The pressure's on for purchasing professionals. Despite a fast start to the year—driven mostly by inventory replenishment activity—the manufacturing recovery has slowed to a painful crawl. Some economists have labeled it a "profitless" recovery, meaning that, while demand may be on the mend, it's growing too slowly to overcome the negative effects of very weak pricing power and rising overhead costs (labor, healthcare, etc.) over the past several years. The result is a strong push by corporate leaders to slash costs and a big share of the burden is falling to purchasing.

A recent reader poll by PURCHASING magazine finds nine in every ten buyers being asked to help their companies cut costs this year. On a scale of 1-10, buyers rate the pressure level at eight, and six out of 10 buyers say the pressure to cut purchasing costs has grown more intense over the past one, three and five year periods.

Eleven percent is the average overall cost-reduction goal for the manufacturing companies covered in PURCHASING's poll. Asked about their personal cost reduction goals, nearly all buyers participating in the survey cite goals that are either the same or higher than their companies' overall objectives (the average is 12%). That discrepancy suggests that some purchasing managers are actually cranking up the pressure on individual buyers by another few notches to ensure they meet their department's goals.

To the dismay of many, the biggest area of emphasis right now appears to be on reducing purchasing overhead, which, no matter how you slice it, amounts to fewer full-time equivalents (FTEs) working in the purchasing function. A whopping 67% of buyers reporting say their company's major cost reduction strategies include "work to eliminate activity costs associated with purchasing", making it the most popular cost reduction strategy, according to PURCHASING's poll.

Pursuing volume leverage across business units or locations is the second-most popular cost reduction strategy (used by 65% of survey respondents) followed closely by parts standardization (62%), leveraging relationships through better comprehension of the amount of business done with suppliers' various locations and subsidiaries (62%), and work to automate purchasing and supply chain processes (60%).

This sounds like bad news for people in transaction-oriented purchasing positions, but may be very good news for analytical purchasing pros that are seeking to play more strategic roles in their companies.

Inventory is another big target area for manufacturing companies seeking to slash costs and bolster their profitability, but many appear to be cutting stock levels at the expense of their suppliers' profitability. Indeed, while 60% of buyers polled by PURCHASING say they seek to reduce costs by shifting inventory burdens to suppliers, only 35% say they work to permanently eliminate inventory from their supply pipelines. What's more, inventory-shifting ranks among companies' top five cost reduction strategies 38% of the time compared to 23% for inventory elimination.

Reducing the costs associated with writing and processing POs may be the most popular cost reduction strategy right now, but it's not necessarily the one getting the most emphasis. That honor goes to volume leverage, which ranks among the top five strategies 37% of the time and is the number-one strategy 15% of the time (beating all others). The strategy appears particularly popular with companies that have grown by acquisition, inheriting a great deal of overlap in their parts specifications and supply relationships.