Strategic Procurement: Strategic purchasing principles and methodologies

This project supports all the course objectives and requires the student to apply nearly all of the strategic purchasing principles and methodologies learned throughout the course. The project involves a literature review and several scenario questions. Consider this project as one paper which will be completed over seven weeks. The complete course project will have three deliverables: (1) Part I, (2) Part II, and (3) Part III.

1. Complete the following:
   a. Part I – Due at the end of Lesson 2:
   i. Submit a complete outline of your entire paper (literature review and projects)
   ii.Submit a list of 5 potential sources (one of which must be your text)
   b. Part 2 – Due at the end of Lesson 4:
   i. Submit a literature review of the foundations of strategic purchasing (your review should include a broad examination of the definition, history, legal aspects, just-in-time, supplier selection, outsourcing, global sourcing, and negotiations). Your review must follow APA format (current edition) and should be 9-10 pages in length. Include a title page and reference page (not counted toward the 9-10 page requirement). You must utilize at least eight sources, one of which must be your text. Please note that you must utilize at least ten sources for the entire paper.
   ii. Refer to the Literature Review and Scholarly Source guidelines shown
   below.
   c. Part 3 – Due at the end of Lesson 7:
   i. Answer the following questions found in the Benton text:
2. Purchasing Decisions & Business Strategy (#2 & 5. p. 43)
3. Effective Materials Manager (#9, p. 84)
4. Just-in-Time Purchasing (#1, 2, 3, 4 & 5, p. 135)
5. Supplier Evaluation (#9, p. 196)
6. Outsourcing (#5 & 9. P. 212)
7. Supplier Partnerships (#1, 2, 4, & 6, p. 252)
8. Total Quality Management (#1, p. 276)
9. Pricing (#1 & 2, p. 304)
10. Negotiations (#2 & 3, p. 344)
11. Equipment Acquisition (#2 & 3, p.381)
    ii.Submit your entire paper (see outline below). Your paper must follow APA format (current edition) and must be 19-20 pages in length. Include a title page and reference page. You must utilize at least ten sources, one of which must be your text.
12. Follow this outline:
    1. Title page
    2. Introduction
    3. Literature Review (should have subsections)
    4. Purchasing Decisions & Business Strategy
    5. Effective Materials Manager
    6. Just-in-Time Purchasing
    7. Supplier Evaluation
    8. Outsourcing
    9. Supplier Partnerships
    10. Total Quality Management
    11. Pricing
    12. Negotiations
    13. Equipment Acquisition
    14. Conclusion
    15. References

LITERATURE REVIEW GUIDELINES
Literature Reviews seek to provide an analysis of the major findings on a given topic by the academic community.
A solid literature review, therefore, will have numerous citations from numerous scholarly sources.
In essence, a literature review is a review of previous studies on a topic, and its main purpose is to provide an exhaustive overview of these previous studies and categorize the findings therein in a systematic way, in order to identify key conclusions that can be drawn and identify gaps in the research.
By default, therefore, a literature review should be full of numerous citations from
numerous sources.

HOW TO FIND A SCHOLARLY SOURCE
What is a Scholarly Source?
Students are often confused about what a scholarly source actually is.
A scholarly source is NOT a newspaper, business magazine, a business-oriented website, a government report, a blog, Wikipedia, an encyclopedia/dictionary of any sort, etc.

A scholarly source IS one that is written for the academic community—for scholars. The academic community is different from the “business professional” community because they are looking for rigorous research and analysis.
Scholarly sources have an extensive review of previous research and often include a hypothesis which the authors seek to test.
Statistical analysis is therefore included as well.
Scholarly sources are “peer-reviewed” meaning, that the editorial board of the journal reviews article submissions for scientific reasoning and acumen.

s”.
How do I use scholarly sources?
Start by reading the abstract at the beginning of an article you think might be a good fit for your assignment. What was the purpose of the article—in other words, what hypothesis/research question were the authors trying to answer?
Skim through the literature review section to see where the authors are coming from in their research.
Skim through the methodology section, which will likely be heavy in statistical analysis.

Focus in particular on the “Discussion” section, where the findings from the research are discussed in greater detail and conclusions are drawn.
When sharing findings from the article in your writing assignment, make sure you actually understand what you are sharing.
If you’re going to quote a statement from the article, make sure it fits within the context of your writing assignment—scholarly sources in particular can be so focused on a particular research question that you have to be sure that you weave in the findings from such sources in an intelligence.