Call it purchasing, supply management or sourcing, the role of procurement within organizations is changing significantly. Purchasing departments are moving at last from reactive to proactive status, responding to management demands that they add value to the enterprise rather than retain their traditional role as cost centers. How can organizations maximize the advantages inherent in strategicprocurement? At the same time, how can purchasing managers ''catch up'' and indeed facilitate this paradigm shift? The answer lies in the integrated procurement system (IPS) introduced in this book.Drawing on 65 years as practitioners and professors of procurement, the authors employ a mix of action steps and dramatic case studies to show you how IPS aggressively seeks out added value at four key stages: 1. Determining what to buy; 2. Identifying and developing appropriate relationships with desired sources of supply; 3. Obtaining the lowest costs forpurchasing and converting materials/services; and 4. Ensuring the quality, quantity, and timeliness of the procured materials. A truly universal system, IPS is being successfully adopted by forward-thinking manufacturers, service firms, governments, hospitals, and construction companies. Similarly, IPS encompasses every department from engineering and inventory control to marketing and finance. Each sector will find detailed applications in this book.