From manual to automated purchasing: Case: middle-sized telecom electronics manufacturing unit

Purpose – Business conditions of electronics manufacturers are demanding due to ever shortening product life‐cycles, higher variety and increased outsourcing activity. Even though companies could manage the increasing amount of purchased items with modularity, software‐based customization and well designed product platforms; the case is often so that item count in purchasing is increasing with high rates. On the top of this, time of the purchasing is being largely spent in new component search and management of end of product life cycle components/products. Therefore, organizations are faced to automate all of the possible manual ordering phases in order to increase the productivity of this function. Our purpose in this paper is to reveal how electronics manufacturers could achieve this challenging objective, and what are the possible causes for implementation success/failure.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses case study findings and obtained data from four year period, when middle‐sized electro...

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