Supplier development at CLEAR Communications

Abstract

A purchasing function that focuses on improvement through developing their vendors performance and capability levels, is proactively initiating supplier development programs. Successful development of a buying firms supply source, can lead to benefits that go beyond a company's bottomline, impacting on competitive advantage. Making supplier development a very attractive and viable, strategic weapon in the new millenium. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide insight and generate theory on supplier development in New Zealand, this is done by addressing three research objectives: 1) Distinguish the nature of the relationship between the vendor and the buying firm, who participate in supplier development efforts in New Zealand, 2) Describe supplier development practices in a New Zealand context, 3) Contrast and compare supplier development efforts in New Zealand against overseas literature. In meeting these objectives, a practitioner need has been met. For New Zealand managers, who desire knowledge of strategies specific to their firms' context. Academically this dissertation generates theory and contributes to the growing number of research articles being based on Supplier Development. This dissertation begins with a comprehensive review of the literature. The literature review grounds the research and identifies factors that are fundamental to the supplier development effort. The descriptive detail, needed to address the above objectives and exploratory nature of the research, determined the methodology. A single case of CLEAR Communications Ltd. CLEAR and three of their vendors participated in this study, allowing a more comprehensive understanding of supplier development as both buyer and suppliers', thoughts, practices and perceptions emerged. The fieldwork is presented in a case study fashion, to ease simplicity of comprehension and focus detailed attention on the nature of the supplier development practices and the relationship between CLEAR and their vendors. The findings of the fieldwork are discussed in the fourth chapter, which provides a comparative analysis of the three vendors that participated in the study. The vendors thoughts and perceptions are then contrasted against CLEAR's. With the overall findings being the subject of a comparative analysis between the CLEAR case and the literature. The section concludes by addressing the objectives and presenting recommendations. The final section discusses the limitations of the research, identifies areas for potential research, and summarises the main findings of the study.