Praktikum - VDO Automotive

Beschreibung der Arbeit

I have worked in the departmnent of strategic purchasing. This is devided into several commodities, I assisted the global commodíty manager for printed circuit boards. It was quite intersting to get to know this market. The challenge was on the one hand to deal with the suppliers and to get the best prices. The problem was that once you have had a good price a lot of times the technicians did not agree to source that supplier because they were afraid the quality could be to low. In fact request for quotations are being send out just to those suppliers whiach are qualified, that means the Quality Department examined before the products and confirmed a high quality. But in the sourcing comitee, where you have represenatatives from Quality, Purchasing, Zechnicans and the Project leader, often they forget about it and prefer to source an european supplier that are normally more expendive as those from Asia. What I wanted to explain is that a purchaser does not only have to deal with the suppliers but he has also to convince the project team of the cost savings. Sometimes it is really hard to meet the target price for the resources, especially when you take into account the development of the exchange rate between dolla and euro. Even if this job was from time to time very stressing I liked it. You have a lot of contact with people inside and outside the company and you can see your results. I never worked more than 10 hours a day.