Purchasing Management And Departments At Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore

Supplier Selection Criteria

Discuss about the Purchasing Management and Departments.

Purchasing management is one of the important departments within an organization, which is responsible for all types of purchasing activities that are needed to maintain infrastructure within the organization. It is the duty of the purchasing department of an organization to ensure that all the raw materials and goods that are needed for the operation of a business are being properly maintained with the help of proper supply chain. The overall cost and price of the product that are being sold by the organization are deceived by the policies of the purchasing department.

The primary objective of the purchasing department is to ensure that good quality of products is being purchased by the organization at minimum amount of pricing. It is also essential to ensure that the organization have a proper relationship with all the suppliers. By maintaining proper data, it is possible for the purchasing department to keep record of all the relevant information related to business transaction.

The current report will analyze the components of purchasing department within the Temasek Polytechnic of Singapore. This is one of the premium learning institutes of Singapore and the third of its kind in the nation. The education institute is mostly famous for its high level of infrastructure that is being offered to the students. The institute was established in the year 1990 only 30 hectare of plot, which offers all type of modern facilities that are needed for learning procedures. The institute currently has more than 15000 students and almost 1200 administrative staffs. It is essential for the purchasing department of the Polytechnic College to ensure proper policies are being implemented that can ensure smooth functioning of the organization. The current report will focus upon few of the primary elements related to purchasing department of the Temasek Polytechnic that includes criteria for supplier selection, application of ICT in purchasing operation and also the cost analysis of purchasing department.

Sebtin et al., (2015), have mentioned about the importance of setting up for the purchasing goals, which can help to improve upon the cost effectiveness of the policies that have been implemented by an organization. The purchasing management goal for an education institute need to have all the policies that are needed to maintain high level of infrastructure for providing quality education service. In case of Temasek Polytechnic, it is the duty of the purchasing managers to ensure that all the students and the administrative staffs are capable of dealing with the challenge related to the providing of high quality of education service. It is important to develop effective purchasing policies, which can help to ensure that only authorized suppliers can provide materials to the institute. It can also help to ensure that only genuine materials are being obtained for the operation of the institute.

ICT for Purchasing Operations

It is the duty of the purchasing officers to act as one of the responsible working staffs to establish effective relationship with that of the major supplier groups, which will ensure that all the working agents are able to get all types of products that are necessary for the functioning of the organization. Quality of the product is also one of the essential criteria, which needs to be insured by the purchasing manager.

According to Adomßent et al., (2014), proper selection of the suppliers is the initial primary challenge of the purchasing manager. In case of an education institute like Temasek Polytechnic, suppliers need to provide proper technological infrastructure, which is one of the essential part of providing high quality education. It is important to mention in the context that most of the education training plans of the Polytechnic College are made with the help of technology, which includes IT software development program. Hence, it is essential for the suppliers to provide the latest technological equipments that are needed in the process of providing education program. Pepper multimedia equipments and also required to provide presentation, which is regularly needed for all seminar programs that is a major part of the education plan (Mason & Mason, 2016).

Proper laboratory equipments are also few of the important requirements of the applied science and engineering department along with that of the IT education course. The purchasing manager of the university needs to implement proper criteria for the selection of the suppliers for laboratory equipments based on the cost and quality of the materials (Weele & Raaij, 2014). The reliability upon the suppliers is also essential due to the fact that it can help the organization to ensure about the level of safety. One of the issues that may be faced by the purchasing manager of the Temasek Polytechnic is due to the fact that in their region they do not have enough choice of suppliers to select. Hence, in many cases, the Institute will have to depend upon Limited number of suppliers. The quality of the product is one of the important criteria, which will decide upon the quality of education service that have been provided by the institute. It is also important to select the criteria for communication with the suppliers. As it is important for the every organization to depend upon Effective mode of communication with the suppliers, it is important to select the supply chain depending upon the source of communication and the level of efficiency, which can help the organization festival, is healthy relationship with supplier group.

Cost Analysis

Proper selection of the suppliers is one of the primary duties of the purchasing manager, which decides upon the infrastructure level and quality of service provided by the organization.

Implication of the information and communication technology is one of the essential duties of purchasing department management that can help the organization to get proper information related to the supply chain from external environment. As per mentioned by Bernon & Mena (2013), the applications of the ICT tools is an essential component to monitor the performance of supply chain management. It is possible to maintain proper documentation with the help of the process of communication technology that can be used by the purchasing department in an organization for future references. Birou et al., (2016), have added in this context that Application of ICT tools is one of the important part of dealing with Procurement of the resources  for an organization that can be used in future during the time of crisis.

The use of information communication technology is an essential part of all types of education degree programs, which and help ensure that the latest mode of multimedia Technology are being applied in all types of degree courses. This can not only that at the level of understanding of the learners but can also help to deal with the challenges related to the complex level of understanding but can also help in the matters related to the challenges within the process of communication. The uses and information Technology is essential due to the fact that it can help to deal with the overall planning process of the purchasing department.

