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Omni Case Essay example

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Omni Automated Systems has over 40 years of experience in manufacturing state of the art electronic assembly equipment. The company sells equipment to electronics manufacturers. Bob Waters is a field sales engineer working for Omni and he has received news that he has lost a sale with Gentech Office Equipment Company. Gentech manufactures a variety of office equipment. They have recently fallen behind in the industry and have experienced market share and profit margin erosion. In order to turn this around they are looking to revamp, modernize, and automate its manufacturing facilities. They will need a new soldering line to automate their manufacturing and are looking to purchase a robotic test cell. Steve Anderson is the purchasing agent …show more content…

Eight other firms were competing with Omni and making proposals. Detailed specifications for the test cell would not be available for the preliminary bid phase. They will provide those specifications only when the vendors submit their final bids. Group forces influence buying because there may be a complex set of smaller decisions made or influenced by several individuals. The degree of involvement of each member varies. Three questions are taken into consideration when a decision is being considered, which organizational members take part in the buying process, what is each member’s relative influence in the decision, and what criteria are important to each. All of the deciders from Gentech worked as a group on the purchasing decision each had an involvement and came to a decision as a group. Individuals from the organization make buying decisions. Each member has an individual perspective to offer in evaluating prospective suppliers. Each individual in the decision process were Steven Anderson, Jim Thompson, Carl Jefferson, and Kevin Reilly. Members of the buying center assume different roles throughout the procurement process. The different roles are users, gatekeepers, influencers, deciders, and buyers. The buying center consists of Steven Anderson the purchasing agent, Jim Thompson the manager of Manufacturing Operations, Carl Jefferson the senior engineer of Test Engineering, Kevin Reilly the vice president of northern California operations.

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