Purchasing cross-functional teams

Cross-functional teams launched at major opportunities. Purchasing leadership is a key requirement for career paths of high potentials... 

A cross-functional team is one whose members are drawn from different departments to share their expertise. For example, purchasing may set up a cross-functional team to decide where to purchase some new piece of equipment. The team members in this situation would include a representative from maintenance, finance or accounting, production planning, process engineering, and purchasing. 

Cross-functional work teams are formed when there is a specific task to be completed, which requires expertise that is contained within many functions of the organization. For example, a quality improvement team might be formed to reduce defects in a particular process. The members of this team might include a production worker, a product designer, a process engineer, a sales representative, and someone from purchasing. If the team is not given a clearly defined task initially, its first order of business is to define the task and... 

Conflicts easily arise within cross-functional CE teams because of different interpretations leading to confusion and lack of understanding. Each team member focuses on different aspects, like marketing on usability, engineering on functionality, production on manufacturability, and purchasing on affordability [7]. In such situations, communication needs to be predominantly personal and involve face-to-face contact. 

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