Over-specification can cause problems to buying organisation, include the following:
- Higher expense due to unnecessary features embedded into the product
- Stifle competition because higher requirements will lead to fewer suppliers in the market are able to supply
- Harder to evaluate the trade-offs between different features and attributes in the specification

There are many types of barriers to entry into a market. Some of these include:
- Economies of Scale: When manufacturing or selling at a large scale, companies are able to avail cost advantages because per unit costs of the product fall. So the more the company produces in quantity the more the benefit. When existing companies have this advantage, it can act as a barrier to entry because a new entrant will have to try to match the scale to achieve the same cost ad-vantage as the existing company. This may not be possible at the initial stage.
- A Differentiated Product: If the product being sold by the existing company or companies is highly differentiated or enjoys strong brand loyalty, then this can act as a strong barrier to entry. The new entrant will have to invest in creating a product with newer and unique features and bene-fits that surpass those offered by the old company. In addition, there will need to be strong efforts to break existing brand loyalties and shift them to a new untested company.
- High Capital Costs: If an industry requires huge capital investments at the onset, then this will act as a barrier to entry for many of the potential entrants. Only those will attempt to enter the competitive fray who have the resources to make this high initial investment.
- Other Cost Advantages: Apart from those cost benefits that come from economies of scale, there are other advantages that an existing firm may enjoy. These include access to the best suppliers, an understanding of existing materials and knowledge of their quality, possession of any necessary and important patents, and proprietary information and technological knowledge. There are also learning advantages, achieved over years of business and experience.
- Cost of Switching: The cost associated with a consumer's move from one company or product or another is called the switching cost. If there are significant switching costs, then a new entrant may not be able to create means of removing these. Or, they may have to offer significant advantage to counter these switching costs at their own expense.
- Distribution Network: Often, distribution relationships are well established and may prove to be a strong barrier to entry for a new company. A new entrant will obviously need access to these dis-tribution channels but will need to invest extra in order to engage distributors who have established relations with existing competitors.
- Suppliers: As with distributors, suppliers may be vital to the operations of a new business. Exist-ing suppliers may have contracts or loyalties with existing companies and may prove to be difficult to form relationships with.
- Legal and Government Created Barriers: Government and regulatory requirements such as permits and licenses may be a strong barrier to entry. There may also be laws governing ways to conduct business that may conflict with a company's practices in other countries.
- Barriers to Exit: Interestingly, barriers to exit may act as a deterrent to entry by new companies. If a company is unable to easily leave a competitive environment in case business does not work out, then it will have to stay and compete even if that is a detrimental business practice. In this case, the company may choose to not enter the market in the first place.

Open-ended problem is something stopping the achievement of an objective or blocking progress. To solve this type of problems, procurement professional should find a way to unblock the block-age. In the above question, high logistics cost is an obstacle to cost cutting objective while suppli-er's incompliance prevents the company to achieve its sustainable objective.

The Kano model is useful in gaining a thorough understanding of a customer's needs. You can translate and transform the resulting verbatims using the voice of the customer table that, subse-quently, becomes an excellent input as the whatsin a quality function deployment (QFD) House of Quality.
The model involves two dimensions:
Achievement (the horizontal axis), which goes from the supplier didn't do it at all to the supplier did it very well.
Satisfaction (the vertical axis), which goes from total dissatisfaction with the product or service to total satisfaction with the product or service.
Dr. Noriaki Kano isolated and identified three levels of customer expectations: that is, what it takes to positively impact customer satisfaction. The figure below portrays the three levels of need: expected, normal, and exciting.

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is a conflict style inventory, which is a tool developed to measure an individual's response to conflict situations.
Genichi Taguchi, a Japanese engineer, proposed several approaches to experimental designs that are sometimes called "Taguchi Methods." These methods utilize two-, three-, and mixed-level fractional factorial designs. Large screening designs seem to be particularly favored by Taguchi adherents.
Six Sigma is a method that provides organizations tools to improve the capability of their business processes. This increase in performance and decrease in process variation helps lead to defect re-duction and improvement in profits, employee morale, and quality of products or services.
Source:
- CIPS study guide page 171-172
- WHAT IS THE KANO MODEL?
LO 3, AC 3.4

Copious amounts of waste can occur in the workplace, particularly in a manufacturing process, but do you know what the eight most commons wastes are and how they impact your organization?
Taiichi Ohno, considered the father of Toyota Production System, created a lean manufacturing framework, which was based on the idea of preserving (or increasing) value with less work. Any-thing that doesn't increase value in the eye of the customer must be considered waste, or "Muda", and every effort should be made to eliminate that waste. The following 8 lean manufacturing wastes, mostly derived from the TPS, have a universal application to businesses today. The acro-nym for the eight wastes is DOWNTIME. Downtime stands for:
- Defects
- Overproduction
- Waiting
- Not utilizing talent
- Transportation
- Inventory excess
- Motion waste
- Excess processing
OWN-IT is the acronym for the process of collecting and analysing the data and information needed in any field SCAMPER is acronym for options addressing the underlying issues and achieving target VA/VE is value analysis and value engineering LO 3, AC 3.4