Sourcing Strategies That Are Appropriate to Each of the Four Quadrants of the Kraljic Matrix

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(A): Sourcing strategies that are appropriate to each of the four quadrants of the Kraljic matrix Procurement of parts and services constitute a great part of expenditure of many organizations. This has led to studies on how improvements in purchasing can contribute to an organizations competitive advantage. Kraljic (1983) introduced the portfolio approach for purchasing and supply management. The idea is to minimize supply risk and make the most of buying power. The Kraljic framework is based on two dimensions: profit impact and supply risk (low and high) for classifying materials purchased by an organization. This results in a quadrant that distinguishes between four product categories: bottleneck, non critical, leverage and strategic items, see Fig 1. Each of the four categories requires a distinctive sourcing strategy. (Gelderman and Van Weele 2002) [pic]Figure 1 Kraljic model Product and service positioning matrix Source: Modified from Krajic (1983). Bottleneck items are products that can only be acquired from one supplier or items whose delivery are unreliable but have a low impact on the financial results. These are items with high supply risk but low profit impact. Suppliers have a dominant power position for these products and there is moderate level of interdependency between the buyer and seller (Caniels and Gelderman 2005). The objective of the purchasing strategy for these types of products is to maintain continuity of supply. Purchasing strategy for these products can be acceptance of the dependence relationship while reducing the negative consequences. This can be achieved by volume insurance contract, Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) or security of inventories by keeping extra stocks. Wal-Mart is one of the successful pioneers of the VMI strategy. The Chemical contracts by Shell for offshore chemicals used in their various processing

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