Companies are in a constant quest for alternative ways in order to limit costs and, at the same time, increase their profit. During the last decades, researchers have illustrated that suboptimal choices in Procurement and Supply Chain Design may greatly affect costs and bottom line.

The main objective of this diploma thesis is the research, analysis, systematization and presentation of new methods on procurement transformation and the distribution channel design. This process leads to the development of pioneering, on line educational material addressed to Financial and Management Engineers. The current diploma thesis is supported by MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), a high-tech learning method used by world class universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Princeton University etc.

The MOOCs resulting from this thesis was created using a vast bibliography in the above basic fields of Supply Chain. The material researched included university courses, texts, and scientific papers, companies’ websites etc. The collected information was evaluated in order to choose the most relevant to include in this diploma thesis.

Concerning Procurement Management, important topics were thoroughly analyses, including Procurement Circle, the Purchase Chessboard tool, Suppliers’ selection criteria, Supplier evaluation, and e-procurement. Furthermore, two basic quantitative vendor selection and evaluation methods, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were studied and related material was developed. 

In the area of Distribution Channel management, the thesis focused on the defining Distribution Channels and their types. Furthermore, the Distribution Channel design process has been analyzed and presented. 

Further diploma theses may develop similar on line MOOC material in other key supply chain areas in order to deliver an integrated, high performance, on line University course in this area, including state-of-the-art methods and cutting edge case studies.

Keywords: Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Supply Chain, Procurement Management, Supply Chain Design, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)