Procure IQ

Logistics Management just ran an excellent article on Logistics and the Law: Don’t Pay Twice, by Brent Wm. Primus, J.D. of Primus Law Office that I think is a must read for anyone responsible for global shipping.When a shipper engages a broker or when a shipper or a broker books a load with a carrier, they expect to be billed and to pay for the charges for moving the freight. What they don’t expect is to have to pay the charges twice. Unfortunately this does happen and, in the last few years, has happened with increasing frequency. This emerging issue …

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SourcingMag.com recently ran a decent article on Cross-Cultural Risk Factors in Offshore Outsourcing that overviewed three risk factors that can have a serious impact on the success of an offshore outsourcing relationship that are worth a review. Corporate Culture Differences There’s a chance the client’s corporate culture and the vendor’s corporate culture could be at opposite poles. One could be bureaucratic and the other entrepreneurial; one could make decisions top-down and the other on consensus; one could encourage employees to step-up while the other beats them down; etc. A lack of alignment will …

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Recently, The Center for Supply Chain Research at the Penn State SMEAL College of Business published a report on Supply Chain Risks: Barriers to Manufacturing in Emerging and Developing Markets that reiterated what we’ve known for a while; that 73% of U.S. companies with revenue exceeding $1 Billion experienced supply chain disruptions in the past five years, that 70,000 companies went bankrupt in China in 2008, and that the average American company operating procurement in Asia found that the average company lost 8.2 Million over a three year time span due to illegal bribes and kickbacks.It also told us that …

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Accenture’s recent white paper on taking control in the new era or price volatility listed the following as the four most important success factors for managing commodity risk. At a high level, they’re spot on. Procurement & Finance AlignmentA risk policy needs to underlie all activities in both departments to insure the risk appetite of the buyer matches the risk appetite of the corporation. The mitigation strategies have to be implemented appropriately. These means that some risks cannot be ignored while others have to be carried. Expertise in Managing …

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In a recent (guest) post over on @ Risk, I quoted Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire from his Storm Front album which was released as a single twenty years ago. I did so because each reference in two of the later verses represent significant potential risks to your supply chain that haven’t changed much in the last twenty years; since what your supply manager would be signing about today would more-or-less have the same underlying risks. In honour of Billy Joel’s masterpiece, which chronicled headline events during the …

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Is it the grid and the possibility of another great blackout (due to a lack of breakers)? Is it the unpredictable terrorist act that could blow up a pipeline in North America (which includes friendly Canada)? No, it’s Sciurus Carolinensis! One little squirrel in one little circuit-breaker in one little substation can knock out power to 9,000 homes with a single nibble, as FirstEnergy customers in North Royalton found out on Tuesday. …

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If you said “yes”, think again! I know for a fact that the odds of you having your biggest supply chain risk covered are so statistically insignificant that they are effectively zero. Why? Because I cover supply chain technology, and it’s current reach. And despite the best efforts of myself, and a few other individuals who have been pounding away at the keys for years, most of the technology that you really need hasn’t yet permeated your four walls (or your ceiling or your floor for that matter). You see, your biggest risk is not market …

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A recent Inside Supply Management article on The Global Reality of Geopolitics noted that terrorism, war, disease and political unrest are just some of the geopolitical pressures that supply management executives face today. The geopolitical risks for most multi-nationals are increasing daily, and most of their supply chains, which still assume flexible JIT models will always be possible, are still not prepared. To prepare your supply chain, you need to identify, assess, and put a mitigation in place for each likely or significant threat. One way to assess the threats, according to Celina Realuyo of CBR Global Advisors, …

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Editor’s Note: This post is from regular contributor Norman Katz, Sourcing Innovation’s resident expert on supply chain fraud and supply chain risk. Catch up on his column in the archive.Dimitrios P. Biller, a former managing counsel for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., alleges in a recent lawsuit that Toyota forced him to withhold evidence from opposing counsel in lawsuits relating to vehicle rollover accidents. As some readers will remember when (small) sports utility vehicles (SUVs) were introduced there were a rash of rollover accidents that occurred. I recall that the reasons were generally centered on the vehicles …

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With credit remaining tight, there is still considerable liquidity risk throughout most supply chains. But there is something that can be done about it, and I’m glad to see that some vendors, like Ariba, are making it easy for buyers to help their suppliers. Even though traditional banks might not be very helpful in these troubled times, there are a lot of new, innovative, lenders out there that will happily do short term financing, for much more reasonable rates, with assurances that they will be (re)paid within a guaranteed timeframe. This means that if a buyer is …

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