2. Selecting Suppliers
Selecting a supplier is generally the single most important decision a buyer can
make. [Ref. 3 :p. 29] In the traditional purchasing operation, many elements that could
be used to select acceptable suppliers are not considered. The supplier is selected
according to lowest price.
Under JIT purchasing, the buyer deals with a limited supplier base. The idea is
to hone the supplier base to only those suppliers that are necessary to meet the business'
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objectives. With the business relying on fewer suppliers, a close relationship must be
established between the organization and the supplier.
Since the supplier is outside the producing organization, the buyer-seller link
must be extremely tight, both behaviorally and logistically, for the JIT system to
function properly. Success requires modifying the traditional buyer-seller interaction,
which placed emphasis on the adversarial role ofthe two parties , to one recognizing the
need for mutual cooperation