Suppose that six months ago, Levi Strauss & Co. began working with a new vendor for zippers, snaps, and other hardware used on its jeans. Now the buying center wants to assess the new vendor's performance. Describe how Levi Strauss & Co. might perform this assessment. Be specific.

The student might model the assessment after the example in the text. The buying center must decide on a set of criteria on which to evaluate the vendor. These will probably include product quality, customer service, and promptness of delivery, but may include other things as well. The team will want to prioritize these issues, possibly assigning each one a weight or importance score. Then, the vendor should be evaluated on each of the criteria. If a total numeric score is desired, the team could multiply individual criteria scores by the weighting factors and then calculate the sum.