Purchasing process improvement

The management of these challenges is improved when a pharmacist takes responsibility for the purchasing process. 

A second relationship-building component is personal visits. The purchaser s supplier development team visits at least one supplier a month. They also have supplier representatives come to visit their plant to discuss process improvement corrective actions. This reduces the burden of travel for either group, but allows both groups to remain in close personal contact. This personal contact focuses on the supplier s actual process steps, and it provides the necessary history for open discussions about mutual problems and goals. 

Figure 2 illustrates the process flow after Valvex implemented the ERP system. It used to place purchase orders for materials largely based on anticipated demands and safety stocks. When vendors delivered materials to Valvex, they were received and put away into the warehouses. Materials were then pulled from the warehouse by the manufacturing department, and either returned to the semi-finished goods stockroom awaiting orders/instructions for assembly operations or sent to the finished goods warehouse for customer shipment. The operational processes improved substantially after the ERP system was implemented. However, a number of problems... 

Degraeve, Z. and F Roodhooft. 1999. Improving the efficiency of the purchasing process using total cost of ownership information The case of heating electrodes at CockerillSambre S.A. European Journal of Operational Research. 112 42-53. 

A batch process runs on a zero-wait-time schedule (see Chapter 3). It has been determined that a 20% increase in capacity is possible if three equally sized storage tanks are purchased, and the processing schedule is altered appropriately. The cost of manufacture is 1.5 million/yr with annual revenues of 2.75 million/yr. The internal hurdle rate for process improvements is 20% p.a. over six years. 

Dow Chemical Company purchased the rights to MacaHum s patents (14), initiated a detailed study of the process and other improved syntheses of PPS in the 1950s and early 1960s, and pubUshed the results of their investigation (9,15,16). Clearly, alternative routes to PPS were desirable and the most promising of these involved the nucleophilic self-condensation of cuprous -bromothiophenoxide, carried out at 200—250°C in the soHd state or in the presence of pyridine (16) ... 

The ten leading energy consumers in the food industry use about one-half of the energy of the total food processing industry. About 50% of the end use energy is from natural gas, 15% is from petroleum, and 15% is from from purchased electricity. Some of the electricity is produced from natural gas and petroleum so the source use would be higher for gas and petroleum. There have been improvements in efficiencies in most of these industries but the relationships of industries still hold. 

Quality control tests or improvement of existing processes. Raw materials from various sources can be used in the manufacture of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The raw materials can contain different impurities at various concentrations. Therefore, before the raw material is purchased and used in a full-scale batch its quality should be tested in a small-scale reactor. Existing full-scale procedures are subject to continuous modifications for troubleshooting and for improving process performance. Laboratory reactors used for tests of these two kinds are usually down-scaled reactors or reactors being a part of the full scale-reactor. 

As has already been mentioned in Chapter 2, ISO 9001, Management Systems - Requirements , is increasingly being adopted by laboratories to cover the aspects of their business that are not laboratory based. This is because this Standard is more about controlling the process and service enhancement rather than technical issues. It requires continuous improvement, demonstrating that quality is not a static process. The requirements for such matters as documentation, document control, purchasing and management responsibilities are much the... 

From the precursors and ineffective control elements identified and analysed in the pesticide company it was shown that the improvement of production depends especially on the steering element. The steering element was identified as ineffective seven times out of ten. An ineffective steering element points to a failure of the management and other interconnected sub-processes, such as planning, purchasing, etc. and not to the operators in the primary process as claimed by the management. 

The CDC in the United States invites bids for particular vaccines in a winner-take-all competition (Salkever and Frank 1996). Multiple contracts are sometimes awarded, usually because there is clear evidence that a single bidder would not be able to produce sufficient quantity to meet the expected purchase level however, during the period Salkever and Frank studied (before VFC), there were few bidders in CDC vaccine auctions. Thus, although the bidding process could be modified to deal with acquisition of particular vaccines, such as for flu, it seems unlikely that minor modifications could yield more than minor improvements. 

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