The application of information communication technology is one of the essential parts of the globalization, which can help an organization to collect all relevant information from the external business environment Perez (2017). Hence, it is possible for the organization to collect information about the demand of the products that are needed for managing their operational activities.  Future planning process can also be implemented with the help of the information that are gathered from ICT. The process for procurement management can be achieved with the help of detail relevant information that is needed as a part of maintaining high level infrastructure within an organization. The supply chain management procedures in an organization can help in the process of coordinating all complex activities that can help to secure all types of requirements within an institute. The Information Technology plays a significant part in implementing purchasing practice for education institutes Temasek Polytechnic. As per the work of Kanapathy et al., (2016), the investment that is made in the purchasing activities of the department, can help to focus upon the challenges that are encountered by the purchasing department. Images of securing infrastructure for an education institute, it is essential to have effective system of information communication technology, which is needed to deal with the challenge related to lack of coordination within the departments of the organization. It is with the help of effective communication technology, which can enable for purchasing manager to get proper information related to the issues and shortages of resources that are encountered by the administrative working staffs and students.

Hence, one of the basic fundamentals of maintaining high level of infrastructure with an education institute can be achieved with the help of securing the infrastructure for ICT.

According to Wengang and Suicheng (2015), one of the important duties of the purchasing department of an organization is to secure the matters related to cost estimation. The cost of the purchasing department can vary depending upon the operational activities that are being conducted within an organization. With application of proper tools, it is possible to calculate about the overall expenditure that is a part of the education institute infrastructure. As Polytechnic College is not only profit making organization, it is important to ensure that the cost of the purchasing department has to be calculated not only based on the profit margin, it also has consider the activities related to providing high quality education service to the society. Hence, it is essential for the purchasing managers not to lower the cost of the purchasing that can compromise upon the quality of education service provided by the institute.

The use of the cost calculating tools is effective due to the fact that it can not only help to deal with the matters related to functioning and current expenditure but can also help to predict the future cost that organization need to spend to maintain sustainability. The software of the accounting tools and account management can be used in this context to get the detailed statistical information about the overall expenditure of the organization. This is one of the major parts of the activities that can lead to deal in the sustainable development. In most of the organizations, the purchasing manager use the tool of average cost, which is one of the essential component that can help to predict the overall cost of the company's infrastructural expenditure.

There are various components which are involved in the purchasing management for maintaining infrastructure within the Temasek Polytechnic. It is the duty of the purchasing manager of the institute to divide the various components of the infrastructure, which can help on to decide the overall expenditure. The cost of purchasing can vary depending upon the type of education that is provided in each of the department. For example, the cost of purchasing products in the social science department is much less compared to that of the applied science department due to the fact that in the later case, high level of infrastructure is needed to set up the laboratory equipments. Hence, it is the duty of the purchasing manager to have separate expenditure list depending upon the requirements of each of the department within the education institute.

It is also their duty to ensure that cost of the purchasing department is calculated by not compromising on the overall quality of the Purchased products and thereby be able to maintain high level of education service quality (Zhao et al., 2016).

Conclusion

In the concluding note, it can be said that the activities related to the purchasing department is one of the essential component of operational activities within an organization. For a reputed education institute like Temasek Polytechnic, it is essential to monitor the activities of the purchasing department, which will ensure that proper infrastructure is maintained within the institute that can help to provide quality education service to the society. Proper selection of suppliers is one of the essential duties of the purchasing department. It is also important to implement proper Information Communication Technology, which is needed for the stakeholders within the organization to communicate about the matters related to product purchasing.

Finally, it is also essential to estimate the overall cost of purchasing product, which is needed to maintain sustainability within the organization.

References

Wengang, Y., & Suicheng, L. (2015). Purchasing Efficacy: Alignment between Purchasing Practice Configurations and Purchasing Competitive Priorities. Journal of Management, 4, 012.

Zhao, C., Xu, G., Tian, Y., Ren, W., Lv, C., Yin, B., & Liang, T. (2016, July). A purchasing management strategy model about grading and classifying railway materials based on material grouping. In Logistics, Informatics and Service Sciences (LISS), 2016 International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

Kanapathy, K., Yee, G. W., Zailani, S., & Aghapour, A. H. (2016). An intra-regional comparison on RoHS practices for green purchasing management among electrical and electronics SMEs in Southeast Asia. International Journal of Procurement Management, 9(3), 249-271.

Perez, C. (2017, January). Conservatism, Overconfidence and Self-attribution Biases Effect on Venezuelan Purchasing Managers. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 12141). Academy of Management.

Birou, L., Lutz, H., & Zsidisin, G. A. (2016). Current state of the art and science: a survey of purchasing and supply management courses and teaching approaches. International Journal of Procurement Management, 9(1), 71-85.

Bernon, M., & Mena, C. (2013). The evolution of customised executive education in supply chain management. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 18(4), 440-453.

Weele, A. J., & Raaij, E. M. (2014). The future of purchasing and supply management research: About relevance and rigor. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 50(1), 56-72.

Sebti, H., Gérard, B. and Perray-Redslob, L., 2015. Identity use of management accounting systems by the members of a professional group: the case of the purchasing function. Comptabilité-Contrôle-Audit, 21(2), pp.13-32.

Adomßent, M., Fischer, D., Godemann, J., Herzig, C., Otte, I., Rieckmann, M., & Timm, J. (2014). Emerging areas in research on higher education for sustainable development–management education, sustainable consumption and perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of cleaner production, 62, 1-7.

Mason, K. F., & Mason, K. F. (2016). Using student activity trends to inform purchasing: a layered model for collection management. Collection Building, 35(2), 54-56.