Metalcraft Case Study - Purchasing and Supply Management

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- Supplier background:

Before evaluating deeply, Metalcraft should consider the very basic information about suppliers, which will help to avoid any future issues. For example, it has to include:

- The ownership: The organization structure of supplier.

- The location: The factory is located in which nation.

- The capacity: The factory’s size and number of employees.

- Supplier’s feedback: It has to include the performance’s evaluation from its customers. For instance, if the supplier has an experience to produce components for the huge brands such as Mercedes Benz or Bentley, of course the buyer always want to work with these suppliers (buyers always consider about brand name).

- Price: The price is also an essential factor in choosing supplier, thus, price should be post publicly in the scorecard. As a result, the buyers can easily to choose the supplier that is the most suitable with the buyers’ objectives and financial ability.

- The more information about supplier Metalcraft knows, the more efficient working process is.

- Technology:

- Production technology: To ensure the supplier is using the good method or not. For example, Spin Master Toys want to produce the new types of toys that require very new technology and thanks to this element in scorecard the business can easily to choose the right one.

- The employees qualification

- This element can satisfy the engineer who is responsible the supplier in term of capability to produce the correct required specifications.

- Manufacturing process:

- It plays an important role in scorecard, there will be the detailed information about each production stage and who take responsibility at this task from the very first step in process, in order to connect directly to these staffs for correcting when problems happen. For example, to make a final T-shirt, the manager should control all the steps from choosing cotton to packaging and delivering products to buyers.

Textile[pic 1]

Apparel

- Gantt chart: To know the supplier doing in right time frame and do it has ability to meet the time requirement.

- Managing from the source helps the director or manager to control the whole supply chain, which can eliminate the errors from the beginning.

- Metalcraft’s requirements:

The scorecard not only be used by the buyers but also the supplier, therefore, the buyers need to fulfill which criteria they want from supplier; and then, the supplier can know and improve its capability to satisfy those demands. In this case, each staff in Metalcraft choose different supplier since they come from different department and they look at different factors to make decision. Consequently, the scorecard should include:

- The requirement from different departments such as engineer, purchasing or even financing.

- The objectives of the whole business

- The combination of requirement from all department and put in scorecard.

- Choose the supplier meets most of requirements.

- Other factors:

Recently, there is a study about the link between supply chain and reputation management (Steeves, 2014). Thus, to avoid the risk caused by suppliers’ bad actions, the scorecard must require from the suppliers:

- The quality certification such as GAP, ISO or ASQ -> higher guarantee.

- The certification to show that the materials used is eco-friendly with the environment. For example, Coca Cola reduces its reputation because of contaminating water in India and it is forced to close 58 bottling factories (Coca-Cola, 2014).

- The certification to illustrate the supplier applies good workforce and good human resource strategy for its labors. Ex: Samsung destroyed its image by forcing its workers work in toxic condition in Korea (Barlett, 2015).

- To make sure that the business like Metalcraft can prevent from destroying its reputation by its suppliers’ behaviors.

References

Barlett, S. (2015). Former employees blame Samsung for cancer. Retrieved from http://www.alternet.org/environment/samsung-blame-cancers-former-employees

Coca-Cola forced to close India bottling factoryover excessive water, pollution. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.rt.com/news/167012-coca-cola-factory-closed-india/

Steeves, R. (2014). Supply chain management’s impact on corporate reputation. Retrieved from http://www.insidecounsel.com/2014/01/01/supply-chain-managements-impact-on-corporate-reput

Trade Interchage, (n.d.). Evaluate Supplier Performance. Retrieved from http://www.tradeinterchange.com/SupplierScorecard.aspx