Prof. Dr. Florian Schupp is Senior Vice President Purchasing Automotive OEM at Schaeffler Group and Adjunct Professor at Jacobs University Bremen, both in Germany. He has more than 20 years of purchasing experience in different industries. Dr. Heiko Wöhner is Director Supply Management Automotive OEM at Schaeffler Automotive Buehl GmbH & Co. KG, Bühl, Germany.

• Introduction to the Nature of Purchasing.- Elements of purchasing in nature.- Upskilling for “Purchasing 4.0” – How European Automotive OEMs master the future of purchasing with the right skill set.- 0 shades of grey – externalization of the quality business philosophy to reach zero defects.- The value of contracts in a long-term context – An example based on the Lateran Treaty and the concordat of 1984.- Creativity in purchasing – what a team can do.- “En garde!” – What business negotiators could learn from an épée fencing champion.- The “True” Cost of Mitigating Commodity Price Volatility: Insights from Total Cost of Ownership and Real Options Approach.- Auctions as the most efficient form of negotiations.- Purchasing’s Role as an Influencer of Business Outcomes.- Towards efficient financial supply chains: How to leverage inter-organizational working capital by digitalizing the financial flows.- The importance ofbeing confident: evidence from a supply chain experiment.- Prospects of purchasing – an evaluation model for data mining approaches for preventive quality assurance.- Ethical purchasing – Knowledge- and person-related inhibitors to consumption of fair fashion.- Reframing Buyer-Supplier Relationships: Deep, Sticky, Transient and Gracious.- Innovation scouting: a new challenge for the purchasing function.