Logistics process

As a medium sized company, EB has relied on its internal office staff to manage many functions beyond the job that they were initially hired for. One area that they have not yet hired a dedicated individual for is purchasing and the responsibility for purchasing products and services is done by the individual closest involved in the activity. For example, the Director of Operations is responsible for purchasing raw materials and you as the Director of Logistics is responsible for purchasing the transportation-related services. Since their inception ten years ago, EB has used the same TL provider. In the short time that you have been with EB you have witnesses some issues around missing pickup appointments, incorrectly completing documentation, and invoices that are not correctly billed. You suspect that there are carriers that may be able to provide better service that what you have been experiencing and in the last senior management meeting, you suggested that EB should investigate other carriers that may provide better service. The CEO of EB welcomed the idea and encouraged you to proceed with looking at new carriers but underlined the importance of not spending any additional money if possible over the rates they are paying today. The CEO explained that whatever decision is made regarding the warehouse expansion, it will need capital to pay for and all departments should seek ways to reduce cost or at least not increase it over the short term.

At the same management meeting, purchasing in general was discussed deeper and you also shared your concern that the organization doesn’t have an ethical purchasing policy. You provided a rough estimate that within the office there are probably ten people that routinely purchase goods and services. This ranges from large spends on raw materials, to smaller but still significant spends on things like transportation, office equipment, software, and vehicle leases for example. It is common that most suppliers visit the company around holidays and provide small gifts to the employees that they interact with and it is normal to hear of employees attending dinners and sporting events with suppliers. You offer to provide a basic framework of an ethical purchasing policy that could be adopted for the entire company and the CEO welcomed your idea.

Following the meeting, the CEO has asked you to prepare a preliminary report that will detail the method that you will use in qualifying a potential new supplier of truckload service and consider a series of areas that an eventual ethical purchasing policy would need to include.

Specifically, you have been asked to:

1. Detail the factors that you would use in comparing truckload companies against each other and develop a proposed weight or ranking of the factors according to what you consider to be their level of importance in selecting a new carrier.

2. Consider and discuss the potential areas that a new ethical purchasing policy needs to address. These include: a) the rationale for why EB should have a corporate ethical policy, b) who the policy should be protecting, and c) what ethical criteria should guide decisions on ethical conduct. The CEO is not requesting you develop the actual policy at this time, rather consider the specific areas and discuss each in detail.

Assignment:

Your report should be approximately 1,500 words, and the structure should include a brief introduction to your challenges, your analysis and your recommendation organized separately for each challenge, and finally a conclusion. You can use this Word template to get started. Please submit your assignment in Word (.doc or .docx) format.

For this assignment, you do not need to include a cover page, table of content, or executive summary. However, you are encouraged to include appendices of reference material where appropriate (i.e. computation tables or reference material not required in the discussion portion of your submission).