Procurement 4.0 Check

With our Fraunhofer Procurement 4.0. Check, we offer you an individual solution for implementing Industry 4.0 in your procurement roadmap. Many companies are looking for the starting point for their digital transformation and would like to analyse their current state of digitization in procurement. Using qualitative and quantitative success factors, we evaluate your procurement department and identify your main areas of action based on a gap analysis. The additional evaluation of your most relevant KPIs, as well as the determination of your maturity level, helps you to identify the status quo and to reach the path to Procurement 4.0 using the structured approach.

The situation:

The fourth industrial revolution includes not only production (Smart Manufacturing/Factory) and logistics (Logistics 4. 0), but also all functional areas of a company, in particular procurement. Digitization creates new technological opportunities and solutions, such as smart contracts, predictive analytics software, new metrics, and big data and real-time availability of data, so companies face new challenges and opportunities. The responsibilities of the buyer are increasingly shifting towards monitoring, controlling, and steering tasks. Operational processes can run almost autonomously.

Due to the constant change in the procurement portfolio, driven by the development in production towards small series production up to batch size 1, procurement must react faster and faster. The goods to be procured are changing towards digital and innovative products and new components that require a new level of technical know-how. Machines or tools for the further processing or refinement of these new components and modules are also to be procured.

Due to increasingly complex technologies and a lack of expertise in certain areas, the company’s R&D department continues to focus on their core competencies and outsource parts of their activities. For this reason, procurement must deal in the future in particular with the procurement of external know-how (innovation sourcing).

Our solution:

We offer 2 solutions:

1. Technological innovations: Procurement of technologies and products that make it possible to meet market and customer requirements for digital solutions, as well as the demands of an increasingly digitalized service creation.

2. Process innovations: The adaptation of procurement processes, structures and ultimately also of employees in procurement to the challenges and opportunities of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Your benefits:

The expanded opportunities resulting from new technologies and changed processes allow the procurement to reposition itself in the supply chain and fulfil its strategic role as a driver of increasing networking and innovator.

The Procurement has interfaces to almost all departments in the company as well as to external partners (especially suppliers). This enables them to identify the need for action at an early stage and to use new control options such as smart analytics and big data to make decisions on an improved data basis for the entire company and the supply chain.

Innovation Sourcing enables the procurement company to offer its product first on the market and thus secures a corresponding market share. Due to the ever-shorter product life cycles and the dynamic market conditions, the acquisition of innovations is essential today to ensure the company’s long-term success.