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A conformance specification is a specification that defines the technical and physical characteristics and/or measurements of a product, such as physical aspects (e.g. dimensions, colour, and surface finish), design details, material properties, energy requirements, processes, maintenance requirements and operational requirements.
On the other hand, performance specification typically includes list of output or outcome or func-tional requirements. Brand name can be a part of performance specification because brand is a re-minder of quality that customers remember. For example, when talking about Roll Royce, people will think about an elegant car.
Reference:
LO 3, AC 3.1

Life cycle costing is a key asset management tool that takes into account the whole of life implications of planning, acquiring, operating, maintaining and disposing of an asset.
The process is an evaluation method that considers all ownership and management costs. These include;
– Concept and definition;
– Design and development;
– Manufacturing and installation;
– Maintenance;
– Support services; and
– Retirement, remediation and disposal costs.
End of life costs often comprise of decommissioning, removing and disposal costs. In the copier scenario, the end of life costs equal to removal cost, which is $150.

Kano model of excitement and basic quality (Kano et al, 1984; Berger et al, 1993; Matzler et al, 1996) brings a different perspective for the analysis of improvement opportunities in products and services because it takes in consideration the asymmetrical and non-linear relationship between performance and satisfaction. The Kano model classifies customers requirements in three categories (figure 3):
a) Basic Requirements (or Must-be requirement). The basic requirements fulfill the basic func-tions of a product. If they are not present or their performance is insufficient, customers will be extremely dissatisfied.
On the other hand, if they are present or have sufficient performance, they don’t bring satisfaction. Customers see them as prerequisites. For instance, for luxury automobiles, “air bags” are considered basic. A customer won’t feel satisfied if the automobile has “air bag”, however he/she will not buy it if “air bag” is not present.
b) Performance Requirements (or One-dimensional requirements). As for these requirements, satisfaction is proportional to the performance level – the higher the performance, the higher the customer’s satisfaction will be and vice-versa. Gas consumption in automobiles is an example of these requirements. Usually customers explicitly demand performance requirements.
c) Excitement Requirements (or Attractive requirements). These requirements are key to cus-tomer satisfaction. If they are present or have sufficient performance, they will bring superior satisfaction. On the other hand, if they are not present or their performance is insufficient, customers will not get dissatisfied. For instance, a surprise gift at the end of a dinner in a restaurant will certainly bring satisfaction, but it will not cause dissatisfaction if not offered. These requirements are not demanded nor expected by customers.
Two other types of requirements may be identified in the Kano model: neutral and reverse ones. Neutral requirements do not bring either satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Reverse require-ments bring more satisfaction if absent than if present.
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For straight re-buy, the specifications for the products are known. Generally, there will be an existing contract with supplier in place. The business need is challenged annually, only on the annual demand. So effective inventory control will help procurement successfully manage straight re-buy.
Reference:
LO 1, AC 1.1

A product’s life cycle portrays the length of time a product is in the market; from the beginning of its introduction to consumers until it is removed from shelves and phased out. This cycle is often divided into four phases: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Depending on the relevant stage, companies will set an according strategy to achieve their desired targets. Pricing and promotions play a pivotal role in the design of these product life cycle strategies. Therefore, product life cycle management, the process of strategizing ways to continuously support and maintain a product, is seen more and more at pricing mature players and could bring real value to your company.
Introduction phase: during the introduction phase, the new product is introduced to consumers and a substantial amount of money is invested in advertising and marketing campaigns to bring awareness of the product to the customer. In this phase competition is low, but units sold will also correspondingly be quite low as well still. Consumers need to be convinced of the benefits of the product. Lots of articles never make it beyond this phase: e.g. 3D televisions.
Profits in the introduction stage tend to be low or there may even be a loss. This is because the cost of marketing to establish product awareness plus distribution costs can be far higher than the revenue received from sales. This can be offset to a degree by ‘skimming’ price in the very early stages. Skimming a price is where a business charges the highest price that it thinks the market will bear initially until product recognition brings in other buyers and then the price drop.
Growth phase: when it’s shown there is proven demand for the product and consumers are buying it, the next stage will be its growth phase. This phase is punctuated by increasing demand, increas-ing production and an increase in the competitive landscape. Availability of the product is under-standably paramount during this phase, going out of stock is unthinkable during the growth period.
The electric car is an example of a product that is currently in the midst of the growth phase.
Maturity phase: normally the maturity phase is the phase that is characterized by declining production and marketing costs due to synergies and economies of scale. During this phase the first signs of market saturation occur and most consumers or households already own the product. Sales numbers still grow, but at a slower pace. In the maturity phase, price competition becomes intense, a broader range of distribution channels are deployed and competition is more focused on competitive pricing, marginal product differences or the difference in services or promotions. This period in the PLC is often said to be the ‘cash-cow period’.
That being said, the idea of ‘Maturity from the start’ also exists. This occurs when a brand decides to launch a product extension and directly follows up the maturity phase of an earlier version of the product. For example, the iPhoneX followed up from the ‘normal’ iPhone-series and therefore the iPhoneX never had to undergo the introduction or growth phase, but immediately started in its maturity phase.
Decline phase: the final phase of the PLC is entered once the product loses market share to other, newer products and the competitive landscape becomes too hard to survive. During this stage, de-mand declines, companies are left with overstock with prices and margins getting depressed. Therefore retailers and brands normally start stunting with promotions during the decline of the PLC to sell their final stock.
A well-known example of a product that has been through the decline phase were the Nokia phones; sales results dramatically decreased after the introduction of the iPhone.
Reference:
– CIPS study guide page 90
– Adjusting your Pricing Strategy to the Product Life Cycle Stage (omniaretail.com)
– Price Skimming Definition (investopedia.com)
LO 2, AC 2.2

