Issue Identification
Boeing Australia Ltd. (BAL) is a relatively new privately owned company and a global extension of the U.S. firm, the Boeing Co. BAL has continued to develop capabilities in the areas of space and communications, site management, and upgrade and maintenance of military aircraft and equipment. Historically BAL has had a myriad of systems encompassed in its diverse systems architecture which was predominantly site-centric in nature. The main issue is the processes. There are redundancies resulting in low productivity and high processing time in procurement processes.

Especially after the appointment of the National Procurement Manager in 1999, various short-term improvements that ensured continuous business …show more content…
BAL has to ensure the necessary procedures for obtaining export licenses in the absence of which delays can be so significant that they can nullify the competitive advantage gained by the leverage. So a new tool to leverage purchases needs to be adopted.

4. Selection of Suppliers is a challenge and limits equal opportunity:
Nature: Operational and Strategic Term: Short and Long Term

BAL suppliers generally needed government accreditation. Occasionally the Commonwealth of Australia would recommend that BAL use certain suppliers for certain purchases. Although the decision was left to BAL, the company supported the Commonwealth in want of better suppliers. Such a supplier selection process was not based on competitive bidding which gave equal opportunity to all the vendors to participate in a particular bid.
Part 4: Environmental and Root Cause Analysis

In the view that BAL is considering to upgrade its procurement platform to include reverse auctions, it is important to understand what benefits an e-procurement system can bring to the organization. What are functional in the company at present and why are they insufficient?

BAL has a “system architecture issue” at present. The company has numerous systems that are based at each site location depending on the separate function of that particular site. This complex systems architecture is leading to inconsistent and non-integrative systems. This in turn prolongs the cycle time by