Procurement

About: Procurement is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25669 publications have been published within this topic receiving 334145 citations.

An intelligent supplier management tool for benchmarking suppliers in outsource manufacturing

Abstract: A global corporation's supply chain usually consists of enterprises and manufacturers that are graphically dispersed around the world, whereby each company is involved in a wide variety of supply chain activities such as order fulfillment, international procurement, acquisition of information technology, manufacturing, and customer service. However, selecting suppliers based on accumulated experience is not both effective and scientific due to subjective judgment and lack of systematic analysis. Therefore, continuously tracking and benchmarking performance of suppliers and forming an appropriate supplier selection mechanism is one of the crucial activities in supply chain management. This paper presents an intelligent supplier management tool (ISMT) using the case-based reasoning (CBR) and neural network (NN) techniques to select and benchmark suppliers. The development of ISMT and how the CBR and NN techniques are used in benchmarking suppliers during the process of new product development in Honeywell Consumer Products (Hong Kong) Limited are presented.

Organizational Assimilation of Electronic Procurement Innovations

Abstract: We investigate the assimilation of electronic procurement innovations (EPIs) and its impact on procurement productivity in buyer organizations. We identify online reverse auctions, electronic catalog management, electronic order fulfillment, and electronic payment and settlement as moderate complements for the performance of the procurement process. We develop a theoretical model that is informed by the literature on innovation assimilation and by structuration theory to explain the aggregated assimilation of EPIs. Our empirical study is based on survey data collected about EPIs from 166 buyer firms. Based on our analysis, we isolate the organizational, technological, and interorganizational factors that shape the meta-structures for the aggregated assimilation of EPIs. Our results also provide evidence of a substantial impact of the assimilation of these innovations on procurement productivity. Our post hoc analysis provides insights on differences across stages and across EPIs on the factors and meta-structures that enable assimilation.

A Procurement Market Model for Reactive Power Services Considering System Security

Abstract: This paper proposes a two-level framework for the operation of a competitive market for reactive power ancillary services. It is argued that the first-level, i.e., reactive power procurement, be on a seasonal basis while the second-level, i.e., reactive power dispatch, be close to real-time operation. To this effect, a reactive power procurement market model is proposed here taking into consideration system security aspects. This procurement procedure is based on a two-step optimization model. First, the marginal benefits of reactive power supply from each provider with respect to system security are obtained by solving an optimal power flow (OPF) that maximizes system loadability subject to transmission security constraints imposed by voltage limits, thermal limits, and stability limits. Second, the selected set of generators is then determined by solving an OPF-based auction to maximize a societal advantage function comprising generators' offers and their corresponding marginal benefits with respect to system security, considering all transmission system constraints. The proposed procedure yields the selected set of generators and zonal price components, which would form the basis for seasonal contracts between the system operator and the selected reactive power service providers.

Procurement Effects on Coopetition in Client-Contractor Relationships

Abstract: Client-contractor relationships are often criticized for being competitive and adversarial, rather than cooperative. The main purpose of this paper is to examine how construction clients’ procurement procedures affect the balance between cooperation and competition (i.e., coopetition) in client-contractor relationships. The empirical results, based on a survey to 87 Swedish construction clients, show that clients’ procurement procedures facilitate a focus on competition. It was also found that clients’ earlier experience of a certain procedure heavily affects their procurement choices, thereby preserving old behaviors. Although two-thirds of the clients wish to increase cooperation with contractors, this does not affect their procurement decisions. This study therefore concludes that the theoretical framework, based on transaction cost economics, is correct in prescribing more cooperation than is empirically observed in the construction sector. The theoretical framework can increase clients’ awareness of ...