Based on variability, the costs has been classified into three categories, they are fixed, variable and semi variable. Fixed costs, as its name suggests, is fixed in total i.e. irrespective of the number of output produced. Variable costs vary with the number of output produced. Semi-variable is the type of costs, which have the characteristics of both fixed costs and variable costs (Source: Key Differences).
Among above costs, leasing and depreciation are relatively static and do not change if volume of business activities increase or reduce.
Packaging, utilities and annual business rate (tax) are variable costs.
Reference:
LO 1, AC 1.2

According to Michael Porter, the threat of substitution, is a function of three factors:
* The relative value/ price of a substitute compared to an industry’s product
* The cost of switching to the substitute
* The buyer’s propensity to switch
(Porter, Michael E.. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (p. 278). Free Press. Kindle Edition.) Reference:
LO 2, AC 2.2

Value analysis is often defined as a systematic process for improving the value of a product, service or project. It is typically used in the following ways:
– To determine the value of each component used
– To find cost reduction opportunities by optimising the components used Segment analysis helps procurement and supply to shape and manage the supply markets.
There is no concept known as Variety reduction.
Standardisation is the process which is used to reduce varieties of products or parts.
In this scenario, the company’s objective is cost reduction, then value analysis or value engineering is more likely to be applied. Also the company aims at reducing variety, standardisation can be combined with value analysis to produce the best results.
LO 3, AC 3.4

Competitive benchmarking
Competitive benchmarking is a direct competitor-to-competitor comparison of a product, service, process, or method. This form of benchmarking provides an opportunity to know yourself and your competition better; combine forces against another common competitor. An example of competitive benchmarking within the Department of Defense, might include contrasting Army and Air Force supply systems for Joint initiatives. Within the private sector, two or more American car companies might benchmark for mutual benefit against common international competitor; or, rival chemical companies benchmark for environmental compliance.
Benefits
– Comparing like processes
– Know your competition better
– Possible partnership
– Useful for planning and setting goals
– Similar regulatory issues
Challenges
– Difficult legal issues
– Relatively low performance improvement
– Threatening
– Limited by trade secrets
– May provide misleading information
– May not get best-in-class comparisons
– Competitors could capitalize on your weaknesses
Source: USN Benchmarking Handbook
Reference:
LO 1, AC 1.3

Detailed Explanation:
A (Production materials): These are directly tied to the production of goods and are variable costs.
D (Manufacturing staff wages): Labour directly involved in the production process is a direct cost.
Indirect costs like salaries, depreciation, and insurance are related to overheads and not directly tied to production. Reference: CIPS Level 4, Cost Structures.

With strategic suppliers, the aim should be to work co-operatively with them to find ways of reducing costs to achieve a target cost. It is necessary to work with the suppliers in carrying out open book costing by having first persuaded them of the need to do it. Open book can be used to establish a Target Cost, a Compensation Event value and can eventually be used to ensure the payment of actual costs to an organization. A number of forms of contract cater for this functionality of which only the NEC goes to into any great depth of methodology.
If the suppliers worry about leak of confidential information, procurement team can suggest them to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The buying organisation should also comply with data protection regulations. The Employer / individual responsible for a project’s costs should ultimately take a pragmatic and sensible approach with regard to commercially or personally sensitive data provided by the contractor. The primary goal of all open book cost management is to provide Employer comfort and security in the accuracy of commercial data; this effectively means striking a balance between undertaking full audits and blind faith.

