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As more and more companies embark on the never‐ending journey of continuous improvement and world‐class manufacturing, their success will depend to a great extent on their ability to win the purchasing battle. It is common knowledge that it is purchasing′s charge to oversee the acquisition and delivery of inventoried materials in a company. In a Just‐in‐Time (JIT) environment this traditional role of purchasing is continually changing to support production and service. Purchasing now emphasizes on‐time delivery of the right amount of competitively priced, high quality products to the right place. Any variation in this doctrine is considered wasteful under JIT. Discusses the strategic roles of JIT purchasing by examining the responsibilities, functions, and methods currently used by purchasing in the areas of vendor sourcing, transport, and product development. Further identifies purchasing as one of the key elements to a company′s competitiveness.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to understand the process of procurement and describe the process of supplier selection; to understand the importance of vendor selection criteria and develop the same; and to develop the framework for steps involved in vendor selection.

Jelani was working in his office over weekends to select the supplier and finalize the contract for installation of SMD LED screen. It was going to be one of its kind in town, and the first ever project for the organization. He was working as procurement manager at Universal Ad Agency and based in their office at Hyderabad. Jelani had already missed the deadline of installation, and he knew that he was not going to get any extension in deadline for the second time. He had visited the markets of Lahore and Hyderabad to source out the best supplier. He had to prepare a strong case and present to CEO. With all the data available, would Jelani be able to select the best evaluated supplier from among the recently sourced out suppliers?

MBA elective courses of Purchase & Supply Management, and Operations Management.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

School business officials procure goods and services through a variety of methods to deliver educational services in a timely and cost-effective way. Recommended practices by professional procurement organizations have changed in recent years to include new technologies aimed at streamlining and cutting costs of traditional procurement methods. Little is known, however, about what procurement practices school districts adopt-new or old. To partially fill this gap, we describe results from a survey of procurement practices of New York State school districts. Our results reveal that despite the potential for new technologies to make certain practices common among all types of districts, competitive bidding laws and enrollment size dictate the procurement methods used most frequently by school districts.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to understand and develop the framework for the selection of location; to understand the resource-based theory (RBT) of entrepreneurship and develop the framework for RBT; to project a firm’s growth path in terms of achieving size; to analyze the important obstacles for same; and to calculate and forecast accurate market demand and customer footfall.

Abdul Jabbar Soomro recently quit his corporate job to achieve one of his dreams. He had always wanted to establish his own business venture and to be a successful entrepreneur. After completing his MBA in 2005, he started his career with one of the multinational companies at a very handsome salary. However, after 10 years of a corporate job, he left the job and started his own food venture. He faced a lot of challenges from his family, but he pursued his dream and started searching for the best location. By October 2015, he was all set and ready for the inauguration of his branch. He received a very positive response from market, and the number of customers kept on increasing on a daily basis. The major reasons behind his success were the environment, ambiance and product quality as promised. After two years of successful operations, Abdul Jabbar Soomro was wondering either to start a new branch or to proceed for expansion and better space management at the existing branch. He was unable to accommodate all the customers at his existing space.

BBA

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 3 Entrepreneurship

Sourcing research to date has concentrated on manufacturing, primarily in the form of just‐in‐time purchasing systems. This study examines sourcing in an important service industry – hospitals. Hospital materials management integrates purchasing, inventory control and distribution. A prime vendor relationship, an agreement between a multi‐line distributor and a hospital, streamlines the purchasing process by reducing the number of vendors and paperwork for the buyer. An examination of 22 general hospitals in Georgia, USA, yielded preliminary evidence the prime vendor relationship led to better materials management performance. This article explores the potential advantages and disadvantages for hospital buyers and vendors and the implications for performance.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the job responsibilities and requirements of textile and apparel (T&A) sourcing personnel from the employers' perspective, based on Kunz's behavioral theory of apparel firms and US Department of Labor's classification principles.

“Job wanted” texts published by Women's Wear Daily, a prominent daily trade newspaper in the US textile and apparel industry were collected. Content analysis was performed to examine three research question categories: daily duties of sourcing personnel, required skills for sourcing personnel, and relevant experiences sought for sourcing personnel.

Sourcing personnel are heavily involved in the firm's management of vendor relations, product development, production, and inter‐departmental collaborations. Desired sourcing personnel must be organized with multitasking abilities, knowledge of various computer applications, and exceptional communication skills. On‐the‐job experiences, industry knowledge, and bilingual abilities were highly sought for sourcing personnel with relatively little focus on formal education.

