Explanation

A conformance specification is a specification that defines the technical and physical characteristics and/or measurements of a product, such as physical aspects (e.g. dimensions, colour, and surface finish), design details, material properties, energy requirements, processes, maintenance requirements and operational requirements.

On the other hand, performance specification typically includes list of output or outcome or func-tional requirements. Brand name can be a part of performance specification because brand is a re-minder of quality that customers remember. For example, when talking about Roll Royce, people will think about an elegant car.

Explanation

ISO/IEC 27001 is widely known, providing requirements for an information security management system (ISMS), though there are more than a dozen standards in the ISO/IEC 27000 family. Using them enables organizations of any kind to manage the security of assets such as financial infor-mation, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted by third parties.

LO 3, AC 3.1

Explanation

The Performance Specifications define what the system being designed must do, and not how it must do it. In this step a list of needs and wants should be created. The needs are customer requirements, while the wants are engineering desires. If a buyer adopts performance specification, the supplier will be free to choose how to make and deliver the product.

A technical specification document outlines how you’re going to address a technical problem by designing and building a solution for it.

A design specification is a detailed document providing a list of points regarding a product or pro-cess. For example, the design specification could include required dimensions, environmental fac-tors, ergonomic factors, aesthetic factors, maintenance that will be needed, etc. It may also give specific examples of how the design should be executed, helping others work properly (a guideline for what the person should do).

With conformance specification the buyer says what they want and how they want it and the supplier has to meet this

Explanation

According to US Department of the Navy, Benchmarking is a strategic and analytic process of continuously measuring an organisation ' s products, services, and practices against a recognised leader in the studied area.

Successful benchmarking will help you:

- Find who does the process best and close the gap

- Recognise the leading organisations in a process or activity

- Create performance standards derived from an analysis of the best in business

- Ensure that comparisons are relevant

- Measure your performance, your processes, and your strategies against best in business

- Measure business processes

- Assess performance over time

- Accelerate continuous process improvement (CPI)

- Establish more credible goals for CPI

- Establish actionable objectives

- Discover and clarify new goals

- Establish customer expectations of business standards set by the best suppliers in industry

- Help your organisation achieve breakthrough improvements

- Create a sense of urgency for change

- Increase customer satisfaction

- Become direction setting

- Provide a positive, proactive structured process

Benchmarking does not:

- Copy the other ' s processes

- Steal other business confidentiality

- Stop. Benchmarking is a continuous process.

Detailed Explanation:

Cotton fabric is a direct cost because it is directly attributable to the production of the garments. Costs like rent, utilities, and payroll are indirect costs associated with running the business. Reference: CIPS Level 4, Cost Categorization in Procurement.

Explanation

Public annual reports can be a source of information that helps the procurement professional to analyse an industry ' s cost and revenue using the line of best fit. Line of best fit is one of the most important outputs of regression analysis. Regression refers to a quantitative measure of the relationship between one or more independent variables and a resulting dependent variable. Regression is of use to professionals in a wide range of fields from science and public service to financial analysis.

In this case, by collecting and analysing 17 annual reports, the procurement manager can find the line of best fit which goes approximately through the middle of the data points with an equal num-ber of data points above and below it.

The slope of the line of best fit is the approximate variable costs the industry. The easiest way to calculate it is to take a point at the right-hand end of the line of best fit and note its cost and output levels. Divide the cost by the output and this gives and approximate figure for the cost per unit of output or variable cost. This gives an approximate value for the industry fixed and variable costs.