Developing a strategic procurement process: a case study at
Boliden AB
Abstract: Boliden is one of the leading mining and smelter companies in the world.
Boliden have mines in Sweden and Ireland and smelters in Sweden, Norway and
Finland. Their main products are copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver.
To make it easier to standardize the procurement process and introduce new
lead-buyers, Boliden has decided to create a procurement manual. The primary
purpose of the Manual is to provide an overview of Bolidens procurement
operations, procurement processes and procurement information systems. As
such, this Manual provides an awareness of mandatory requirements, policy
considerations, guidelines, procedures and best practices. The manual will
contain job descriptions for all roles involved in procurement, instructions
on how to handle communications, purchasing ethics and policies and detailed
descriptions of the procurement process and its sub processes.
In this project this manual is created through interviews and workshops with
relevant personnel. The manual is adopted for presentation at the company
intranet. In the process of creating this manual five main processes are
identified: Governance and administration, strategic sourcing, contracting,
operative procurement and supplier management. These processes are mapped in
flowcharts and presented in the report.
The final conclusions of this report is that in order to be able to control
and measure the procurement process in order to improve it, it has to be
properly mapped.
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