No description available.

Purchasing activities are defined as the essential activities associated with the acquisition of the materials, services and equipment used in a business organisation. They are significant functions because they help organisations to realise many benefits such as cost reduction, improved material delivery, a shorter cycle time, access to product and process technology and quality improvement. This can only be achieved if an organisation performs its purchasing activities effectively and efficiently. There are four purchasing development frameworks, or models, that are helpful in evaluating the purchasing activity in an organization. These are: Stannack, P. and Jones, M. (1988) Model, Reck and Long, (1988) Model, Jones, D.M., (1999) Model and Arjan V. (2000), Model. However, it was concluded that these models were nonoperational and merely indicate the stage of development of the purchasing activity. The shortfall of these approaches is that they have no "standard" development criteria that organizations can follow to evaluate their purchasing activities. These models also have a limited number of development measurement variables. In an attempt to overcome these shortfalls and identify factors that affect purchasing improvements, a purchasing development model was developed. The aim of this research is to produce a new purchasing maturity model (PurchMM) based on a wide variety of purchasing parameters that have been discovered during the literature review. The Readiness PurchMM describes an evolutionary improvement path for purchasing function from an ad hoc, immature process to a mature, well-organized one. Five levels of maturity encompass this path. The Readiness PurchMM guides purchasing functions that wants to gain control of their purchasing activities for improving, developing the performance of the purchasing functions, maintaining

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with establishing whether particular sourcing strategies lead to the achievement of sustainable competitive advantage, and the affect that the type of power relationships have on the situation. The theoretical framework for the study was grounded in the resource-based view. A survey was undertaken of twelve sourcing strategies within six organisations. The organisations varied in size and were from different industries. Furthermore, the sourcing strategies comprised six reactive and six proactive approaches and exhibited a varied mix of different power relationships. This enabled a thorough examination of the variables to be carried out. Three critical cases were then analysed in greater depth in order to investigate some of the contextual factors and second-order findings that were uncovered during the survey. The study found that proactive sourcing strategies may lead to sustainable competitive advantage, particularly when combined with buyer dominant or interdependent power relationships, but reactive approaches do not. However, a number of intervening variables were identified that also appear to influence the situation, such as the nature of the purchase, the objective of the sourcing strategy, and the degree of commitment to and investment in the sourcing strategy. A model is developed which explains the relationship between sourcing strategies and sustainable competitive advantage.

Dans un contexte économique fortement concurrentiel, la maintenance des équipements de productions constitue un enjeu socio-économique décisif pour les entreprises. De même, les enjeux de maintenance ont connu de fortes évolutions, le secteur est en pleine mutation. Face à cela, les attentes, les besoins en matière de coût, de délai, de qualité et de respect de l’environnement changent. Suite à ce constat, on a souhaité développer dans cette thèse de nouvelles stratégies intégrées de maintenance, de production, de gestion des stocks de pièces de rechange en tenant compte de différentes contraintes opérationnelles. Parmi ces contraintes, on peut citer la variation de la cadence de production des systèmes et son impact sur la dégradation du système de production ainsi que sur le plan de maintenance et de gestion de pièces de rechanges. On s’est intéressé aussi à l’origine et au type des pièces de rechange (neuves ou usagées) utilisées pour assurer les activités de maintenance. En plus de l’influence technico-économique de l’origine des pièces de rechange utilisées sur le système de production, on a également évalué l’impact environnemental de ces derniers en considérant des données de l’ADEME. Formellement, L’objectif de cette thèse est de contribuer par des approches formelles permettant une optimisation des cadences de production couplée à des politiques de maintenance et intégrant des stratégies efficientes dans la gestion des pièces de rechange. Des méthodes analytiques et techniques d’optimisation, appuyées par des modèles de simulations selon la difficulté de résolutions ont été développées afin de réaliser les objectifs de cette thèse. Une étude de cas industrielle ainsi que des exemples numériques sont présentés pour valider les résultats théoriques obtenus / In a highly competitive economic environment, maintenance of production facilities is a crucial socio-economic challenge for companies. Similarly, maintenance issues experienced significant changes, the sector is changing. Faced with this, the expectations, the needs of cost, time, quality and environmental change. Following this, we wanted to develop in this thesis new integrated strategies for maintenance, production, and inventory management of spare parts taking into account different operational constraints. These constraints include the change in the rate of production systems and its impact on the deterioration of the production system and on the maintenance plan and spare parts management. It was also interested in the origin and type of spare parts (new or used) used to ensure maintenance activities. In addition to the technical and economic influence of the origin of spare parts used in the production system, we also evaluated the environmental impact of the latter considering ADEME data. Formally, The aim of this thesis is to contribute by formal approaches to optimization of production rates coupled with maintenance policies and integrating efficient strategies in the management of spare parts. Analytical methods and optimization techniques, supported by simulation models according to resolutions of difficulty have been developed to achieve the objectives of this thesis. An industrial case studies and numerical examples are presented to validate theoretical results

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the intra-organisational processes used by businesses operating in the United Kingdom to narrow the gap between their socially and environmentally responsible procurement (SERP) policy and its implementation in buyer-supplier relationships. This is a response both to the wide variety of recent human/labour rights and environmental violations in corporate supply chains as well as to concerns that the corporate policies developed in response to stakeholder pressure regarding such violations may not be sufficient for the effective implementation of their remedy. This examination of corporate efforts to implement SERP policy initiates a line of research aimed at building a theory of internal SERP policy implementation. The theoretical lens used in the component studies of this thesis is a combination of organisational culture and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. The former is used to assess how top managers and procurement departments show support for SERP implementation. This is to say that aspects of their cultures are used to perceive this support. The organisational and human resources made available to the procurement department are considered to be the capabilities needed to translate this support into practice. Drawing on data from a survey of 340 buyer-supplier relationships and from two in-depth case studies of businesses operating in the United Kingdom, this thesis contributes both theoretically and empirically to the literature. Prime examples of this thesis‟ contributions include the mapping of commercial processes used to connect stakeholder rights and pressures to procurement activity; the identification of internal subgroups that affect SERP implementation; and the conceptual reconsideration of two core capabilities theorised to facilitate this process. Further research includes the replication of case studies; the consideration of supplier capabilities to implement buyer requirements; and how this research can be more aligned with extant supply chain strategy research.

Graduate School of Business Leadership / MBL

Graduate School of Business Leadership / MBL

Information explosion, globalisation and the reduction of trade barriers have led to the emergence of global production markets and broader access to a range of products for customers. For manufacturers this has led to managing fragmented networks to deal with more polarised markets with wider variety of products at reduced costs and shorter lifecycles in an increasingly competitive environment. This coupled with the pressure to create shareholder value calls for a dynamic approach in the design and management of their supply chains. Market responsiveness is ability to anticipate and react purposefully within appropriate timescale to changes in the market place in order to maximise shareholder value and customer value. The aim of this research is to develop a model for market responsiveness that will enable organisations to deal with the changing needs of the market. To achieve this aim the research methodology was designed to primarily collect qualitative evidence from three distinct supply chains within different industrial contexts. Contrasting across these contexts has helped to determine if the model is generic enough to be applicable in other contexts. The findings were that value gaps exist between interfaces within organisations and their supply chains. At such gaps value is either created, maintained or lost. Value gaps are the primary reasons why organisational tensions exist as the entities involved are focused on conflicting strategic objectives that lead to behavioural misalignment and ultimately poor response. Therefore the research concludes within a market responsiveness model within which there are frameworks for business performance management and managing the value execution point of which maximum shareholder value and customer value can be created.