A company that desires to exert, through its
purchasing activities, some influence over its supplying
sources may choose a relationship strategy that is
somewhere between two extremes: a concurrency
strategy and a partnership strategy. The concurrency
strategy consists in the sharing of the purchased volume
between several suppliers, which belong mainly to the
capacity suppliers category. The buying firm may
simultaneously use different suppliers, change suppliers
over time, or both. Moreover, the percentage of the
total volume allocated to each supplier may vary. As a
consequence, provided that there is a sufficient
number of suppliers, none has the certainty of a sale,
but the buyer is always guaranteed a supplying source.
Clearly this strategy may be appropriate in a context
where the main objective is the minimization of buying
costs. But in a JIT purchasing context, there are a
number of contradictions between the short-term
consequences of the concurrency strategy and JIT
objectives. The main one is that such a strategy is likely
to lead to transactional agreements that will not last:
hence a supplier will not have any incentive to change
its operational mode, as there are no trade-offs, such
as exclusivity or long-term contracts.