Part To The Correct Purchasing Organization example essay topic

While working in procurement at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale, California, there were many processes in place that needed improvements. In this paper I plan to analyze how the organization I worked for improved its' processes. I will provide examples to support the processes and my own ideas for improving them. In my organization we purchased electronics for all the programs within Lockheed Martin that were based in Sunnyvale.

Some of the processes that my organization was improving on were time management, [reducing time to place an order?] reducing the supplier base and reducing requirements. 'The organization assigned the purchasing function usually has several functions and responsibilities. It must acquire items that conform to the requirements specified and obtain these items in time to support manufacturing schedules, and the items must be procured at a minimum cost. ' (Cappels [, page]) Our organization found that too much time was being spent getting the order to our department. The parts had to go through too many people before it finally reached our organization. The engineer began the process by filling out a form and sending it to a planner who would enter it into Sunnyvales' [Sunnyvale's] own computer based program called PROMIS.

PROMIS would route the information to Quality Assurance (Q.A.) to have the proper requirements (called T-codes) added to the part. These requirements called out packaging specifications, supplier quality levels, and other provisions that may be required on a specific part. Once the T-codes had been applied, PROMIS directed the part to the correct purchasing organization. Once our organization received the order in PROMIS they would then direct through PROMIS to the correct employee who handled that specific commodity. Sometimes this process would take months [wow! ]; sometimes it would take days. This often interfered with scheduling and meeting deadlines, which created line shutdowns.

There was no really definite way to determine how long it would take a request to get to our organization to be purchased. One way our organization found to improve the routing process was to create 'Quads' in which there would be one person from each department working together in one area attaining the same goal of procuring a part. This way if any problems occurred we had the correct person right next to us to resolve the issue. There were several times were [when? Where?] I needed to address some requirements that were placed on the order that I felt did not belong. If the order was placed incorrectly it would be held up in shipping and receiving until the problem was resolved.

With the Quads I was able to talk to the engineer and Quality Assurance immediately before placing the order to insure everything was correct. Where as before we would have to track down Quality Assurance or an engineer by email or phone, then wait for them to respond. This process could take weeks. 'Many potential problems may be avoided by checking early in the procurement cycle. ' (Cappels) I believe this process could have been improved even further if the engineer or requestor double-checked their work to insure they were ordering the correct part. Often times we would get simple mistakes like an invalid part number that began with the engineer.

Our supplier base was too large and we were always looking for ways to improve it and make it smaller. All our suppliers had to go through a process with Q.A. in order to get into our database, where they were approved at different levels of quality. 'Quality Assurance determines whether the supplier can furnish items which meet the requirements of design documentation. ' (Cappels) We found one way to reduce our supplier base was through contracts. The contracts were part specific with minimum quantity requirements and pricing. They were only awarded to certain suppliers who could meet all the requirements.

The only way buyers were allowed to deviate from these contracts was to get a signature from the requesting programs' upper management. These contracts helped reduce our supplier base significantly. In my opinion they could also reduce it even more by asking the buyers who their most common suppliers were and how often they were used. I know that I had a list of approximately 20 suppliers that I used on a regular basis, which included the contracted suppliers. I rarely if ever deviated from my list.

I had at least 50 suppliers to choose from in our database that I never used. The biggest complaint I had was with the T-code requirements that were added to the orders. Not only did the suppliers have a hard time understanding them, some of them were redundant or out of date. The problem also lied [was] with Q.A. who would assign unnecessary T-codes because it was something that was always done and they never felt a need to question it. PROMIS would also automatically assign certain T-codes depending on the part that was being required.

Since PROMIS was updated regularly that problem was easily fixed. I believe Q.A. needed to go through the process of reviewing all the T-code requirements and revising them to fit today's standards. In conclusion I feel the organization I worked for and some of its' processes which include other organizations processes needs to do some major changes to become more effective in the way they procure parts. The organizations should continue to analyze their processes for prolonged improvements.

Bibliography

Cappels, Thomas M., Financially Focused Quality. Boca Raton, Florida: St. Lucie Press, 1999.