Reference visits to the plants of suppliers’ present customers are an important practice in industrial marketing. Yet, studies regarding how to conduct reference visits do not seem to exist. The purpose of the article is first to describe the total process of a reference visit and then to...

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to analyse whether environmental issues form a supplier selection criteria of companies when sourcing third party logistics (3PL) services. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a total of nine cases, where six buyers and three 3PL are...

Purpose – During the past decade the role of purchasing in global competitiveness has been steadily increasing in importance. Similarly, the role of packaging continues to increase in importance because of its dual function in advertising and shipping. The purpose of this paper is to employ...

Purpose – Manufacturing firm reaction to a supply failure is important because buyer dissatisfaction may induce related development or switching costs. The purpose of this paper is to ask: what is the impact of a supply failure and recovery on manufacturing firm dissatisfaction with the...

Purpose – Liberalisation of the European electricity sector has allowed the industrial consumers to freely choose their electricity suppliers. Proliferation of different contract proposals for such supply means that all proposals need to be carefully evaluated for correct supplier renewal...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to verify if Brazilian companies are adopting environmental requirements in the supplier selection process. Further, this paper intends to analyze whether there is a relation between the level of environmental management maturity and the inclusion of...

Presents a description of the implementation of a supplier source integration (SSI) program at a large manufacturing company, and the challenges faced in the pursuit of new processes, methodologies and techniques. Discusses issues pertaining to the management of interfaces with the supplier over...

Purpose – “Business sustainability” refers to the total effort of a company – including its demand and supply chain networks – to reduce the impact on the Earth's life‐ and eco‐systems. The objective of this paper is to describe a business sustainability model based upon a case...

The need for retail and manufacturing companies to better track inventory and raw materials, and the decreasing cost of microchips have led to enhanced interest in automatic identification systems. Retailers continue to face challenges in managing their business due to inconsistencies in data...

Describes research to identify and pilot an improved planning and fulfilment process at Noramco, a manufacturing division of General Pump. The focus was to develop a synchronized system from source to consumption with continuous flow of information and materials for one of Noramco’s main...