Staufen Shanghai heartily welcomes BME as one of new partners of our Academy. BME – the German Association Materials Management, Purchasing and Logistics – is a leading buyer association in Europe. Founded in 1954, BME now has over 7,000 members from all industrial and service sectors. The association offers its members sourcing-related know-how transfer and services, e.g. conferences, trainings and a quality supplier database. BME’s Shanghai office opened in 2008. After signing a cooperation agreement in April 2009, Staufen and BME successfully launched two new public training programmes in the second half of the year:‘Strategic Sourcing’ and ‘Negotiation Skills’. The purchasing-oriented training programme will be further developed in 2010. At the ‘BME China Sourcing Conference 2009’ in Shanghai, Mr. Thomas Rohrbach, CEO Staufen Shanghai, gave a speech about ‘Strategic Sourcing in China’. The annual BME event was attended by over 100 sourcing experts from a variety of industrial sectors.