Development of a purchasing portfolio model: an empirical study in a Brazilian hospital

Abstract

This study was motivated by the complexity of managing hospital purchases. This area of activity is characterised as having a great diversity of items to be purchased, classes and suppliers, which impacts the business, costs and health risks for patients in many ways. Our paper presents the development of an approach to managing a purchasing portfolio for a large Brazilian hospital, using Kraljic’s model, the Fuzzy-TOPSIS method and decision rules as methodological resources. We discuss the results and summarise a set of managerial implications for our case study, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of our proposal. This study also contributes to expanding the application domain of Kraljic’s model, in which the Fuzzy-TOPSIS method has proved a flexible tool, and supports solving sorting problems.

Keywords:

• Purchasing
• purchasing portfolio models
• hospital purchasing
• Fuzzy-TOPSIS