Supplier Collaboration

At Linde Engineering, we believe in building strong, lasting relationships with our suppliers. Their process know-how, flexibility and innovative drive are crucial to our continued success and enable us to deliver higher-quality products faster than our competitors.

We manage our relationships with suppliers via six Global Procurement Centers: PC Europe, PC America, PC Middle East, PC India, PC China, and PC Korea.

Meeting

Procurement Centers (PC)

A PC provides full procurement service for all commodities as well as project requests.

The PC manages the relationships with vendors from assigned supply countries/markets.

The PC is responsible, among other things, for submission of inquiries, negotiations, placement of purchase orders, purchase order execution and supplier qualification and development.

Strategic Procurement

Strategic Procurement monitors the global markets and provides input and services to all PCs.

All procurement activities, including the approval and qualification of new suppliers, follow tailored material groups strategies.

Project Procurement Management

The procurement requirements of each project are managed by the Project Procurement Manager (PPM).

The PPM, as a member of the project team, acts as an interface between projects and the PCs.

The PPM involves PCs in new inquiries and manages the awarding process. Negotiations, however, are conducted by PCs only.

Expediting

The main task of expediting is to ensure on-time delivery in line with the contractual delivery dates of the purchase orders.

Expeditors at Linde monitor the manufacturing progress by receiving a monthly progress report containing information about sub-orders, risks and issues as well as production schedules from the suppliers.

Logistics

Logistics plans, purchases and coordinates international logistics services to ensure material availability on time. The Logistics team contains members in all PCs to cover outbound or inbound deliveries globally.

The relationship management with the Logistics Service Providers (LSP) is coordinated by the Strategic Logistics Team. It is also responsible for the development of the IT landscape, which also includes the IT interface to our suppliers and LSP such as SupplierConnect and Track & Trace.