“Supply chain,” “supply-chain management,” “e-procurement,” and other similar terms are commonly used interchangeably although they have different meanings and different levels of applicability for transit agencies. Leveraging these concepts to achieve the desired gains requires a basic understanding of the terminology, the concepts, a self-assessment of agency capabilities, and the will to make the investments needed in technology and personnel—or the willingness to outsource, if necessary. In theory, the advantage of the supply-chain approach is that a community of trading partners can leverage their respective core competencies, thus producing greater value through their cumulative efforts than would be possible if they were not collaborating. In such an integrated supply chain, the end customer is the focus of the entire supplychain community, with unfiltered electronic information exchanged freely among community members. This exchange allows trading partners to leverage information to reduce miscommunication (i.e., waste) among firms and enhances internal processes (i.e., increases value). Creating such partnering relationships requires a long-term commitment of time and resources to develop the trust needed to freely share information among organizations and is a major challenge to creating supply-chain communities. e-Procurement is the business-to-business purchase and sale of supplies and services over the Internet. e-Procurement reflects the application of supply-chain principles to leverage the Internet’s ability to provide faster, more cost-efficient means of communicating information between buyers and sellers. Research cites the ability of e-procurement techniques to reduce purchase and transaction costs, but the value and number of e-procurement transactions remains small (less than 10% of all business purchases in the fourth quarter of 2001 [1]). However, this share is growing rapidly, with e-procurement viewed as an integral function for large purchasers. Driving this growth are reported savings of 15% to 20% on item costs and up to 80% in process cost savings (2,3). e-Procurement takes five primary forms: 1. Automated purchasing systems; 2. Internet market exchanges (i.e., e-markets); 3. Buyers’ consortia; 4. Industry portals; and 5. Private trading exchanges. Of these, automated purchasing systems—typically software purchased from a vendor to standardize buying practices and aggregate purchasing volumes for better pricing—are the most popular. Online auctions are popular with large corporations while governmental, educational, and non-profit entities tend to favor Internet market exchanges (i.e., e-markets)(4). Current transit industry e-markets exist through providers such as iRail.com and iBusXchange.com (both of which are part of the same company), with an American Public Transportation Association–sponsored (APTA-sponsored) industry portal— TransportMAX.com—under development. iRail/iBusXchange’s current and TransportMAX’s planned service offerings duplicate functions, but only the iRail/iBusXchange services are currently available for use (although TransportMAX is in the testing stage of posting requests for quotations [RFQs]). Securing seller support and participation in e-procurement activities is a major problem for all e-procurement forms (5) and a special problem for the transit industry. APTA’s “Procurement Task Force Status Report” indicates that the “health of the [transit vendor] industry is not good,” with difficulty in attracting suppliers and vendor complaints of low margins and slow payments resulting in unacceptable levels of risk (6). Additionally, the task force observes that current agency purchasing practices often result in the buying of substandard products. As described, this is a particularly challenging environment in which to apply a supply-chain approach to procurement—an environment in which trust is a key component in developing the collaborative environment essential for effective supply-chain partnering. Project research on non-transit, fleet-focused organizations indicates that few firms have achieved a significant degree of supply-chain integration for parts and materials support, with Internet parts sourcing at most companies limited to the use of online vendor catalogs. Most firms recognize the Internet as an integral tool of future parts sourcing but remain unclear as to how to progress to a higher level of integration consistent with reports from other industries and sources (7). However, anecdotal information from fleet-industry insiders suggests that supply-chain integration is more advanced and pervasive at large carrier fleet operations than can be confirmed in the literature. Success stories identified for fleet-based parts or inventory management generally involved some type of systems implementation, either vehicle maintenance management or warehouse inventory systems. However, available information did not indicate the extent to which these systems were tied to automated purchasing systems that support e-procurement. Management personnel at two less-than-truckload carriers and at a major truck-leasing company acknowledged the use of electronic vendor links by their respective firms. However, these implementations used prime vendors and contractors serving as lead suppliers in handling such procurements, usually on a multiyear contract basis (to defray the start-up costs of integrating information systems). This form of “outsourced purchasing” is conceptually similar to the use of on-site contractors to provide vehicle parts and inventory support, as is used by the U.S. military and the Texas DOT (TxDOT). The strategic basis for such arrangements is the vendor’s core competency in areas of parts procurement and inventory management and the superior buying power of such firms. For fleets, asset-management decisions are the fundamental drivers for equipment parts and inventory needs. Relevant decisions include choices about replacement strategies, degree of standardization, vehicle mix, maintenance source (in-house versus outsourced), and maintenance focus (preventive maintenance or remedial-focused), among others. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting