Design and Development
At the Supply Management 2.0 Forum in London earlier this month, Jessica Dunlop, e-Sourcing and Strategic Purchasing Manager for ITT Indutries, gave an encore performance of how new strategic sourcing and supplier and category management approaches helped her company overcome the mounting pressures of rising global competition and turmoil in the telecommunications industry, one of ITT’s [...]
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In recent posts on the requirements for Supply Management 2.0 and value-based sourcing, I banged the drum loudly about how it is imperative for supply managers to move beyond their cost focus and find new ways to contribute value to the business. A recent Purchasing magazine feature on the key role supply management plays in product development [...]
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Congratulations. And thank you for responding to my request to share your favorite approaches for driving supply and contract management improvements.
Supply Excellence reader input — coupled with personal meetings with supply management teams around the globe — serve as the foundation of a new electronic book:
The 100 Greatest Supply Management Tips of All Time!
Practical [...]
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News yesterday that Ford Motor Company reported its largest annual loss ever increased doubts about the future of Detroit. (General Motor’s decision today to delay earnings and restate past results only fueled greater concern.)
The bad news overshadows the tremendous progress both automakers have made on the supply management front. It also raises a serious question about the discipline: [...]
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Thinking about beating up suppliers to meet your short term cost savings targets? Think again.
Faced with lackluster sales and disappearing profits, Detroit automakers seem to have thrown out their copy of the sound supply management principles book — resorting instead to cutting supplier rolls and demanding price concessions. Such myopic cost cutting tactics are now coming back [...]
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Automotive suppliers breathed a collective sigh of relief yesterday when news reports leaked that General Motors had rejected plans for a global alliance with Renault and Nissan Motor Co. As I speculated in previous posts, the parties recognized that the proposed synergies were less than originally expected. (Specifically, Renault-Nissan was touting that the alliance would [...]
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Thanks to rising energy costs and raw-material hogs like China, India, and Boeing, supply markets these days have more faces than Sybil.
Supply managers received good news this week as oil and gas prices continued to decline, with oil slipping below $68 per barrel for the first time since June. Industry experts also downgraded earlier concerns that a [...]
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Thanks again to Doug Smock for igniting the discussion around product costing and the convergence of design and supply.
I agree with Doug: Harley-Davidson was indeed a supply management innnovator before its time. As a senior editor at Purchasing magazine in the pre-Internet boom, I had the opportunity to do a cover story on Harley’s advanced [...]
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Today, I’d like to welcome back Supply Excellence guest blogger, Doug Smock. Co-author of the supply management best-seller, Straight to the Bottom Line, Smock will continue his findings on new strategies and systems for product should- and future costing.
In a recent post on Spend Matters, Jason Busch briefly reviewed a CAD-based costing technology from a [...]
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