Market Analysis
Next the company weights the bargaining power
of its suppliers against its own strength as a customer (see Exhibit III). It
systematically reviews the supply market, assessing the availability of
strategic materials in terms of both quality and quantity, and the relative
strength of existing vendors. The company then analyzes its own needs and
supply lines to gauge its ability to get the kind of supply terms it wants.
Exhibit III Purchasing Portfolio Evaluation
Criteria
Of the contrasting criteria of supplier and
company strength listed in Exhibit III, some are self-explanatory. But six call
for special comment.
Suppliers’ capacity
utilization. This criterion indicates the risk of supply bottlenecks.
In a cyclical upswing, with suppliers’ production running at 90% of
capacity, the probability of a bottleneck in the supply of a strategic item is
extremely high. Electronics manufacturers that have neither their own
chip-production facilities nor adequate contractual coverage have nightmares
whenever demand for microchips heats up. A European aircraft manufacturer had
specified high-grade titanium alloys for certain applications but had failed to
reckon with potential supply bottlenecks. After a series of production setbacks
and cost increases, it has now switched back to specialty steels.
Supplier’s break-even
stability. A supplier that achieves break-even at below 70%capacity
utilization can ultimately deliver at lower cost than one who breaks even at 80% utilization.
For the same reason, however, the first supplier will prove a tougher
bargainer, for it can more easily delay negotiations and accept capacity
underutilization.
Uniqueness of suppliers’
product. This is a function of natural scarcity (as in certain
strategic metals and minerals), high technological sophistication (like the
256K RAM chip), and/or entry barriers in the form of high R&D or facility
investments. If a product is unique, the probability is less that alternative
sources or suppliers will appear or that supplier competition will force cost reductions.
Annual volume purchased
and expected growth in demand. Volume, the main
determinant of the company’s overall bargaining power, is critical because
economies of scale in purchasing often yield a decisive competitive cost
advantage. In the case of many automotive parts, cost reductions as large as 4% can
often be achieved by doubling the volume allocated to a given supplier.
Past variations in
capacity utilization of main production units. A
company can judge the built-in flexibility of its supply coverage from past
variations in demand resulting from sales strategies and promotions, changes in
the order backlog, or overall economic conditions. If the company plans a major
expansion or an aggressive sales strategy for a product line where supplies are
tight or suppliers’ capacities fully used, it may be able to cover the higher
materials requirements only by paying a price premium. In turn, projected
profits may decline.
Potential costs in the
event of nondelivery or inadequate quality. The higher such
costs and the greater the risk of incurring them, the less latitude the company
has for rapidly shifting supply sources or delaying negotiations or contracts.
These costs influence required inventory levels and safety stocks, but they
mainly affect production. Changing a source of supply might, for example, make
it necessary to modify the production process. In the case of materials for
highly automated production processes (such as certain alloy steels or carbide
tools), the costs of such modification could be prohibitive.
No list of evaluation criteria is equally
applicable to every industry: a petrochemicals producer and an automobile
manufacturer would each have its own modifications to those shown in the
exhibit. Moreover, the relative importance of different criteria may vary with
technological change or with shifts in the industry’s competitive dynamics.
Careful definition of the criteria of both supplier and company strength is a
prerequisite to accurate market analysis.
Phase
3: Strategic Positioning
Next the company positions the materials
identified in phase 1 as strategic in the purchasing portfolio matrix (see
Exhibit IV). It can then identify areas of opportunity or vulnerability, assess
supply risks, and derive basic strategic thrusts for these items. The
purchasing portfolio matrix plots company buying strength against the strengths
of the supply market and can be used to develop counterstrategies vis-à-vis key
suppliers—an approach sometimes called “reverse marketing.”
Exhibit IV The Purchasing Portfolio Matrix
The cells in the purchasing portfolio matrix
correspond to three basic risk categories, each associated with a different
strategic thrust. On items where the company plays a dominant market role and
suppliers’ strength is rated medium or low, a reasonably aggressive strategy
(“exploit”) is indicated. Because the supply risk is slight, the company has a
better chance of achieving a positive profit contribution through favorable
pricing and contract agreements. Even so, it has to take care not to exploit
the advantage so aggressively that it jeopardizes long-term supplier relationships
or provokes counterreactions by insisting on rock-bottom prices in times of
market discontinuity.
On items where the company’s role in the
supply market is secondary and suppliers are strong, the company must go on the
defensive and start looking for material substitutes or new suppliers
(“diversify”). It may have to increase spending on market research or supplier
relations, or even consider backward integration through major investments in
R&D or production capacities. In short, the company needs its supply
options.
For supply items with neither major visible
risks nor major benefits, a defensive posture would be over-conservative and
costly. On the other hand, undue aggressiveness could damage supplier relations
and lead to retaliation. In this case, a company should pursue a well-balanced
intermediate strategy (“balance”).
Usually, a company will find itself in
different roles with respect to different items and suppliers. When it can
bargain from a position of strength, it should press for preferential
treatment. Bargaining from weakness, the company may have to offer
inducements—longer-term contract obligations, for example, or higher prices—in
order to ensure an adequate supply.
