I am a firm believer in asking questions and this skill has stood me in good stead over the course of my career.
In Procurement, asking Why has helped me understand why a certain timing belt, mechanical seal, British Standard Steel, etc were required and helped me to anticipate and explore other options before my stakeholder knew they needed a solution/alternative. For example, when I first started working at a manufacturing site, I realized that, over a week, I was processing requisitions for the same timing belt four to five times. When looking into this, I also realized that the timing belt price was under the limit for free delivery, so 9 times out of 10 we had an additional cost for delivery.
I deduced a few things from this:
1) there is something wrong with the timing belt/its make up or how we install/use it.
2) the supplier’s order processor and representative are aware that we were ordering the belt again and again, but they have come to site or picked up the phone to understand why we were ordering the part multiple times. Perhaps for them it was a case of making hay while the sun shone?
3) the engineers who were installing the belt must be fed up with performing the same task practically every second day.
4) we were spending far more on delivery than we should since the consumables supplier were delivering into site a number of times a week, but since “express orders” were deemed “additional” these were not added to the regular delivery and therefore the additional delivery cost was charged. This was additional cost was confirmed by looking at the T&Cs agreement on the back of the paperwork.
First step was: asking the head of engineering, Why are they using so many of these belts. Second step, asking the supplier Why they did not add the belts to a standard order for us to avoid additional delivery costs and Why have they not been to site to discuss the belt failure rate and Why an alternative has not been suggested or tested on the machines. And Why they treated a £5m turn over customer so disrespectfully.
Asking the Why question helped our company to substitute the belt for another more robust one, reduce engineering maintenance and repair cost, eliminate delivery cost by outsourcing the engineering stores to the consumables supplier and making them responsible for any mechanical, non-moving or dead on arrival (DOA) products.
A Strategic Procurement Professional’s key question should be “Why?”. If your stakeholder tells you to procure something and you don’t understand the Why of it, then ask to understand and go beyond the want and deliver “exceptional as standard” service to your stakeholder.
