Procurement System?

Question

If you were responsible for designing and implementing a new procurement system at a big plant to reduce costs, what problems and opportunities would you have considered in conducting your initial systems investigation?

Answer 1

You will probably manage to get some useful info from this paper titled METHODOLOGY FOR ASSESSMENT OF NATIONAL PROCUREMENT SYSTEMS, especially the checklist at Annex 1 on page 53.

This table (ANNEX 1 BENCHMARKING COMPLIANCE AND PERFORMANCE SHEET at page 53) provides a template that may be used to summarize the findings of the assessment and give an overview of the situation and of the strengths and weaknesses of the system under assessment.

Another useful paper is this one:
Procurement at the United Nations Secretariat has been criticized for its lack of accountability, fairness, and competition as well as its failure to provide goods and services on time. In response to these criticisms, The Expert Group developed comprehensive recommendations to create a procurement system that ensured accountability, fairness, competition, and the economical and timely delivery of goods and services. Altogether, its 36 recommendations aimed at creating a dynamic system that could continuously improve its performance.

Concentrate on the section titled Commonly Identified Characteristics of Effective Procurement Systems (pg 5 onwards at the 2nd link)