Waardetoevoeging en integrasie van diensverskaffers in die chemiese industrie

Abstract

Increasing international competition have forced South African chemical producers to evaluate all factors that can sustain and improve their competitiveness in the global market. Successful supplier utilisation has proven to be a major advantage to Japanese companies in the past forty years, proving that suppliers fulfil a critical role in successful companies. Close collaboration and partnerships between customers and suppliers resulted in value added to the total value chain of the customer, increasing customer profit margins and competitive advantage. Customer-supplier relationships have changed through the last thirty years with the evolution of sourcing practices. Traditional market competition sourcing practices focused on short term financial benefits to the customer, and little or no supplier value added. Collaboration between customer and supplier have resulted in a continuous optimisation of the total value chain in the long term. The collaboration between customer and supplier is successful due to the cultivation of long term relationships built on trust and win-win approaches. The survival and long term financial success of both customer and supplier is the common goal that fuels the continuous improvement of the collaboration relationship, where the customer and supplier strive to improve total cost, delivery, quality and service of the product. The level of supplier value adding in the South African chemical industry was evaluated and found to fall short of the optimal approaches and desired results. Although a mixture of sourcing practices are used, a survey concluded that both customer and supplier identified close collaboration as the preferred sourcing practice. Value adding can be achieved by incorporating collaboration sourcing as a strategic goal of an organisation, and implementing a structured program to achieve collaboration between customer and supplier.