Purchasing and Supply Management

Course Description

Purchasing and Supply Management teaches the fundamental concepts of purchasing, negotiation and supply management. UWF states that emphasis is placed on strategic sourcing, negotiation, cost management, balanced scorecards, ethics, electronic purchasing, forming supplier partnerships and managing supplier quality, and that the class will provide strategic understanding for the organizational buyer and challenge students with practical examples of purchasing situations relevant within the supply chain.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MAN is the Management prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Commerce, College of Business. It is offered at approximately 8 Florida institutions.

⚠⚠ This is the only MAN course at UWF published by the Department of Commerce rather than Business Administration, and its prerequisite is different too — MAR 3202, a marketing course, rather than a standing requirement or MAN3301. Check that you have the right prerequisite well before registration, because it is not the one the rest of the prefix uses.

Purchasing is the most underrated function in a business degree. In most manufacturing and distribution firms, purchased goods and services are the single largest cost category — frequently more than half of revenue. A percentage point saved on spend drops straight to profit, which is why sourcing decisions get executive attention that the job title does not suggest.

⚠ The shift the course teaches is from price to total cost of ownership. The cheapest unit price is routinely not the cheapest outcome once quality failures, expediting, inventory, tooling, switching and risk are counted. Learning to build and defend a total cost case is the core professional skill here.

Supply chain risk stopped being theoretical in the last several years, and Florida has its own exposure — hurricane season, port dependency at Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville and Port Everglades, and a large share of goods arriving through a small number of nodes. Single sourcing looks efficient until a storm closes a port.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, and prerequisites. It does not publish contact hours or terms of offering for any course. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is derived. The figure applies the standard lecture convention of 15 contact hours per credit, giving 45 hours for 3 semester hours. Confirm the meeting schedule and delivery mode with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the purchasing function and its strategic importance.
• Describe the purchasing process from requisition to payment.
• Distinguish tactical purchasing from strategic sourcing.
• Conduct spend analysis and categorise purchases.
• Apply portfolio approaches to segment purchasing categories.
• Describe make-versus-buy analysis and outsourcing decisions.
• Describe supplier identification, qualification, and evaluation.
• Design and evaluate a request for proposal.
• Apply total cost of ownership analysis rather than unit price comparison.
• Describe cost and price analysis techniques.
• Describe should-cost modelling and cost breakdown analysis.
• Apply negotiation strategy to a supplier relationship.
• Describe contract types and how they allocate risk.
• Describe supplier relationship management and partnership development.
• Describe supplier quality management and its measurement.
• Describe supplier performance measurement and balanced scorecards.
• Describe electronic purchasing systems and e-sourcing.
• Describe supply risk assessment and mitigation strategies.
• Describe the trade-offs of single, dual, and multiple sourcing.
• Describe global sourcing and its added risks and costs.
• Describe ethical obligations and conflicts of interest in purchasing.
• Describe sustainable and socially responsible sourcing.
• Describe legal aspects of purchasing including agency and the UCC.
• Evaluate a sourcing decision and defend the recommendation.

Optional Outcomes

• Apply the material to a real organisation or case study.
• Work effectively in a team with defined roles and deadlines.
• Present and defend a recommendation to a business audience.
• Use AI-assisted tools appropriately and verify their output.
• Build a portfolio artefact suitable for showing an employer.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The purchasing function and its importance
• The purchasing process
• Tactical purchasing versus strategic sourcing
• Spend analysis and categorisation
• Category portfolio approaches
• Make versus buy and outsourcing
• Supplier identification and qualification
• Requests for proposal
• Total cost of ownership
• Cost and price analysis
• Should-cost modelling
• Supplier negotiation
• Contract types and risk allocation
• Supplier relationship management
• Supplier quality management
• Performance measurement and balanced scorecards
• Electronic purchasing and e-sourcing
• Supply risk assessment and mitigation
• Single, dual, and multiple sourcing
• Global sourcing
• Ethics and conflicts of interest
• Sustainable sourcing
• Legal aspects: agency and the UCC
• Evaluating a sourcing decision

Optional Topics

• Applied case studies and live organisations
• Team practice and role definition
• Presenting to a business audience
• AI-assisted tooling and its governance
• Portfolio development

