A review of Best Locations for a Global Purchasing Headquarters in the Pacific Rim. Review of 10 General Criteria. Details of criteria and commentary with tailored analysis provided to clients.

1. Top Locations for Purchasing
Headquarters in the Pacific Rim
Bill Kohnen
A guideline for considering location of
Pac Rim Purchasing Headquarters

2. General Assumptions
• Assumptions are for Global corporations
• Professional Purchasing group
• Total corporate spend is a significant portion
of revenue – Greater than 45%
• Supporting groups such as Supplier
Quality, Supplier Engineering, Logistics are
robust and global in focus
• Spending is suppliers used are global
supporting global sites

3. Criteria for Evaluation
• Access to best global suppliers
• Infrastructure
• Airports and transportation
• Ease of doing global business
• Diversity of talent and people
• Safety
• Currency and Financial institutions
• Government support
• Language
• General Stability

4. Rating
• 1 is very bad
• 5 moderate
• 10 is Excellent

5. Locations Evaluated
• Singapore
• Hong Kong
• Silicon Valley
• Shanghai
• Seoul
• Penang
• Jakarta
• Tokyo
• Tai Pei
• Los Angeles
• Manila
• Kuala Lumpur

6. Location Access to Infras Airport Ease of Diversity Saf Curren Govern Lang Stabi Total
best tructu s and doing of talent ety cy and ment uage lity
global re transpo global and Financi suppor
suppliers rtation business people al t
institut
ions
Singapore 8 9 10 9 9 9 8.5 9.5 9 9 90
Hong Kong 8 7 9 8.5 8 8 8 8 8 8 80.5
Silicon 7 8 6 8 10 6. 8 5 9 9
valley
5 76.5
Shang Hai 6 7 8 6 6 6 5 5 4 8.5 61.5
Seoul 6 7 8 6.5 6 7 6 6 6 6 64.5
Penang 4 5 1 4 5 6 3 5 5 7 45
Jakarta 3 3 2 4 4 3 2 4 4 4 33
Tokyo 7 6 5 6 6 8 9 6 5 8 66
Tai Pei 6 5 4 5 5 6. 6 6 6 6
5 55.5
Los Angeles 7 5 4 6.5 7 5 8 7 7 7.5 64
Manila 4 3 4 6 4 3 4 5 7 4 44
Kuala 6 8 7 6 5 7 7 7 6.5 7
Lumpur 66.5

7. Best Places To Locate Purchasing
Headquarters in Pac Rim
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

8. Comment
• Generally the best places to locate Global
Purchasing headquarters match “common
thought” for overall business
• If one where more focused on spending in a
particular area then a lower scoring area
might be higher in a specific case
• Shenzhen was not on the list as a global
location but arguably could be in mid range.

9. Cost
• Although not a direct element rated operating
costs tend to be lower in the lower scored
locations
– However – because of other issue total hidden
costs can be unexpectedly high