Costing
About a month ago I had dinner with the head of supply chain for one of the world’s most recognized food service brands. We weren’t even through the salad course when he lit into me about previous Supply Excellence posts encouraging buyers to consider alternative fuels, materials, and lighting methods.
“Next time you’re at one of [...]
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If Spend Management has a limiting axiom, it might be the idea that there is a limit to how much cost you can take out of an item, service or process. After all, cost can not go to zero…can it?
With a slightly different perspective on things, it turns out that cost can nearly go to [...]
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Have you ever been in a meeting with an internal stakeholder who doesn’t want any help on their category because it’s too complex, or is the creative service that can’t be effectively sourced or managed by anybody but the supplier and that stakeholder himself? Then this story is for you…
In the Business Week article “The [...]
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Oil may have crested at the $100 per barrel mark recently (and is still holding high on production constraints), but buyers should keep a close eye on the rising cost of alternative fuels.
Global markets quaked last week as soybeans sprouted to near-record prices of $11.50 per bushel, the cost of corn reached an 11-year high, [...]
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With Tata Motors unveiling of its much-anticipated one-lakh (about 100,000 rupees or $2,500 U.S.) Nano car last week, the race to deliver the most affordable car officially kicked into high gear. Analysts revved up positive predictions for the future of the auto industry as automakers around the world scrambled to revive efforts to deliver small, [...]
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Over on SpendMatters, Jason Busch is doing a Casey Kasem-like countdown of his favorite posts of the year. (That is, if Mr. Kasem wrote and recorded his own songs.) The multi-part series is a not so subtle reminder of the great service Jason is doing for the supply management sector.
In the spirit of plagiarism being [...]
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Earlier this year I released a compilation of The 100 Greatest Supply Management Tips of All Time! The recommendations in the e-book were pulled from real-world approaches used by supply management professionals. In fact, several of the tips came directly from Supply Excellence readers and posts.
I intentionally included tips that were not complex and that did [...]
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Forget Captain Jack Sparrow and the End of the World. (The box office certainly has.) Instead, worry about pirates pillaging equipment, siding, and other metal-based materials from your plants and facilities.
New reports find that the black market is bullish for scrap metal. A 95% boost in prices over the past two years for copper, aluminum, lead, tin, [...]
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I once knew of a guy who was unrealistically terrified of the Year 2000. Certain that the Y2K computer glitch would bring commerce to a halt and turn the city into a post-apocolyptic Waterworld, he bought a safehouse in the mountains, stocked it with food, and converted most of his wealth into gold bullion bricks.
True [...]
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A Wall Street Journal cover story earlier this week warned of inflationary indicators around the globe, including near-capacity production operations in Europe and double-digit wage increases among both laborers and service providers in China and India. The article quotes former IMF Chief Economist summing the current supply market situation this way, “Markets have gotten used [...]
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