Resources & Tools

• The text the instructor assigns — Monczka's Purchasing and Supply Chain Management is the standard; Handfield and Burt are common alternatives.
• Institute for Supply Management (ismworld.org) — the professional body; the CPSM credential is the recognised one, and student membership is inexpensive.
• ASCM/APICS (ascm.org) — CPIM and CSCP; the broader supply chain credential path if operations interests you as well.
• SAM.gov and Florida's MyFloridaMarketPlace — free; public-sector purchasing is a large employer and its rules are published in full, which makes it unusually good study material.
• Excel — free through UWF; spend analysis, total cost models and supplier scorecards are all built in spreadsheets in practice.
• Supply Chain Dive and the ISM Report on Business — free; current disruption and price conditions, which makes the risk material immediate.
• The UWF library's business databases — included in enrolment; industry reports and practitioner sources sit behind paywalls a student already has access to, and most never find out.
• LinkedIn Learning — frequently free through UWF or a Florida public library card; strong on specific tools, weak on judgement.

Career Pathways

• General and operations manager (SOC 11-1021) — the broadest destination, and the one most graduates reach through a functional role first.
• Human resources specialist (SOC 13-1071) and human resources manager (SOC 11-3121) — the specialist role is the normal entry point; the manager role follows experience.
• Training and development specialist (SOC 13-1151) and compensation and benefits analyst (SOC 13-1141).
• Project management specialist (SOC 13-1082) — and note that project work is entered from every discipline, not only from business.
• Logistician and supply chain analyst (SOC 13-1081), purchasing agent (SOC 13-1023), operations analyst (SOC 13-1111, management analyst).
• Management trainee and rotational programmes — ⚠ these recruit on a fixed annual cycle, often a year ahead. Students who wait until spring of their final year have already missed most of them.
• ⚠ Florida employer landscape: healthcare systems (AdventHealth, Orlando Health, BayCare, Baptist, Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola) are among the state's largest employers and run substantial HR and operations functions; hospitality and theme parks (Disney, Universal, and the cruise lines out of Miami, Port Canaveral and Tampa) are operations-intensive at enormous scale; defence and aerospace (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, and the Navy presence around Pensacola); logistics and distribution around Jacksonville and Central Florida; agriculture and food processing; and state, county and municipal government.
• Small and family business is a genuine Florida destination, not a fallback — the state has a very high rate of small business formation, and the SBDC network at Florida universities, including UWF, provides free consulting.

AI Integration

Management is being changed by AI in two distinct ways, and they need separating. The first is AI as a tool a manager uses. The second is AI as something a manager must govern — deployed in hiring, scheduling, performance evaluation and forecasting, where the consequences fall on people.

• Where AI tools genuinely help managers: drafting documents and correspondence, summarising long material, preparing meeting notes and first-draft plans, analysing survey and operational data, and rehearsing a difficult conversation before having it.
• ⚠ Where they fail: they fabricate confidently — including citations, statutes and figures; they do not know your organisation, your people, or your context; and they produce fluent text that reads as considered when nothing was considered.
• ⚠⚠⚠ Employment decisions are the highest-risk application, and this is not hypothetical. AI screening tools have been shown to reproduce and amplify bias present in historical hiring data. Under United States law the employer is liable for discriminatory outcomes regardless of whether a vendor's tool produced them, and disparate impact does not require intent. The EEOC has issued guidance specifically on this.
• ⚠⚠ Regulation is arriving and it is not uniform. Several jurisdictions now require bias auditing or candidate notification for automated employment decision tools. Where your employees and applicants are located determines what applies — not where your office is.
• Never put employee or applicant personal data into a public AI tool. Personnel records, medical information, disciplinary matters and compensation data must stay in controlled systems. This is a common and serious early-career mistake.
• ⚠ A human must own every consequential decision. "The system flagged it" is not an explanation you can give an employee, a regulator, or a court. Keep a person accountable, and be able to state the reason in plain language.
• Academic integrity: the course policy governs and policies differ. Read the syllabus, ask if unclear, and disclose what you used when asked. In a course teaching judgement, outsourcing the judgement defeats the purpose — which is a practical point, not a moral one.

Special Information

⚠⚠ The statewide title and the UWF title differ — read the description, not the name

• Statewide inventory title: Global Sourcing. UWF publishes it as: Purchasing and Supply Management.
• Global sourcing is a component of UWF's course rather than its whole subject. UWF covers strategic sourcing broadly — domestic and global — along with cost management, supplier quality and electronic purchasing. If a requirement was written specifically against global sourcing, confirm this satisfies it, though the courses are closely related.
• ⚠ The practical advice is the same in every case of title drift: carry a syllabus, and search on the number rather than the name when looking for equivalents at other institutions. SCNS equivalency runs on the number and the content.