Phase
4: Action Plans
Each of the three strategic thrusts has distinctive
implications for the individual elements of the purchasing strategy, such as
volume, price, supplier selection, material substitution, inventory policy, and
so on (see Exhibit V).
Exhibit V Strategic Implications of Purchasing
Portfolio Positioning
In the short term, for strategic items where
the supplier’s strength outweighs the company’s and the indicated strategy is
diversification, the company should consolidate its supply position by
concentrating fragmented purchased volumes in a single supplier, accept high
prices, and cover the full volume requirements through supply contracts. To
reduce the long-term risk of dependence on a single source, however, the
company should also search for alternative suppliers or materials or even
consider backward integration to permit in-house production. On the other hand,
if the company is stronger than the suppliers, it can spread volume over
several suppliers, exploit price advantages, increase spot purchases, and
reduce inventory levels.
In this phase, then, the company should
explore a range of supply scenarios in which it lays out its options for
securing long-term supply and for exploiting short-term opportunities; clearly
define respective risks, costs, returns, and strategic implications; and
develop a preferred option with objectives, steps, responsibilities, and
contingency measures laid out in detail for top management approval and
implementation. The end product will be a set of systematically documented
strategies for critical purchasing materials that specify the timing of and
criteria for future action.
Practical
Applications
The usefulness of the purchasing portfolio
approach in a variety of industrial situations can be seen in the diverse
experiences of four large companies. Not long ago a welding materials producer
with plants and sales operations all over Europe found its profits squeezed by
increased competition and slackening market growth. Searching for ways to
improve the picture, the company found that supplies were critical to the
production of its welding wires and electrodes. Together, just five out of the
470 different items it purchased accounted for more than 60% of the
company’s total purchasing volume of $135 million. Taking into account
demand growth, quality standards, and logistics, the company then analyzed the
European market for these five items in light of its own plant-by-plant
requirements. A third step determined the company’s position against a wide
range of individual suppliers and assessed the risk of increasing the share
sourced from each one.
Finally, the company developed several
strategic supply scenarios, each involving a different mix of suppliers and
different assumptions about price, volume, and risk. The scenarios ranged from
very low risk (total dependence on well-established sources) to very high (most
purchases from lesser-known, geographically dispersed suppliers). Cost-benefit
analyses of each enabled management to pinpoint several opportunities for
substantial improvement. On one key item alone, electrode wire, the company’s
potential annual savings ranged from $1.5 million to $6.3 million, or
3% to 12% of the total cost. Supply strategies the company worked out
for other key items resulted in an overall saving of 10% on purchased
materials, adding some 3% to 4% to the company’s pretax profits.
Action plans and decision and monitoring rules developed for each item enabled
buyers to implement the new sourcing strategy and permitted management to
monitor purchasing activities regularly, in some cases on a day-by-day or
bid-by-bid basis.
A large U.S.-based maker of electrical
equipment categorized castings as a key strategic purchased item and
systematically analyzed its own demand in terms of the annual volume and
relative complexity of each type of casting. It assessed, foundry by foundry,
the capabilities of each potential supplier and decided, by comparing
alternative supply scenarios, which was the best fit. The resulting new mix of
outside suppliers reduced the company’s outlays for castings by 5% to 15% and
significantly improved its competitive cost position.
Anxious to reduce the risks associated with
current sources of feedstock supply, a multinational chemical company revamped
its entire purchasing strategy and organization. Out of more than 5,000
purchased items, the company defined 75 as strategic or bottleneck feedstocks.
Detailed analysis of both demand and supply confirmed that, thanks to the sheer
volume of its purchases, the company enjoyed a strong position in most
feedstock supply markets. Its risk profile, however, gave real cause for
concern.
Accordingly, the company spread its
hydrocarbons procurement among petroleum- and coal-based feedstocks; balanced
its geographic base among Middle Eastern, African, North Sea, North American,
and Latin American sources; changed its contracts-to-spot-purchases ratio;
optimized its make-or-buy mix by integrating backward; and began to rely on
wholly owned subsidiaries for a bigger share of its feedstock requirements. In
addition, a corporate-level review revealed attractive trade-off and
substitution opportunities, which the corporation soon set about exploiting,
once it had changed and upgraded its purchasing organization and systems in
order to do so.
Faced with sharp rises in the labor and
overhead costs of producing high-precision parts in-house, a Europe-based
heavy-equipment maker decided to review its make-or-buy strategy. Examining the
supply market, it identified a group of obscure, small manufacturers of
precision parts that had begun to use dedicated, numerically controlled
equipment. Thanks to low overhead and economies of scale achieved through
specialized production, they could supply high-quality parts at prices 10% to
20% below the cost of in-house production. In consequence, the company
shifted from making the parts to buying them.
Strengthening
the Organization
Few companies today can allow purchasing to be
managed in isolation from the other elements of their overall business systems.
Greater integration, stronger cross-functional relations, and more
top-management involvement are all necessary. Every facet of the purchasing organization,
from systems support to top-management style, will ultimately need to adapt to
these requirements. Concrete changes in the organization will be required to
establish effective organizational relations, provide adequate systems support,
and meet the new staff and skills requirements.
