Strategic purchasing practices : the case study of PAUL Bakery UK

Abstract

Traditionally, purchasing has been considered to be an exchange activity between buyers and sellers for a mutual benefit. To some extent, this is the basic nature of purchasing and it will never be obsolete in a small operations scale. However, the leverage of strategic purchasing has been gradually recognized by practitioners and researchers over decades. With an integrated vision, purchasing is no longer a basic function in the or-ganizational structure. Rather, it is now a potential area to develop in order to optimize the input performance specifically in inbound logistics and generally in logistics opera-tions. A strategic development applied in purchasing requires company’s ambition for establishing long-term relationships with their suppliers, negotiating total cost reduction and creating value-added features in supplier partnerships.

The commissioner of this thesis is PAUL Bakery UK. It is one of the fastest growing subsidiaries of PAUL International in France. Operating mostly in London, PAUL UK has a huge business potential for growth. This is the time when the company seeks for new improvement in its operational process to keep pace with the market competitive-ness and support its own expansion. Purchasing at PAUL UK serves mostly for its pro-duction needs and has not yet been built up to its fullest potential. Thus, new develop-ment of sourcing methods shall be helpful with some possible applications in the near future.