On February 11th, 2016, the kick-off meeting of the Erasmus+ project PERFECT (Purchasing Education & Research for European Competence Transfer) took place in Dortmund. The participants from Dortmund, Mainz, Twente, Staffordshire and Lappeenranta met already the evening before for a comfortable get-together at steak restaurant Pfefferkorn at the Phoenixsee in order to get in contact personally and bring up the first aspects with regard to project contents.

The kick-off meeting served mainly as a possibility for all participants to get to know the people with whom to cooperate during the next three years and for creating awareness of organisational and administrative rules as well as for scheduling the next meetings and implementing project management tools. Moreover, it was important to reach a mutual understanding of goals and further approaches and to present the results of the first work package, which deals with discovering and supporting Purchasing & Supply Management (PSM) skills and capabilities by means of literature research and benchmarking studies of existing academic and practical programs.

The participants found the meeting to be very interesting and constructive due to a pleasant atmosphere and open discussions.

The next meeting will take place within the framework of the IPSERA Conference in Dortmund on 20^th-23^rd March. The conference is arranged by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) and the Chair of Enterprise Logistics (LFO) of TU Dortmund. The PERFECT project will be introduced by a multiplier event on 20^th March with a presentation and an information booth. First results will be presented. Networking, the development of further contents and internal discussion of open issues will be in focus.