I forgot one important story.
Toyota used to have a "company store", but it has changed its name to procurement.
I used to sell a lot of Corolla sprinters to this department. Of course, it's an exaggeration, but I was working on price negotiations.
It is my job to aggregate all the car parts prices, investigate the processing cost, submit the cost of one car as an estimated price, and negotiate with the purchasing staff of Toyota itself.
The person I was able to deal with was a wonderful person who later became a managing officer.
In the system at that time, it was customary to run the system all day and night to calculate the cost of the Corolla.
Write the parameters to get the job to run. It was a rule to deliver it to the counter by the time of the cloth.
Finally, I will write the parameters 30 minutes late and take them to the counter. I often found a pile of unusable data when I promised to do it by tomorrow morning with a low head and look at the results the following day.
It was an era when machines (computers) were more vital.
We will talk about the procurement (purchasing, materials, etc.) department this time.
In this blog, I have repeatedly told you about the importance of collaboration.
Imagine when you ask the manufacturer for a quote.
The "request for quotation" asks the design department how much the drawings will come from and how much they will be made.
The procurement person sends a request for a quotation to the manufacturer based on the drawing from the design.
A few days later, the manufacturer's sales staff will call you, "The dimensions here in the drawing are incorrect. Please check." (The exchange of sales and design is behind this)
The procurement staff said, "... Check?"
It will d back to the design.
From the design, "It was .. mm. I will correct the mistake."
The procurement staff will tell the manufacturer as it is.
If you add up this time, you can see that you are spending considerable time.
It's a barren time. There is no change in the information exchanged. We describe this as "information has no added value."
They spent their days with a lonely feeling.
The procurement person always thought.
If we can get more specific specification information from the design, we can "negotiate more".
It was a lonely feeling.
At that point, cost planning activities began.
A cost planning goal is set, and you can propose ideas to reduce the cost to the target value.
It is no longer the point of contact for design and interaction with manufacturers as it has in the past.
I felt that intuitive electricity runs through my brain, saying, "OK, I can demonstrate my bargaining power."
Needless to say, after this, the procurement staff did their job until they were satisfied. But, of course, Kaizen Sight remains.
In this activity, I could hear the designer's intentions fully. As a result, you can find a reasonably priced company from a procurement perspective.
I utilised the information that I had been warming up until now, including overseas.
It was a big harvest this time that I understood the significance of procurement by talking with the designers in various ways.
As a result, we were able to achieve our goals and significantly contributed to the company's profits.
Procurement is a support organisation that supports the core organisation from the perspective of the whole.
However, by working together with the core organisation, I demonstrated my true strength.
Are there any other organisations like this in your company?
You can get great results by yourself, but you get even more power when you work together.