The purpose of this assignment is to identify and apply purchasing and supply chain management concepts/tools to solve supply chain problems and improve supply chain performance. To this purpose, you should find an interesting purchasing or supply chain problem from the real business world and think about how you can apply the concepts/tools that you learned in this course to solve the problem.

More specifically, an individualshould:

• Find a purchasing or supply chain problem fromthereal business world (from his/her own work or from any company)
• Identify specific leaned concepts/tools that can be applied to the problem
• Apply an appropriate concept/tool or a set of appropriate concepts/tools to propose a solution to the problem
• Analyze the expected results that may be obtained when the solution is implemented. This section should also include a comparison between best and worst scenarios of the potential outcomes.

The report must follow the outline below:

1. Executive summary

- Summarize what is the purchasing/supply chain problem, what concepts/tools have been applied to the problem, and what are the expected results of the proposed solution.

2. Background information

- Clearly state whether the problem is from your own work or from business articles/cases. If it is from business articles/cases, provide its source(title, author, name of the journal, date published).

- Briefly introduce the company background (e.g., name, products, business size, location, internal/external interesting facts, etc).

3. Problem Description

- Describe the problem clearly and specifically.

- You should focus on a single PURCHASHING/SUPPLY CHAIN problem, although you can introduce several other issues for informational purposes. General management problems are not acceptable.

- The problem may involve either operational decision-making or process improvement.

- This section must include a problem statement starting with, e.g., "This paper considers the problem of determining ...", "The main problem of the firm is how to ...", etc, either in the beginning or at the end of the section.

4. Concepts/tools that can be applied

- Describe what specific concepts/tools can be applied to the problem and why they are appropriate to the problem. This section should make it clear that you understand the concepts/tools you are about to use.

5. Application of the concepts/tools

- Choose a concept/tool or a set of concepts/tools among the ones provided in section 4 and apply it to propose a solution to the problem.

6. Analysis of expected results

- Analyze the expected results of the proposed solution.

- You should compare between best and worst scenarios after the implementation of the proposed solution and justify the proposed solution clearly.

7. Conclusion