Manufacturers' pursuit of flexible manufacturing and the continuous expansion of production scale have correspondingly increased many difficulties in material management. Compared with BOM materials that directly constitute the final product, MRO materials often bring troubles to procurement management because of their lower prices and various types. However, it is these humble MRO materials whose procurement cost often accounts for 30.35% of the total procurement cost. This paper will introduce the elements of material purchasing management, and how to subdivide and manage suppliers, establish an incentive system for purchasing teams, help purchasing personnel to better purchase and manage MRO materials and provide material support for normal production. 1 MRO, a purchasing management element, is English maintenance, repair &; The abbreviation of Operations, for manufacturers, MRO materials mainly include antistatic products, consumables in the production process, various hand/electric tools, electronic/electrical parts and spare parts on production equipment. In some factories with clean and dust-free requirements, purified products are also a major category of MRO. In addition, some manufacturers also include some chemical products (such as solder paste, tin bars, etc. ) and office supplies (including printing and copying equipment consumables). Different from the direct material (BOM) that constitutes the final product, MRO materials are usually some low-value consumables with complex types and uncertain purchase quantity, so they are also quite different from BOM materials in procurement and inventory management. In the process of purchasing MRO materials and managing suppliers, the purchasing staff of manufacturers can strive for better prices and services by grasping five elements. 1. 1 Quantity is power, which is the basic principle in the negotiation process. The buyer's purchasing quantity is the biggest advantage in negotiation, but how to make rational use of this advantage depends on different purchasing strategies. For BOM materials, especially large OEM/CEM manufacturers, the advantages of purchasing batch are quite obvious. In order to maintain price competitiveness and spread risks, BOM materials often have to maintain two or three suppliers. As for the procurement of MRO materials, the situation is just the opposite. MRO materials are usually low-value consumables with a wide variety, and the purchasing scale of a single commodity is not necessarily large. If we still adopt decentralized procurement, we will reduce our advantages. In this case, the same kind of goods, even different kinds of goods, can be merged and purchased, thus enhancing the power of negotiation. Imagine that if a manufacturer has nearly a thousand projects and the annual purchasing volume is several thousand yuan, if each product is purchased separately, no one will gain the purchasing advantage, and because it has to trade with hundreds of different suppliers, the purchasing cost of the manufacturer is also quite huge. But if these 1000 pieces can be purchased from one or two suppliers, the manufacturer is a big customer with an annual purchase volume of several million, and no supplier will ignore the existence of this customer. 1.2 Select a comprehensive supplier. If we want to merge procurement projects, MRO suppliers are not necessarily material manufacturers or large organizations. Sometimes a small and medium-sized company with strong comprehensive ability may be more able to meet the buyer's needs. For a single material manufacturer, the purchase volume of a single customer may not be very large. Although they have cost advantages, what they offer to buyers is not necessarily the best price, and they rarely reserve a large amount of inventory for a customer alone. However, due to their own systems, large organizations will not reserve inventory for each customer, and the delivery speed is often slow. In contrast, when purchasing through a comprehensive supplier with flexible service, the buyer can often get a special discount on the huge purchase volume, and they can ask the supplier to reserve a certain amount of inventory, so as to minimize their own inventory. When the buyer cancels the purchase order of some materials due to production change or output fluctuation (which is very common for OEM), because most of the inventory is placed with the supplier, this part of the loss can be shared with the supplier, and the supplier can also sell these surplus inventory to other customers through its own sales channels. With the support of supplier inventory management, flexible production and JIT production are ensured in material supply. Not only that, suppliers can also form a very close cooperative relationship with large customers by increasing inventory and providing additional services. Suppliers achieve the goal of small profits but quick turnover through a large number of goods in and out; When customers have other needs, they often become the first choice suppliers. This is actually a win-win situation. 