PERFECT

Problem definition

More than half of the total turnover of a modern industrial company in Europe is transferred directly to suppliers. The purchasing and procurement management (PSM) of a company manages these suppliers. Moreover, the majority of deliveries no longer originate from within Germany, but from Europe and abroad. As this network economy with low vertical integration and high dependence on international suppliers is a new phenomenon that has emerged in the last two decades, companies are still struggling to find effective and efficient ways to deal with it. At the same time, the professionalism of human resource management in PSM and the skills of buyers were cited as important performance factors.

Despite this importance, purchasing and procurement management, unlike other disciplines such as marketing or finance, does not have a standardized university curriculum for purchasing and procurement management. This problem is seen at national, European and regional/international level (e.g. in North America).

As a result, companies have to recruit graduates from other disciplines and often spend years bringing them up to a skill level that graduates from other disciplines already have. A major challenge for students is to find suitable university courses during the international exchange and to coordinate these with their course offerings. For the participating universities, the different course contents and depths in the exchange programs make it difficult to teach basic modules in a stringent manner, which are then further expanded for PSM.

Objective

In order to achieve this goal, the overarching objective of the PERFECT (Purchasing Education and Research for European Competence Transfer) project is to develop an empirically validated European best practice curriculum for a Bachelor's and a Master's degree program in Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) and, in the next step, to establish an international study program at the participating universities for higher education in PSM.G he main objective of PERFECT is to develop a pan-European purchasing curriculum. In contrast to the status quo in other disciplines, there is currently no standardized curriculum in higher education in any region of the world to train the buyers of the future.

Approach

First, the project will conduct a benchmarking study based on a conceptual competency model, analyzing best practice examples from educational programs of universities, companies and associations. Secondly, the findings will be validated through a survey of European companies to identify the skills and competences that characterize successful companies and effective and efficient PSM. Thirdly, based on this first comprehensive skills assessment, the PERFECT project will design a European curriculum for procurement. Finally, to promote rapid and wide dissemination, PERFECT will develop a self-assessment tool for PSM skills assessment and prepare a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) for basic PSM skills that can be used by students and companies to assess the level of PSM skills.

If you are interested in contacting us about the project, please contact our secretariat!