Libertad de acción y libertad espiritual

4.4.1 Introduction

Arcoma AB is at interchange of technology, functionality and design. The company utilizes combination of ergonomic Scandinavian design with engineering to produce innovative radiography systems and components. Arcoma was founded in 1990 by two entrepreneurs. The company is located in Växjö, Sweden and has its headquarters in U.S and Canada (Arcoma.se, 2014). Company has around 50 employees and has three main customers namely Fuji Film, KonicaMinolta and Canon which are buying 70 percent of their finished product. The Company's turnover during last year was approximately 140 Million SEK (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

4.4.2 Company’s view of supplier development

Arcoma has approximately 400 suppliers among which 130 suppliers are delivering to the serial production and these are classified into three categories A, B and C based on purchasing volume. Arcoma has three approaches to select and categorize suppliers that are serial production, spare parts and tools suppliers. Category A supplier covers 75 percent of purchasing, 10 percent of the purchasing is assigned to suppliers B and the rest of them are categorized in suppliers C. Suppliers are both national and international. Arcoma is dependent on their suppliers as they affect company’s performance and success in term of on-time delivery and required quality. The main problem with suppliers is on- time delivery. The order is placed based on three months lead time considering recommendation of marketing department yearly forecast (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

Arcoma needs to have suppliers that are specialist in their filed for product development and can deliver on-time, with high quality and at good price. Dependency on suppliers can be regarded as a barrier for the company. By being medium size company Arcoma thinks that low volume is the main limitation when dealing with suppliers while no bureaucracy structure and fast decision making could be regarded as benefit for the company. Since Arcoma is an innovative company and many big companies wants to be Arcoma's suppliers and want to use Arcoma’s name as their customer. Arcoma is trying to take big customers and wants to grow along with those customers. The company wants to reduce supplier base and is more tilled towards system suppliers (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

54 4.4.3 Supplier development elements

Arcoma communicates with its suppliers mainly by e-mail, phone and Scala system. Moreover, the purchasing manager has meeting with suppliers A and B every year. Meetings with suppliers can be considered as a measure to improve the communication with suppliers. Arcoma does not provide any training to its suppliers as they are already specialist in their fields (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

Company is trying to extend and uses its suppliers for new product development. As company has limited resources in R&D department and mainly want to focus on core competencies, this could be considered as a benefit, on the other hand there is no more risk involved while involving supplier into product development due to agreement with them. Arcoma has regular site visit of supplier A and B each year. By visiting site and face to face meeting with suppliers, company accesses the improvement in production, quality of the processes and equipment. Price could be also discussed during the visit. According to Arcoma policy, suppliers must be certified based on ISO 9001 as it will improve their quality (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

Arcoma with the support of quality and purchasing department conducts quality audits annually and make the supplier aware of their deviation form quality standards, service level and deliveries. The audits could also be conducted any time if there arises some problems. Arcoma does not provide financial and capital support to its suppliers. When it comes to technical support, company helps the suppliers by testing and evaluating prototypes and components. Trust and good communication are important factors while working with suppliers. Arcoma’s management is aware of supplier development importance and prefers to make partnership with suppliers. Company uses alternative sources for simple parts and not for critical. Arcoma uses purchasing agreement based on supplier categories; one year for supplier C and three to five years agreement with suppliers A and B. Arcoma believes that stability and sustainability can be benefit of having commitments with the suppliers (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

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Table 8: Elements level of agreement from company perception

4.4.4 Supplier performance evaluation

Suppliers’ performance affects the company's performance in terms of delivery performance, quality and cost. Company follows its own model to evaluate the supplier’s performance. Company communicates performance evaluation with their suppliers twice a year. Company’s quality and purchasing department conducts annual internal review of supplier’s performance and investigates quality and service level of the suppliers. If supplier performs out of agreement then company asks them to follow the contract, if it happens continuously, company will continue with new supplier (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

Arcoma has specific division for technical purchases which is divided in two groups; one is responsible for buying equipment while other is responsible for measuring supplier performance. Arcoma has up-to-date balance scorecard that reviews monthly supplier delivery and quality performance. The important aspect while evaluating supplier performance is stable suppliers with good economy. Supplier must have company structure that can meet Arcoma's requirements. Arcoma considers supplier’s feedback for improvements. For the company quality is the most important followed by delivery and price (Mustafa, Purchasing manager, 2014).

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Table 9: Performance measures and their level of importance from company perception