The Purchasing Machine
Book

The Purchasing Machine

How the Top Ten Companies Use Best Practices to Manage Their Supply Chains

Jonathon Stegner, Patricia E. Moody and Dave Nelson
Free Press, 2001
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

One of this book’s mantras is that purchasing is a lot more important these days than in decades past. The authors, Dave Nelson, Patricia Moody and Jonathon Stegner, have spent decades in the field of purchasing. Their principal argument is that now that most companies outsource their equipment and even their parts (for example, very few Dell parts are made in-house), purchasing has become not only more important, but a potential source of incredible savings. The dozen companies profiled in this book - which is meant to detail the best practices in purchasing worldwide - have realized millions of dollars in savings simply by optimizing supply-chain management. The authors emphasize that this isn’t an individual task. Change in purchasing management requires an internal team and management support. getabstract.com recommends this book not only to purchasing managers, but to all corporate executives, any of whom will glean some invaluable pointers about how to save money in day-to-day operations.

Summary

Procurement Proficiency Produces Profits

Procurement should no longer be seen as a necessary evil or as some minor function that can’t help your company become more competitive. In fact, the crucial step that corporations must take to capture more market share in the 21st century is procurement and supply-chain management.

If you haven’t addressed your purchasing process, the future is now. Over the next 10 to 20 years, the most exciting place for a manufacturing professional will be supply management, which will encompass these functions:

  • Purchasing
  • Materials flows
  • Acquisitions
  • Sourcing strategies
  • Movement and control of intellectual property

To find the best path to achieve purchasing and supply-chain improvements, you need to create real change and leapfrog the competition with out-of-the-box ideas. Today, every part of manufacturing is being designed for better, more predictable performance. This is performance that can be achieved only by doing the work very well, every time. The companies profiled here don’t perform all of the best practices, but each one does some things extremely well under high quality...

About the Authors

Dave Nelson a vice president at Deere and Co., previously led the growth of Honda’s purchasing division, which received the Medal of Professional Excellence from Purchasing Magazine. Patricia Moody was profiled by Fortune as one of the 10 pioneering women in manufacturing and is a consultant to such companies as Cisco, Honda and Solectron. Jonathon Stegner is a director of supply management at Deere and a 20-year supply management practitioner.

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