ABSTRACT
Lean purchasing is the introduction of lean principles into the purchasing function. It covers two
important, but separate, areas of professional practice. One is to use lean principles in the governance
of the purchasing department itself. The other involves the purchasing personnel’s use of their
professional knowledge in handling suppliers to help the company in its efforts to build lean supply
chains and networks. The first area is in many ways easier, as the purchasing personnel exercise a fair
amount of control over their own procedures and, consequently, can decide to manage their
department according to lean principles.Usually, this would happenwithin the context of an already
established lean initiative at the company or division level. The second area is more challenging to
handle as it involves other organizations and thus cannot be decided solely by the purchasing
personnel or top managers within a company. Instead, a collaborating process must be applied,
where the purchasing personnel and managers from a company work with the personnel of one or
more suppliers to create the framework for cooperation. This framework for cooperation should
implement lean principles at the supplier, supply chain, and supply network levels, thus benefiting all
companies involved. This chapter discusses these two different areas of lean purchasing.