1.3 In the procurement of MRO materials, the time and cost of local procurement and transportation cannot be underestimated. About a quarter of the delivery time of materials is spent on transportation. Because MRO materials are mostly low-value products, long-distance transportation will undoubtedly increase the procurement cost, and sometimes it may even exceed the value of the materials themselves. In fact, many manufacturers have noticed this. For example, when building Starnet Industrial Park in Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, Nokia also invited their main material suppliers such as motherboards, batteries and casings to set up factories in the Development Zone. In the whole Starnet Industrial Park, Nokia's materials can be accessed on demand, basically achieving zero inventory. The Pearl River Delta region has also formed a relatively complete industrial chain, and a good transportation network enables products to be delivered within one day, which is why electronics manufacturers like to put their production bases there. The above examples are also applicable to the procurement of MRO materials. 1.4 application of ERP system The application of ERP (enterprise resource management) system can undoubtedly improve the efficiency of enterprises in using various resources. For the procurement management of MRO materials, the application of ERP system can improve the operation speed, reduce the error rate, enhance the accuracy of the plan, and thus bring about a corresponding decline in procurement costs. But it must be noted that ERP is not omnipotent. For BOM products and other products closely related to output, the application of ERP system can really improve efficiency. But for other miscellaneous goods, if you use ERP indiscriminately, it may be counterproductive. 1.5 Timely and rapid payment is very important for any enterprise. Good supplier relationship is achieved through honest and mutually beneficial cooperation, in which the timeliness of payment is the most important criterion. A good credit record can greatly enhance the buyer's position in the negotiation, and it will not be difficult for the buyer to ask the supplier to extend the payment period. At the same time, a good supplier relationship can often enable the buyer to get the supply in time at a relatively reasonable price when the materials are in short supply, and get a quite favorable price when the supply is sufficient. Of course, it depends on the speed of the whole company's payment process and the cooperation of the financial department. With the arrival of "turbulent economy" and the incentive system of purchasing team, the competition law has changed from competition among companies to competition among supply chain alliances. Good supplier relationship is the basis of building a supply chain alliance, and supplier relationship management has therefore become an important factor in determining the competitiveness of enterprises. Supplier relationship management is a framework, which includes two aspects: supplier segmentation management; And the incentive and monitoring of purchasing personnel. 2. 1 Sub-suppliers In supplier management, we must first distinguish between general suppliers and strategic suppliers. For ordinary suppliers, you can use standard procedures to deal with them, and spend less energy. For strategic suppliers, which needs to be divided into different levels and managed differently, it is necessary to find out who depends on whom and when/how to achieve interdependence. Great Wall Computer Company manages general suppliers and insists on' institutionalized' management. Establish systems such as "no black-box operation" and "avoidance of close relatives" to prevent related transactions. When managing strategic suppliers, the top management of the company usually participates directly. For global suppliers like Microsoft and Intel, almost all computer manufacturers attach great importance to their relationship. Timely delivery and appropriate price tilt are very important to improve the competitiveness of manufacturers. Here: Relationship is also productivity! "No matter what kind of supply and demand relationship, mutual communication and understanding are the key to handling the relationship. We can set some specific goals to encourage conflict resolution and information sharing, and then we can effectively reduce costs and improve quality. For a long-term alliance, we can measure it by cooperation time, the growth of transaction volume and the number of technology upgrades. " 2.2 Segmentation of the supply market The segmentation of suppliers should be based on the segmentation of the supply market. According to the difference of the number of manufacturers and the competitive relationship, the supplier market can be divided into competitive market and monopoly/centralized supply market, and the latter can be manifested as single oligopoly and multi-oligopoly. In a competitive market, the purchasing strategy is to maintain the competitiveness of the supply market; In a multi-oligopoly market, dynamic sequencing should be used to divide the purchase quantity; In the oligopoly market, the buyer's strength is the heaviest weight. For example, packaging suppliers and some component suppliers belong to the competitive supplier market. In this market, there are a large number of suppliers, and suppliers basically have no excess profits. Buyers can make full use of their active right to choose, analyze and predict the supply market and establish a competitive mechanism to limit monopolistic behavior. At the same time, let new competitors have the opportunity to enter their own supplier list and build a dynamic and stable supplier team. For the multi-oligopoly supplier market, buyers mainly rely on bargaining to obtain relatively good supply services. Dynamically sort the oligopolies and divide the purchase share, so as to improve the ranking of buyers in the customer list of oligopolistic suppliers. Through the ranking selection between suppliers and buyers, choose the right suppliers to establish different and in-depth cooperative relations, and win the preferential prices and services of suppliers from the purchase volume and cooperation degree. The oligopoly market is mainly the choice of suppliers and buyers. At this time, for the procurement department, strategy takes second place, and the share of the company's overall strength and purchasing power in the total procurement market is the most important. 