Regularly, I receive articles, theses, about strategic supplier management. To write my books and prepare my courses, I have also researched specific topics.
Often students are asking for references to complete thesis, etc. I try to gather material here to help them.
As this material is usually copyrighted, I do not host a copy but, if possible, provide a link. Please let me know if you find a broken link. Some articles are available at a cost, or through learning organizations libraries.
Supplier Management Strategy
With a bit of a historical perspective, here are the articles I gathered on the subject, to write "Collaborative Sourcing" and later, as I kept researching the subject.
- Peter Kraljic (1983). Purchasing Must Become Supply Management.Harvard Business Review September-October 1983. This is the grandfather of articles about strategy supply chain management, the first article suggesting a strategic perspective to manage suppliers.
- Arjan J van Weele and Frank A Rozemeijer (1996). Revolution in purchasing Building competitive power through proactive purchasing. European Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 153-160. An article investigating the early attempts at broadening the scope of the Purchasing function, with the first mentions of competitive advantages and corporate strategy, although there was no mention of the elements of competitive supplier management strategies like exclusive access to resources or innovation.
- John Ramsay (2001), The Resource Based Perspective, Rent's and Purchasing Contribution to Sustainable Competitive Advantage The first trace I found of a reference to exclusive access to resources as one of the objectives of the Purchasing function, and the benefits for shareholders. A strategic approach to the purchasing function.
- Anna Dubois and Ann-Charlott Pedersen (2001), Why partners do not fit into purchasing portfolio models, 17th Annual IMP Conference, September 2001. This paper is one of the first that identifies the need to treat partners differently than what traditional purchasing models would suggest. They do not go as far as linking specifically partners to the development of Sustainable Competitive Advantages, like what I did in my first presentation of the Matrix to McKinsey in 2001
- David F. Pyke and M. Eric Johnson (2003) Sourcing Strategy and Supplier Relationships: Alliances vs. eProcurement. The Practice of Supply Chain Management, Kluwer Publishers, C. Billington, H. Lee, J. Neale, T. Harrison editors, 77 - 89, 2003. An interesting classification of different styles of relations
- Andy Eversbusch and Rolf Schimrock (2003). Strategic Supply Management - A Growing Source of Competitive Differentiation. AT Kearney Business Briefing: Global Purchasing & Supply Chain Strategies 2003. This is the first article I identified that mentions the use of Purchasing as a tool for competitive differentiation. Unlike the article I wrote in 2002, it does focus more on the speed of change and adaptation of new technologies than the specific management of a supplier's contribution with an exclusive offering in mind.
- Cees J. Gelderman, Arjan J. van Weele (2005); Purchasing Portfolio Models: A Critique and Update; The Journal of Supply Chain Management: A Global Review of Purchasing and Supply, August 2005. Arjan van Weele is one of the leading European researchers in the field of supplier management.
- Brigitte Faber Nico Lamers Reinder Pieters, Models for Decision Making in Purchasing: Kraljic vs. Monczka. Institute for Logistics HAN University for Professional Education, 2007. A simple, straightforward article that describes the two main models used in structuring a Purchasing strategy.
- Jan Dannenberg and Christian Kleinhans (2007). The Coming Age of Collaboration in the Automotive Industry. Mercer Management Journal 17. This article is quite telling, as it points collaboration as a novelty in 2007!
Tools for Category Management and Analysis
Everybody knows the term TCO, but do you have the details? How about other tools like LPP?
- Total Cost of Ownership article on Wikipedia
- W. Rocky Newman, Timothy C. Krehbiel (2006); Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Linear Performance Pricing: A Collaborative Tool for Focused Supply Cost Reduction; A good explanation of the concept of LPP, déveloped by McKinsey in 1997. Additional information can be found on ewikisource and the German pages of Wikipedia.
Organization
Designing a high performance purchasing organization is sometimes a challenge. Finding the right balance between a centralized team and local support is one of the issue. Another one is the development of the right team: good supplier management professionals are difficult to find but remain a top priority for CPO
- Chip W Hardt, Nicolas Reinecke, Peter Spiller (2007). Inventing the 21st-century purchasing organization. The McKinsey Quarterly, October 2007.
- David Hannon (2008). From developing interns to training veterans, building the right procurement organization is a lot like managing a sports team. Purchasing. February 2008
- J. Rodney Turner (2001). Project Contract Management And A Theory Of Organization. Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) July 2001
- Lynne M. Leftwich and al (2004); Organizational Concepts for Purchasing and Supply Management Implementation, 2004, the RAND Corporation. The result of a study to implement private business approach to purchasing in the US Air Force
Send your suggestions to add to this list
If you find an article, a reseach paper, etc. that you find interesting, do not hesitate to send me the references, to enrich this list. Feel free to mail your suggestions to Suggested Reading for consideration.