The largest event for all procurement professionals in the south east Europe region
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Irena Rimac Gaspari
DIRECTOR OF CORPORATE PROCUREMENT AT HIDRIA
Irena Rimac Gaspari is the director of corporate procurement at Hidria, which has production locations in Slovenia, Germany, Hungary and China. She has more than 15 years of work experience in procurement and is a long-time member of the Association of Purchasers of Slovenia. At the same time, she is also a regular lecturer at events organized by the Association.
She focused her work in procurement primarily on connecting and strengthening teamwork within the procurement function, which in Hidria connects several business units with different production programs. Within Hidria’s multidisciplinary teams and in cooperation with suppliers, customers also develop innovative solutions that create and contribute higher added value to Hidria through the procurement process.
In 2018, she was named Purchasing Manager of the Year.
FUSION OF PROCUREMENT WITH SUPPLY CHAIN
For most of the critical commodity groups, procurement has become supply chain management. To compete in the actual arena, we must in fact make a flow down of the requirements of our customers to our tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers. When possible, we have to propose our customers what our innovative suppliers are capable to do. In other words, we are expected to influence the choices of our customers by proposing innovative solutions or the outcome of the partnership with our key vendors.
To do this we have to radically transform our function. A simple adaptation is not sufficient.
The primary target of the buyer is no longer the procurement cycle but the integration of the supply chain to exploit its creativity on products and processes, and the reduction of the time to market. Buyers and key suppliers become primary actors of the innovation proposed by sales people to our customers.