⚠⚠ A different department, and a different prerequisite

• UWF publishes this course through the Department of Commerce, while every other MAN course in this batch sits in Business Administration. The prerequisite differs accordingly: MAR 3202, not a standing requirement and not MAN3301.
• ⚠ Check this early. A student assuming the prefix-wide pattern will discover the mismatch at registration, and MAR 3202 may itself carry prerequisites.
• The placement makes sense: purchasing is the mirror image of selling, and the marketing prerequisite reflects that a buyer needs to understand how they are being sold to.

⚠⚠ Total cost of ownership: the idea the course is built on

• Unit price is the visible cost and frequently the smaller one. Quality failures, rework, expediting, inventory carrying, tooling, training, switching costs and end-of-life disposal all belong in the comparison.
• ⚠ The cheapest supplier can be the most expensive outcome, and demonstrating that with numbers is how a purchasing professional earns credibility with a finance function that sees only price.
• Single sourcing buys leverage and volume discounts and concentrates risk. ⚠ Recent years supplied an abundance of evidence on which side of that trade was underweighted, and Florida's hurricane exposure and port concentration make it locally relevant.
• Ethics in purchasing is unusually concrete. Buyers control money and are courted for it. Gifts, hospitality and conflicts of interest have bright-line rules in most organisations and criminal consequences in public procurement — know your employer's policy before you are offered anything.

⚠ Offered concurrently with the graduate MAN5573

• UWF teaches this course alongside its graduate counterpart, MAN5573, with graduate students assigned additional work.
• ⚠ The undergraduate section is not a lighter course. Lectures, readings and examinations are shared; what differs is the extra assignment load on the graduate side. Expect graduate pace.
• This is useful if you are considering an MBA or a graduate HR programme — it is an honest preview of the level, and the instructor is someone who could later write your reference.

Certifications and credentials worth knowing about

• Human resources: SHRM-CP (Society for Human Resource Management) and PHR (HRCI) are the two entry-level credentials. ⚠ SHRM-CP can be sat by students in their final year at SHRM-aligned programmes, and student membership is inexpensive — ask the College of Business whether UWF's HR curriculum is SHRM-aligned, because it changes your eligibility timing.
• Project management: CAPM is designed for people without project experience and is the realistic student credential; PMP requires documented leading experience and comes later. PMI student membership substantially reduces the exam cost.
• Operations and supply chain: APICS/ASCM CPIM and CSCP, and ISM's CPSM for purchasing. Six Sigma Green Belt is widely recognised in manufacturing and healthcare operations.
• ⚠ A degree and a certification do different jobs. The degree is durable; certifications are current, specific, and expire. Employers ask for both and neither substitutes for the other.
• Experience beats both for most of these roles. An internship, a student organisation officer post, or a real project you can describe outperforms a certification with no practice behind it — and SHRM and PMI both run student chapters worth joining.

Transfer, articulation, and how Florida course levels work

In the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit is the level: 1 and 2 are lower division, 3 and 4 upper division, 5 and above graduate. ⚠ A lower-division course generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement — which matters in this prefix, where MAN2021 and MAN3025 both introduce management and only the second is upper division.

⚠⚠ Business programmes add a layer SCNS does not. Many Florida business colleges are AACSB accredited, and AACSB programmes commonly limit how much upper-division business coursework may transfer in — frequently requiring a substantial share to be taken in residence. A course can articulate under SCNS and still not count toward the major. Check the receiving programme's residency rule before relying on a transfer.

⚠ UWF states of its BSBA capstone that it "must be taken at UWF." Residency rules of that kind are common in business programmes and are worth checking early, because they cannot be worked around late.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Lecture with case analysis, team project work, and written and oral reporting. ⚠ Management courses are graded substantially on communication, which surprises students who expected a quantitative business course.
• ⚠ No fee notices appear anywhere in the MAN prefix, and no "permission is required" marking except on the BSBA capstone. Enrolment is gated by standing and by MAN3301.
• Ask about delivery mode. UWF offers substantial online provision in the College of Business, and an online section of a team-based course demands more self-management, not less.
• UWF publishes no contact hours or terms of offering. A course offered in one term only will delay a sequence by a full year if missed — confirm with the department.

MAN4570 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida.