ABC was a medium$-$sized Hong Kong$-$based company with two manufacturing plants in China, one in Dongguan and the other in Shanghai with employees of $3,000.$ The company was manufacturing micro$-$wave ovens in three different product lines including oven$-P,$ oven$-Q$ & oven$-$R series. While $P$ & $Q$ models were for its domestic customers, $R$ models were designed for its overseas clients. The three product lines were targeting at different market segments. $40\%$ of their components were nevertheless shared among the three product series and $60\%$ of the components were common to P & Q models. Basically, the components were divided into several categories including the casing, the heater, the glass front door, the electronic control, the magnetron, and the small mechanical and plastic parts. The following was the generic purchasing procedure that ABC was adopting to control its purchasing activities.

User department $($e$.$g$.,$ Production of oven$-$Q$)$ issued a Purchase Request $($PR$)$ to Purchasing Department for a component W $($e$.$g$.,$ light bulb$).$

Purchasing Department negotiated with the supplier about the price of manufacture of $W.$

ABC issued a Purchase Order $($PO$)$ to detailing the specification of $W$ and the required receiving date.

Upon the receipt of order, Receiving Department checked the material against PO and issue Receiving Report $($RR$)$ to Incoming Quality Control $($IQC$)$ Department

IQC checked in accordance with the testing procedure TEST$-$W$101108-$MILSTD and issued a Testing Report $($TR$)$ to Purchasing Department to close the order.

Accounting Department issued a cheque to the supplier upon received an invoice from it$.$

Questions:

Identify the potential disconnects of the purchasing procedure

Given the following $.$problems$/$issues$,$ what are your suggestions to the Purchasing Department?

a$.$ The specification of components and parts were provided by the Design Department which employed a team of engineers in the discipline of electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering. Due to the frequent modification of design to suit the overseas market, the drawing of $W$ was revised frequently that more often than not the engineers made hand$-$writing changes on the drawings and then issued to Purchasing for release.

b$.$ The lead time for IQC to check W was rather long, it usually took three days to complete a full lot testing. As a result, IQC had to release some urgently needed W$\text{'}$s to production for use without testing. Furthermore, the testing equipment was found not able to test the precision as required by the W$\text{'}$s specification.

c$.$ There were three potential suppliers $x,Y$ and $Z$ providing $W$ to ABC. $x$ was good at quality, $Y$ was responsive and Z$\text{'}$s price is competitive.

d$.$ Finally, $Y$ was selected but ABC later found that that due to Y$\text{'}$s capacity constraint, a portion of W was outsourced to Y$\text{'}$s suppliers.

e$.$ There were $31$ staff in the Purchasing Department including the manager. The remaining employees were split into three teams responsible for purchasing all the raw materials and components used to producing oven$-$P$,$ Q & R respectively. To cope with the growth of ABC in overseas market which emphasized much on product differentiation, it was anticipated that oven$-$R series would only share $10\%$ of common parts with oven $R$&$Q$ in future.

f$.$ Recently, supplier $x$ complained about the failure of obtaining the offer from ABC about the purchase of $W.$ They directly appealed to the Managing Director of ABC about the suspected