Purchasing

DigiSonos

From: DigiSonos Company Purchasing

To: you

The purchasing employees have just been reorganized into a team-based structure to process internal purchase orders more efficiently. Our teams are responsible for reviewing internal orders for one or more product classes. For example, there is one team that processes purchase orders for raw materials, another for office equipment, etc. A database tracks who is assigned to which team.

Our department distinguishes between "product classes" and "products." The former are types of products (e.g., "laptop," "chair"), the latter are the specific products (e.g., "Latitude X9000", "ThinkPad Z950") sold by one vendor. A product class might include offerings from several different vendors. We buy directly from vendors. Each order might include many products, but goes only to one vendor.

Orders are entered in the system by our employees, who pick from a list of approved products and indicate the desired items and quantities. Our teams then authorize the release of the orders, item by item. This means that they change the status of the items (from 'Requested', to 'Submitted'), so that the orders can be sent electronically to the vendor. Managers might audit the orders, if they want to do so.

The employee who enters the order also specifies the shipping address (one per order). Currently, a paper copy of all internal orders is sent to the Receiving dept. The new system will eliminate the paper trail and instead send them an alert that an order was submitted to the vendor (if needed, model it as an attribute: "date alert sent").

Before the employees look at the list of approved products, our Teams assess product status. They use current and historical prices and delivery errors to decide the status of each product: "Approved" / "Not approved." Right now the Receiving Department sends us data on delivery errors per each product ("% delivery error") that we store.

Thanks again for your help in doing all this.

- Clark Kent, Purchasing Manager