There are five questions from this section and it covers the advantages and disadvantages of having supply management policies in the context of the organization and managing change in these policies.
If you have a policy ( say you start work on a new category buy request within 24 hours of receiving from the user) the advantage is that your users are likely to be more satisfied. The catch is that everybody in the supply team must understand the policy and execute it whole heartedly. Here the problem is of communicating that policy to the team. If you can do that well you will prevent problems with users if every buyer has a random action date on her/his buy indents. Examples of policies are Ethics (accepting gifts,meals etc.) Social Responsibility ( Diversity in Supplier base for eg.) and reciprocity policy. Reciprocity policy normally means that you cannot decide to favor a supplier just because that supplier is also a customer because buy and sell policies normally operate independently -unless specified by management otherwise. In other words, if you are new to the organization you should know the rules, help make new better rules and help change the ineffective or outdated rules relating to supply management.
The bridge exam component of this section is about aligning the supply management policies to the organization policies. For example, if the organization has a principle of returning calls and emails within 24-48 hours for other stakeholders like customers and shareholders you need to have a similar policy for suppliers. In other words you need to align the goals of supply management to the goals of your organization.
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