ISO/IEC 27001 is widely known, providing requirements for an information security management system (ISMS), though there are more than a dozen standards in the ISO/IEC 27000 family. Using them enables organizations of any kind to manage the security of assets such as financial infor-mation, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted by third parties.
LO 3, AC 3.1

Value Analysis (VA) is concerned with existing products. It involves a current product being ana-lysed and evaluated by a team, to reduce costs, improve product function or both. Value Analysis exercises use a plan which step-by-step, methodically evaluates the product in a range of areas. These include costs, function, alternative components and design aspects such as ease of manufac-ture and assembly.
According to the Value Methodology standard, there are 6 phases to a Value Analysis:
– Information
– Function Analysis
– Creative
– Evaluation
– Development
– Presentation
1. Information
In this first phase, the team attempts to understand why the project exists and who or what it is to produce. They obtain project data, present the original design or product concepts, and understand the project scope. Schedule, costs, budget, risk, and other non-monetary issues are studied until the team is comfortable with the concept of the project, what it is to produce, and who its end users are.
This step also includes things like site visits and meetings with the project team, if required. Project documents like plans, drawings, specifications, and reports are obtained and the value engineering team becomes familiar with them.
2. Function Analysis
This step represents the meat and potatoes (core) of the value analysis. The team attempts to determine the functions the project serves. Functions come in two forms:
– Primary functions are those that represent the reason for the project’s existence, for example, a building project might have adequate plumbing as a primary function.
– Secondary functions are those that the project serves without being core to the project. For example, a building project might have as a secondary function maintaining the view of the neighboring building.
The functions are described in verb/noun pairs, such as “supply water to all suites,” or “Maintain view of adjacent park.” For a project like this, the team should come up with 10 – 15 functions. You might be surprised how many secondary functions exist for most projects. Subject matter experts would be a great resource, but in their absence an appropriate level of brainstorming and analysis are necessary.
The team should also identify value-mismatched functions to focus the improvements on. For ex-ample, maybe a large obstruction is preventing the view of the adjacent park from too many suites resulting in a potential mismatch of the cost vs. functional benefit. This is investigated in the next step.
3. Creative
This phase represents the generation of improvement ideas. The team develops alternative ways that the project can perform the functions that have been identified. At this step, the functions are looked at individually and each one gets a list of alternative ways to perform the function. There is no judging between the importance of the various functions.
4. Evaluation
At this stage, a priority is given to each project improvement idea. The ideas are discussed and potential costs are determined. Once the risk-reward profile of each idea is itemized, the team has determined which ideas are worth implementing into the project or feature.
A few years ago, there was a pedestrian bridge built near my home which was originally designed for emergency vehicles. Although this type of design is standard practice for the bridges of this type, the value engineering team identified that emergency vehicle passage was not needed (verb/noun pair = ‘maintain passage for emergency vehicles’). Also, a second major outcome of this value analysis was to change the design to an aesthetic, curved bridge because it was in a prominent location. The redesign of the bridge cost some money but this was more than made up by the cost of the bridge construction. Thus, the value analysis paid for itself about 10 times over in the reduced construction cost, and the bridge was significantly more aesthetic.
5. Development
Once the value improvement options have been whittled down to the ones that make sense, the value engineering team develop the options to the point of passing them back to the original project team. They must be clearly written and explained so that the project owner and stakeholders can understand how it benefits the project and act on it. Any potential negative factors are identified. Potential costs and cost savings are itemized.
6. Presentation
This last phase represents the presentation of the alternatives to the stakeholders. Often value engineering represents a change in the normal practices that people are used to, an “out of the box thinking.” Thus the best salesperson on the team is often the best one to do the presentation.
Some typical products of a value engineering analysis are a briefing document, risk analy-sis, present worth analysis, advantages vs. disadvantages, etc.
Reference:
LO 3, AC 3.4

Detailed Explanation:When the buyer does not align with the supplier’s strategic interests, the supplier may take advantage by charging higher prices to compensate for the perceived lack of value. This approach maximizes the supplier’s benefit from a transactional relationship. Reference: CIPS Level 4, Supplier Engagement and Negotiation Strategies.

Open-ended problem is something stopping the achievement of an objective or blocking progress. To solve this type of problems, procurement professional should find a way to unblock the block-age. In the above question, high logistics cost is an obstacle to cost cutting objective while suppli-er’s incompliance prevents the company to achieve its sustainable objective.

There are two major types of specification: conformance and performance specifications. They have the following characteristics:
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Since performance specification is often a list of outputs or outcomes, it usually takes less time to develop than conformance specification.

Specifications for through-life contracts must be clear. They should use precise technical language and avoid any ambiguity as much as possible. In most cases, ‘good quality’ is ambiguous. The con-tractor doesn’t know exactly which product the buying organisation needs and how to supply that product.
Other notices for description of requirement are:
– Short and simply description
– Clear definitions at the beginning of the documents
– Clarify abbreviations (if any), but abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible
– Avoid any ‘slang’
– Use imperative forms of language whenever possible.
LO 3, AC 3.2