The study data source was limited to one US‐based trade publication from 2007 to 2008 and, thus, any extrapolation of the results must be done with a caution.

The study results help employers define clear position descriptions, current and future sourcing personnel effectively develop career path plans, and educators provide timely and relevant sourcing curriculum. Ultimately, the study results may help students be better prepared for a sourcing job market.

The paper provides practical, in‐depth information of sourcing personnel's daily duties, required skills, and desired experiences from the employer's perspective, which has not been available in the literature to date.

Practicing managers and academicians have described a variety of elements of the just‐in‐time (JIT) implementation process. Reports a survey to determine which of these elements are critical to success in JIT implementation. The survey of 114 JIT users related the importance of these elements to the magnitude of improvements in inventory and utilization criteria. Found that, in addition to production elements, a collection of vendor‐related elements have a significant impact on successful implementation. Discusses managerial implications for the vendor.

Traditionally, researchers have relied on the “rational choice” paradigm in studying organizational buying behaviour. Shows that such reliance is inappropriate in the international setting. By integrating insights from four theoretical perspectives that break out of the rational choice model, ventures 14 propositions of importer behaviour that shed useful light on the complex and messy process of overseas vendor search. Also discusses managerial implications and directions for further research.

Outsourcing is in a new era: an era of value-adding services, innovation and transformation. An era that shifts competition to skills and expertise where the main focus of key players in the industry is on the strategic impact of outsourcing services. As the outsourcing landscape is changing, so competition between countries for outsourcing work is reconstructing. It is no longer competition for low costs, but a search for superior skills, both technical and managerial, that provides the strategic guidance and operational excellence needed in the twenty-first century. While the professional and academic literature has extensively studied the comparative advantage of low-cost locations such as India, we know very little about the attractiveness of Western countries, such as the UK, for outsourcing services. To contribute to this end, the purpose of this paper is to examine the UK attractiveness in light of three key trends in the outsourcing industry: the maturity of the outsourcing industry drives more client firms to seek impact on business and strategic performance from their vendors; client firms and vendors deploy complex sourcing models that increase the importance of sourcing managerial capabilities, such as relationship management, vis-à-vis technical and delivery capabilities; locations with promising entry points to lucrative markets are becoming attractive for outsourcing investments as part of the firm's growth strategy.

The empirical base of this study is based on a comparative analysis of eight European destinations (UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Czech Republic and Poland) to conclude that the UK, as a talent-base, value-adding country that also offers advanced sourcing capabilities, has positioned its economy to attract investments from both outsourcing vendors and client firms. While the authors acknowledge the relative high-cost base of the UK economy, they assert that the high service standards, access to skills, entry point to mainland Europe and the USA, government support and supportive infrastructure are superior value propositions offered by the UK in the context of outsourcing services.

The findings of this study highlight the contribution of Western economies to outsourcing and their fairly strong comparative position to specific line of services such as contact centers, research and development and specific business process outsourcing services.

The main limitation of this study is the use of a country attractiveness framework which has been mainly used for low-cost countries. The authors therefore acknowledge the need to develop a country attractiveness framework which is suitable for Western countries.

This study offers decision makers an extensive tool to assess their outsourcing investments by considering both low-cost and Western countries based on the value expected from each investment.

This is the first study on the attractiveness of a Western country, such as the UK, which the authors defined as a talent-based, value-adding and advanced sourcing (TAVAAS) country. Through the examination of its comparative attractiveness the authors highlight the potential of the UK and many other Western countries such as USA, Germany or Canada to attract outsourcing investments.

The purpose of this study is to derive a prioritized list of the present and future topics that sourcing managers in large companies are mostly concerned with using a rigorous methodological approach.

The Delphi method was chosen to derive the list. An initial list of topics was compiled based on a literature review combined with the results of an expert panel. This input was prioritized and extended by sourcing managers over three iterations.

The findings indicate that outsourcing remains a hot topic, even after almost 25 years of academic research. The authors identified four clusters where outsourcing scholars who are interested to provide insights and guidance for practitioners should focus their attention: managerial decisions (selection of the right partner and ability of the company to outsource parts of their business), managing the service provider (governance issues and relationship management and alignment), managerial responsibilities (integrated risk management and adherence to regulation and compliance) and increased flexibility (cloud computing and multi-vendor arrangements).

The findings are only directly transferrable to large companies using experienced sourcing managers in Germany.

The findings may serve as input in formulating a research agenda which helps to align scholars’ focus and practitioners’ problems.