Innovative approaches to transportation service procurement : aiming for extensive buyer-supplier collaboration

The purpose of this thesis was to research innovative approaches to tendering in the field of transportation service procurement and find out if they would be viable to replace or supplement traditional ones. Data was gathered from books, research papers and articles written by industry experts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals of the field. The data was analysed and processed by using qualitative methods such as identifying reoccurring themes. Research indicates that new innovative methodologies have emerged to challenge the status quo of transportation service procurement. They take a more collaborative and solution based approach to the entire process, emphasizing the importance of the buyer and the supplier working together rather than being adversaries. However, they are currently only on an experimental level and further investigation and testing should be conducted to determine their viability in practice. The findings suggest that the innovative procurement approaches presented should be considered as strong candidates to supplement current ones, but not necessarily in transportation procurement. Although some aspects of the new methodologies should be implemented to enhance current processes, in a heavily commoditised field like transportation, taking completely new approaches is just not necessary. In addition, there are no clear guidelines as to how to execute procurement with the new methodologies and enough proof does not exist to show whether or not they actually work as promoted