Purchasing & Supply Management II - Tactics & Operations  

AIM  

To examine tactics and techniques for the control of supply chain operations. 

Introduction  

This syllabus will consider all of the above operational techniques within the context of  both different sectors and different sized organisations. This is a broad syllabus, and the student should adopt a general view. 

Specifying and Managing Quality

• Specifying quality and the development of specifications

• The buyer's role in formulating specifications

• Specifications and costs

• Standardisation and variety reduction

• Value analysis and value engineering

• The use of company, national and international standards

• The 'tools of quality management' - SPC, histograms, fishbone diagrams, flow-charts, Pareto analysis, telly charts

• Off-line quality techniques such as Taguchi methodology

• Quality function deployment

• Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

• Total Quality Management

• Managing Service Quality

• Maintaining quality standards in out sources services

Sourcing and the Management and Development of Suppliers

• Vendor assessment and vendor rating

• Selecting quality capable suppliers

• Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) and Early Buyer Involvement (EBI)

• Assessment and development of appropriate suppliers

• Use of supplier management teams

• Simultaneous engineering and cross functional teams

• Outsourcing  

Matching Supply with Demand

• Inventory control and the economics of stock management

• Independent demand, fixed order quantity and periodic review systems

• Dependent demand and buying for materials requirements planning (MRP), manufacturing resource planning (MRPII), and distribution requirement planning systems (DRP)

• Buying for kanban and Just in Time systems

• Lean supply

• Make or buy decisions

• Optimising stock turnover rates and service levels

• Consumables (or maintenance repair and operating supplies)

• Purchasing for resale

• Approaches to forecasting. Capital Buying

• The co-ordinated approach to capital buying

• The nature of capital buying

• Life cycle costing

• Investments appraisal

• Terms and conditions, payment arrangements

• Defects liability and after sales support 

Buying from Overseas  

• Reasons for buying abroad

• Problems of buying abroad

• Import procedure, Incoterms

• Buying capital items from overseas

• Currency management and payment arrangements  

Commodity Buying  

• The nature of commodities and the main commodity markets

• Speculation and the role of the speculator

• Futures contracts and hedging, and options

• £-cost averaging and budget buying

Transporting Goods

• Inbound, outbound and internal movement

• Modes of transport - advantages and disadvantages

• Integrated distribution systems

• Total Distribution Costs and their minimisation

• International freight movement 

Information Systems  

• Manual and computer-based transaction processing in the supply chain

• Integrated information systems internal and external networks, including electronic data interchange (EDI) and Electronic point of sale (EPOS)

• ePurchasing and eCommerce

• Use of bar coding in operations and inventory management

• Developing a supply chain database  

Negotiation  

• The nature of negotiation

• General principles of effective negotiation

• Planning for negotiations - information gathering and tactics

• Establishing objectives

• Implementation - the phases (stages) of negotiation

• Models of negotiation

• Negotiation strategies

• The post-negotiation phase.