In January 2023, students from Mainz University of Applied Sciences presented their results of concrete real-world cases to the company Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH & Co. KG. In the Purchasing and Procurement option, students researched real issues related to the market for pharmaceutical-specific services. Topics included writing documents and texts for the approval of drugs, summarizing trial results, and providing information for patients (medical writing). One group investigated the U.S. market and another the European market, and an additional group developed a criteria model for evaluating providers.
In the Purchasing and Procurement option, taught by Prof. Dr. Volrad Wollny and Sascha Kwiatkowski, students learn about purchasing-specific instruments and concepts and apply them directly to practical problems encountered in corporate purchasing departments. The duo of lecturers combines theory and practice, as reflected both in the content of the lecture and in the academic successes achieved by the students.
In addition to the challenges from the procurement department of Boehringer Ingelheim, Sascha Kwiatkowski shared three strategic procurement tasks from the field of facility management: the maintenance of elevators, doors and gates, and purchasing-specific issues in fleet management.
Sascha Kwiatkowski is a lecturer at the School of Business and full-time Chief Procurement Officer at Apleona. As a graduate of Mainz University of Applied Sciences, he is passionate about passing his experience on to students and awakening their interest in the subject of procurement. “It gives me great pleasure to inspire students for the subject of procurement and to show them that combining theory and practice from the classroom into solving real issues from different companies is very important at our university and can achieve great learning effects on the side while also being a lot of fun.”
Prof. Dr. Volrad Wollny assesses the collaborative lecture as follows: “We offer a concentrated and quick introduction to the problems, methods, approaches, and instruments of purchasing and their direct application to concrete cases from the real world. This is a challenge for the students – the academic successes and results of the student teams show that our concept works well.”
The two lecturers will offer the option again next winter semester and plan to include more practical cases from other companies.