2.3 The main cost of stimulating and monitoring the purchasing team in the supply chain of electronic manufacturing industry is the direct materials of products, and there are two factors that affect the cost: the purchase price and the purchase quantity. The former reflects the purchasing staff's understanding of the industry and cooperation with R&D; The latter reflects the communication between purchasing personnel and marketing, R&D, planning and forecasting departments. In purchasing behavior, both of them show how to grasp the best opportunity to negotiate with various suppliers according to the changes of internal demand and external supply. Therefore, the success of supplier relationship management depends on the strategies and measures of the purchaser on the one hand, and the communication and trust between the purchasing team and suppliers on the other. After years of exploration, each enterprise has settled a set of methods for its own supplier selection, evaluation and management. The problem that really bothers purchasing managers generally lies in: how to manage purchasing personnel "people-oriented", motivate them to improve their relationship with suppliers consciously and actively, and always put cost reduction in the first place? The fundamental way to solve the problem is to constantly improve the procurement management system, provide an efficient monitoring system and effective management methods, strengthen incentive management, and avoid the "gray" phenomenon to the maximum extent. In addition, strengthen the training of procurement personnel, including professional procurement skills and communication skills training; It is necessary to train suppliers in time and infiltrate the corporate culture and procurement operation mode of the purchaser into the suppliers. Great Wall Computer Company's management of purchasing team is to give the purchasing department a decline index according to historical experience and competition trend in the same industry. Reward the purchasing team for completing the task, stimulate the enthusiasm of the purchasing team, and help them analyze it realistically if it fails. Although the implementation of institutionalized management has many divisions of labor and complicated procedures, on the surface, it reduces efficiency, but it also avoids the emergence of individual arbitrary behavior, and buyers do not have to consider taking some risky short-term behaviors. And because there is no chance, I won't regret losing it. Really' love their jobs, be loyal to their duties and work hard for a long time' ". Let the purchasing staff feel the sense of accomplishment brought by the work, and stimulate their enthusiasm through material rewards are two important aspects to motivate the purchasing team. Motivation is the support of management, and the premise of effective motivation is clear benchmarks and goals. The establishment of monitoring system and incentive mechanism enables the purchasing team to straighten out the relationship with the company in the face of a large amount of cash flow and logistics, and effective management methods can improve work efficiency. However, how to organically combine the management system and management methods, and at the same time improve efficiency, so that buyers can proceed from the interests of the company, is still a problem to be explored. The supplier management method of AB corner often encounters a thorny problem: at present, when purchasing the products of A company, the quality of the products of B company has surpassed that of A company for a period of time, and the price is lower. What should I do? Choose a or b? If you choose B, your relationship with A is over. If C exceeds B in the future, do you want to establish a new relationship? In order to solve this problem, Great Wall Computer Company's solution is to implement AB angle system, and the supply will be completed by AB two suppliers. B's products are cheap and good, and more A's products are less. It is to let A realize the criteria of choice. When the delivery date is met, the order quantity should satisfy the following formula: order quantity = (quality/price) × relationship, that is, the purchase quantity is directly proportional to the quality of the products supplied and inversely proportional to the product price, and the relationship element is usually regarded as 1 (unqualified suppliers are regarded as 0). In this way, as long as the purchaser is open, fair and just, it will convince supplier A, so as to pay more attention to improving quality and management and strive to do better in the competition. Practice has proved that this is not only a risk-free delivery, but also a more stable long-term relationship.