Major suppliers to the pharmaceutical firms are manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which form a sub-sector of the chemical industry. The LEAST important driver of supplier power is:

You have just started work as the Supply Chain Manager for Skateboards company These powered skate boards are a huge marketing success and the company owner now wants someone to look at his supply chain and see what efficiencies/savings can be made. One of your remits is to assess the supplier management strategy of the firm to ensure we are getting the most from our relationships in the supply network. You have asked (as a start) for a copy of this weeks purchases from Accounts and someone has kindly written some comments next to each entry on the payment run, this is printed overleaf. Look at this weeks purchases and think about the following;•Strategic importance of the item to the firm.•Supply risk to the firm (risk of non-exclusivity or even supply failure). The substitutability of the product.•The supplier relationship (b)  Next session you will be shown a matrix for categorising types of purchase and assigning suitable supplier strategies to pursue for each category.

Bradley Solutions and Alexander Limited are two well-established suppliers of inexpensive tools. Meanwhile, Weekend Projects is a national chain of retail outlets and wants to find a supplier for a particular tool set that promises to be a big seller. Expected annual sales are 100,000 units (D). Weekend's warehouses operate 50 weeks a year. Management collected data on the two suppliers, which are contained in the table below: Annual Freight Costs Shipping Quantity (Q) Annual Lead Annual Supplier 20,000 40,000 Price/unit(p) Administrative Holding Cost/Unit(H) (L)(wks) $1.5 $1.8 Time Cost Bradley $30,000 $20,000 Alexander $25,000 $22,000 $6 $5 $20,000 $30,000 4 What is the total annual cost for Weekend Projects if the company chooses Alexander as the supplier and determines the shipping quantity at 40,000 units per shipment? $608,600 O $609,600 $606,600 O $607,600