Supply Management
I’m a consultant and I’m in the same business as a CPO.
Leafing through the archives of CPO Agenda, I came across an executive coaching Q&A, where a CPO asked how to tackle the problem of procurement not being involved with other functions and company decision making. Sound familiar?
Dick Russill’s eloquent and measured response was: sell. [...]
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Last week, Supply Excellence contributor Kris Colby reported from the Sourcing Interests Group’s regional conference that sustainable supply strategies are not just a passing fad. After rubbing elbows with sourcing and supply management executives from some of the world’s largest manufacturing and retail companies, Kris came away with this conclusion: “world class sourcing organizations are [...]
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In a special section of the Wall Street Journal (registration required) earlier this week, a duo of supply chain management professors warned that changing global market dynamics require new supply management skills and approaches that most companies lack.
Such findings are not news to the Supply Excellence audience. (Indeed, most of you are feeling the pinch [...]
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Last week, I had the opportunity to present at the Sourcing Interest Group’s (SIG) meeting on Green/Sustainability in Sourcing in Seattle. Talking with the other speakers and attendees, I was once again struck by just how seriously companies are taking this issue. This is not a feel good effort by people in Prius’s (or is [...]
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Southwest Airlines has the reputation of being lean and mean, the mother of the point-to-point low cost business model that decimated legacy carriers (leaving those of us in Pittsburgh with a very large and expensive puddle jumper palace). Their clairvoyance in hedging the price of jet fuel has helped keep costs low and fuel their [...]
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Just weeks after the Big Three shocked the industry by announcing plans to move some assembly back inhouse, a labor strike at a major auto supplier is making the automakers appear clairvoyant. Adding to pricing pressures, volume cuts, and rising material costs, the United Autoworkers (UAW) strike at American Axle is shuttering production across the [...]
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Three years after its inaugural look at Chief Procurement Officers’ key transformation strategies and the challenges to implementing them, Aberdeen Group’s latest CPO Agenda study finds more of the same. Cost-cutting continues to rank among top goals, due in large part to the ailing economy. And procurement execs say their groups struggle most with misaligned [...]
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The love affair between LCCS (Low-Cost-Country-Sourcing) and China has taken a few hits in recent years: bad press on humanitarian issues, unfavorable VAT rebate reductions, a weakened US$, and increasing government interference. It’s made more than one company turn a speculative eye towards central and eastern Europe (CEE).
And why not? There are a number of [...]
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The House Energy and Commerce sub-committee on Oversight and Investigations had some of the nation’s top food company CEOs on the witness stand this week. Congress’ look at the record breaking recall of 143,000,000 lbs of beef, piled on top of the tainted vegetable stories of the last year, serves to highlight another example of [...]
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Henry Ford must be smiling. After decades of outsourcing manufacturing, engineering, and other responsibilities to suppliers stateside and in low-cost regions, The Big Three automakers are beginning to bring sub-assembly back in-house.
Beginning this spring, Ford Motor Company — the birthplace of Henry Ford’s vertical integration manufacturing model — will be the first to take back [...]
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