Centralized purchasing means buying and managing purchases from one location for all locations within an organization. Decentralized is the opposite where each plant or office buys what it needs. This operation allows any employee to buy what he needs. :-)
Centralized purchasing is the control by a central department of all the purchasing undertaken within an organization. In a large organization centralized purchasing is often located in the headquarters. Centralization has the advantages of reducing duplication of effort, pooling volume purchases for discounts, enabling more effective inventory control, consolidating transport loads to achieve lower costs, increasing skills where as decentralised purchasing is teh opposite of centalized purchasing. It has various controling unit and various representative to merge together for organising the system.
Concepts on a centralized purchasing
Disadvantages of decentralize in purchasing system