Abstract:

Besides of production process, products portfolio or other management functions purchasing is a critical process of each enterprise. This paper aims to explore how different management scientific disciplines are connected to purchasing. The objective of this paper is to study the changing landscape of purchasing relationship with other scientific disciplines. This paper aims to analyse present purchasing integration and understanding with the main focus on case study of non-ferrous metals purchasing and their specifications in Czech Republic. The paper is based on three typologies of qualitative research methodologies: paper review, mind map analysis and case study. The paper systematic review an existing contributions of purchasing and synthetize these into a conceptual framework of purchasing. The Mind map is used for detail analysing of purchasing. Finally case study brings example from non-ferrous metals purchasing in manufacturing company from Czech Republic. This paper shows that each enterprise has to coordinate and manage both all internal and external factors of purchasing. Some enterprises believe that it is enough to implement principles of lean management or a new information and communication system as a solution for critical items identification, but results show that each raw material, sub-assembly or component requires additional fine-tuning or specific decision making process.