Effective
Relations
To exploit the company’s full buying and
bargaining power, the purchasing function must reflect the overall corporate
setup. In particular, top management must decide to what extent it should centralize
or decentralize the function.
The issue is not clear-cut. While
centralization augments a company’s purchasing clout, it is also more
inflexible. To find the right balance, companies must carefully consider
trade-offs between clout and flexibility. One diversified multinational
corporation, for example, successfully centralized purchasing of basic
materials but found that it could not do the same with technical goods because
of heterogeneous production facilities, varying national standards, and differentiated
service and parts demands.
Another important issue is purchasing’s
position in the corporate structure. Should the company treat it as a function
of production or of operating divisions? Should management set it up as a
central independent department or division or position it as part of the
materials management function or even of a supply division? The answer will
depend on factors such as volume and concentration of purchased goods as well
as on the corporation’s structure and complexity.
Different corporate philosophies lead to
different solutions. One international chemical company, for example, formed a
central supply group with worldwide responsibility for all raw materials,
feedstocks, and energy-related activities, while a major competitor went for
all-out decentralization and gave each division its own purchasing group.
Though diametrically opposed, both solutions made sense in their respective
contexts.
The purchasing department’s structure should
reflect supply-product market affinities and permit staff with specialized
competence to take the lead in working out strategies for specific items. The
company should encourage flexibility and entrepreneurship in its managers
within the constraints of the overall corporate structure.
Systems
Support
Too often the purchasing department receives
information on the company’s business plans and objectives that is incomplete
or improperly geared to the tasks and time horizons of strategic supply
management. Purchasing executives are usually informed of major expansion and
investment projects as well as month-to-month production requirements but often
lack adequate operating information with a three- to six-month time horizon,
which would provide early warning of short- to medium-term demand fluctuations.
The purchasing department needs these data for negotiating prices, rescheduling
supply quantities, and balancing raw material inventories in response to
cyclical demand swings.
In the absence of such data, supply
bottlenecks, short-term demand fluctuations, and ad hoc purchasing decisions
are inevitable. In turn, the company incurs higher time and money costs,
penalties for unfulfilled contract terms, excessive inventories, and disruption
in purchasing activities, all of which force buyers to spend their time
troubleshooting.
Complex companies with numerous products,
multiple plants, and substantial production for stock (as in the consumer goods
or chemical industries) are more vulnerable than are companies with a single
product line and/or considerable job-order production, such as industrial
equipment manufacturers. In either case, tailor-made systems support will be
called for. Such support might include:
·
Improvement of operational flexibility through a rolling demand
forecast system with a three- to six-month time horizon, coupled with
systematic evaluation of supply market data.
·
Improved efficiency, shortened through put time, and reduction
in costs and manual paperwork through EDP-supported purchasing planning,
information, and disposition systems.
·
Integration of purchasing systems with other corporate systems,
such as liquidity planning, and/or with the corresponding planning and
disposition systems of key suppliers. The most familiar example is the
so-called Kanban system, which allows the Japanese automaker Nissan to work
with practically no parts or work-in-process inventories. Recently, however,
U.S. and European car manufacturers are moving in the same direction.
·
Introduction of proven purchasing analysis approaches, such as
commodity analysis or value analysis, to help develop action plans for
nonstrategic purchased items with limited supply complexity and risk but up to
15% savings potential.
Improved systems support frees buyers and
management from preoccupation with day-to-day problems and enables them to
focus on long-term analytic work and planning. Additional benefits include
price reduction or savings, inventory reduction, reduced clerical work, and
better delivery and service.
The company will realize these benefits only
if it uses the systems effectively. It must foster consistent, cross-functional
information flows and demands and induce line managers to supply the required
data for the purchasing information system. (One way to reduce their
instinctive resistance is to show them that most of the “new” data already
exist and need only be recast in an appropriate format.) Finally, management
must make certain that any major new systems are user-friendly.
Staff
& Skill Requirements
To meet the demands of the new supply
strategy, the company must also upgrade the skills and experience it requires
of key purchasing people. One big international company vastly improved the
status of the purchasing division by promoting a dynamic sales executive with
broad international expertise to head it. To loosen its design department’s
grip on supplier selection decisions, another organization hired away an expert
applications engineer from a specialized process-control manufacturer and put
him in charge of the purchasing department. The result: substantial savings
through standardization and alternative sourcing of process-control equipment.
Despite the potential leverage to be obtained
through improved purchasing staff and skills, hasty moves in this area can
backfire, especially if they disrupt close relationships with suppliers. Top
management should foster a constructive atmosphere and attitude among
purchasing staff before undertaking any radical staff changes.
Progress toward effective supply management
can only be gradual, and the company will have to surmount many obstacles to
implementation along the way. But the rewards are well worth the effort. An
attitude of “purchasing as usual” will make the company vulnerable to
competitive pressure; but enhanced strategic awareness, greater flexibility,
and stronger entrepreneurial thinking in the supply area can improve the supply
security and lower the input costs of any industrial company.
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