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The Purchasing Chessboard: 64 Methods to Reduce Costs and Increase Value with Suppliers

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The bestselling Purchasing Chessboard® concept, used by hundreds of corporations worldwide to reduce costs and increase value with suppliers, is the topic of this successful professional book now published in its third edition. The 64 squares on the Purchasing Chessboard provide a wealth of methods that can be applied either individually or in combination. And because many of these methods are not customarily used by procurement, the Purchasing Chessboard is also the perfect tool for helping procurement professionals to think and act outside the box and find new solutions. A well tested concept that works across all industries and all categories in any given situation, it is little wonder that business leaders and procurement professionals alike are excited by, and enjoy strategizing around, the Purchasing Chessboard. It encourages greater rigor and creativity and the building of world class capabilities.



The explosive growth in analytics and the rise in the number of specialists in procurement practice have taken the application of the Purchasing Chessboard to new levels. This third edition of the book includes a rich assortment of case examples to reflect the lessons learned across geographies and industries. Some of the chapters have also been updated to accurately reflect these trends.

260 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 11, 2017

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About the author

Christian Schuh

16 books4 followers
Christian Schuh is a trained engineer with degrees in aeromechanics and artificial intelligence (doctorate) from TU Graz. After three years at Unilever, he joined A.T. Kearney in 1995. His career in consulting has taken him to exciting places like NASA's Johnson Space Center and mega-factories in China with more than 300,000 workers. He spent many years advising car makers in Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Brazil and the US and is more recently focusing on high tech firms in the US and in Taiwan.

He is best known for his books The Purchasing Chessboard and The CPO and is currently launching two new books, one on Supplier Relationship management with Michael Strohmer, Stephen Easton Mike Hales and Alenka Triplat and another one on Corporate Plasticity with Laurent Chevreux, Wim Plaizier, Wayne Brown and Alenka Triplat.

He lives in the historic center of Vienna, Austria.

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for Vishnu.
70 reviews
October 4, 2022
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS ON THE INSIGHTS OF PURCHASING AND ALL THE BASICS EXPLAINED IN A SMIPLE AND UNDERTANDABLE WAY

WORTY READING FOR LIFE AND ANY PROCURMENT OR BUSSINESS PERSONAL
Profile Image for Yor.
306 reviews13 followers
July 5, 2020
Mis amigos, mis comentarios sobre el libro “The Purchasing Chessboard: 64 Methods to Reduce Costs and Increase Value with Suppliers” de los autores de A.T. Kearney escrito por Christian Schuh, Joseph L. Raudabaugh, Robert Kromoser, Michael F. Strohmer, Alenka Triplat, James Pearce.

El libro se distribuye en 4 partes principales.
1. Purchasing between a rock and an hard place. (Introducción al mundo de compras.)
2. From 4 strategies to 64 methods. (La introducción de pasar a 4 estrategias básicas para los 64 métodos.)
3. Using the purchasing chessboard (manos a la obra, usando, comprendiendo los 64 métodos).
4. The Purchasing chessboard. (El uso detallado e ilustrado de cada metodo)

En principio inicia por que la historia nos indica que hay dos fuerzas que permiten reconocer el alza o caída de una civilización dominante, estas fuerzas son: poder de abastecimiento, y demanda, en alta y baja.

Partiendo desde la concepción del cuadro por 4 estrategias básicas de manejo de abastecimiento que sería 1. alto poder de abastecimiento, 2. alto poder de abastecimiento y demanda, 3. bajo poder de abastecimiento, 4 bajo poder de abastecimiento y demanda.

Conforme avanzamos en la gestión y manejo inteligente de las estrategias de las 4 básicos puntos podemos pasar a 16 niveles de estrategia, y luego de estos 16 se detalla como se encajan los 64 métodos o estrategias para el manejo adecuado del gasto, servicios, y proveedores, abajo los 16 niveles:

1. Demand Management, Co-sourcing, Volume bundling, Commercial data mining.
2. Change nature of demand, Risk management, Innovation breakthrough, Technical data mining, Re-specification.
3. Levarange competition among suppliers, Globalization, Tendering, Target pricing, Supplier pricing review.
4. Seek joint advantage with supplier, Integrated operation planning, Value chain management, Cost partnership, Value partnership.

Al pasar a usar el tablero de compras, el primer paso es clasificar apropiadamente los gastos, categorias, entender el detalle de lo que se necesita adquirir en la cadena, identificar históricos si caso existe data que nos permita analizar.

El segundo paso es mapear los volúmenes de abastecimiento en el Tablero de Ajedrez de Compras. Al posicionar elementos de gasto a lo largo del poder de demanda eje, uno debe considerar lo siguiente:
¿Qué participación del mercado de ventas relevante (de una región) tiene la empresa?
¿Qué perspectivas de crecimiento ofrece la empresa a los proveedores?
¿Qué posibilidades de mejora de competencias ofrece los proveedores a la empresa?
¿Cómo pueden los proveedores mejorar su imagen trabajando para la empresa?

Estos procesos de reflexión y búsqueda sobre proveedores calificados para suministrar la necesidad también, debemos entender los componentes internos y sus indicadores, ejemplo para construir algo cuales son los materiales, cómo se comporta en el eje de poder de abastecimiento y demanda, en el libro vemos un ejemplo de cómo identificar esto con el tablero de ajedrez de compras, una concepto revolucionario que simplifica mucho el proceso de razonamiento de encontrar los costos internos y posibles estrategias a considerar según el segmento del tablero.

Así en la siguiente parte y final, encontraremos detalladamente las explicaciones por medio de ejemplos e ilustraciones como usar cada método en el tablero del ajedrez de compras.

Frases celebres para reflexionar:
“Modern purchasing combines technical and commercial information with knowledge of the
supply markets and is therefore well prepared for negotiations with suppliers. The goal is to know more about the subject matter of the negotiations than the supplier does.”


“Rising energy prices … agile companies can exploit high energy prices for their own benefit, for instance by supporting technological innovations to solve the crisis. Nonetheless, most suppliers simply use price increases as an argument for raising their own profits.”

“The Purchasing Chessboard is used to assign strategies and methods for cutting costs and increasing value to specific sourcing volumes. The first step is to find an appropriate classification for a given sourcing volume.”
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