Its all about skill and attitude – building relationship with micro small and medium scale suppliers fromthe Indian large scale manufacturing industries context

Most supply chain professionals define buyers as the representatives of buying organisation and bridge between selling and buying firms, but this statement is incomplete from supplier relationship management perspective. Buyers are also need to represent and work for supplier organisation by understanding their problems from ground zero and must formulate action plans to mitigate those problems for creating a strong and loyal supply base. There is no doubt buyers are required to exhibit their skill in this process, but the essence is that they need to show their positive attitude to the extent possible. This strategy is more relevant where large scale buying organisation is having majority of supply base from small scale industries. Our study focus on the ground problems of eastern parts of Indian Micro small and medium enterprises (MSME) associated with large scale sectors and the role of large scale buyers to counter the problems and converting a simple buyer supplier relationship to strong and binding long term partnership. This study also provides an insight to the factors which are leading to the supplier satisfaction attributes by understanding their problems from the root.