Strategic Purchasing at the Component Level for an Elevator Manufacturer

Purchasing strategy should be consistent with business strategy. However, previous research into the development of purchasing strategies has typically overlooked the strength of the impact of different components of a product on a manufacturing business´s strategic priorities. This paper presents the application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to the grouping of components by strategic priority as required in the formulation of a purchasing strategy for an electric traction elevator manufacturer. The strategic priorities are seen as quality, availability, cost and time. The relative importance of these is established for the case study, along with the relative importance of the sub-criteria used to measure these criteria. Components of the elevator are assessed to see which have the greatest impact on the sub-criteria (measures) to establish groupings of the components according to their priority in the context of strategic purchasing.