Procurement 4.0, the impact on supplier relationship management in a case study within the fashion industry

The aim of the Thesis is to analyse the impact of a new trend called “Procurement 4.0” and how it affects supplier relationship management, and the performance of the company. In the current business landscape, characterized by a dynamic and rapidly evolving competitive environment, companies need to be agile to react to sudden changes. Procurement, as a critical function, assumes a fundamental role in this context. Establishing robust partnerships, leveraging external knowledge, and improving relationships with suppliers enable organizations to construct a resilient and sustained competitive advantage. Furthermore, in the present era, companies are deeply involved in digitalization projects, primarily driven by Industry 4.0, aimed at enhancing process efficiency. Consequently, making an in-depth analysis of the adoption of new technologies for supplier relationships management emerges as a meaningful subject. The study has been conducted during the internship period in a company that is involved in the luxury field. The companies’ core business are leather goods products even if in the last years the variety of offered goods increased a lot and now produces clothing, shoes, lot of accessories and even furniture. Having a strong relationship with the supplier side is nowadays fundamental, especially for manufacturing firms, this allows frequent and a secure supply in a market that is continuously changing, increasing the competitive advantage. Therefore, the focus of this Thesis will be the automation/improvement of supplier relationship management using Procurement 4.0 theory. The work will analyse the present literature, with all the main aspects, advantages and disadvantages and providing a real project examples, developed in the company that allows the team to improve the relationship between supplier side and internal department. There won’t be the application of advanced tool that will be mentioned in this text, because the main aim is to demonstrate how small improvement in the process of SRM (supplier relationship management) could bring to substantial advantages (like security of the data, higher efficiency, lower time required to develop the forecast of the material arrival) and finally a possible application of advanced tool/instrument is fundamental to increase the competitive advantage.