Enterprises are nowadays exposed to a worldwide competition intensified by huge concentration movements ocurred in the last fifteen years in all economic sectors, as well by the appearance of competitors from new industrialized countries (China, India, Brazil, Eastern Europe, etc.). Large western companies have fastly identified opportunities that arise from suppliers installed in these new countries (global sourcing). In this paper we analyse requirements and performance regarding cost, quality, stability, responsiveness and flexibility of logistic processes associated to international procurement in industries specially engaged in globalization : the automotive industry and the global retailer. After that, we propose a generalization.
Logistics; global sourcing