Each of these four categories requires a distinctive purchasing approach, whose complexity is in proportion to the strategic implications. The company may need to support supply decisions of strategic items with a large battery of analytic techniques, including market analysis, risk analysis, computer simulation and optimization models, price forecasting, and various other kinds of microeconomic analysis. Decisions about bottleneck items may require specific market analysis and decision models for resolution, while vendor and value analysis, price forecasting models, and decision models may come into play on issues affecting leverage materials. Where noncritical items are concerned, simple market analyses, decision policies, and inventory optimization models will normally suffice. As companies like Akzo,
the giant Dutch chemical producer, have found, this
classification permits a more differentiated and hence
better focused approach to the analysis of supply market
data.