Is your supply chain adding value?
How do you know?
Your supply chain shouldn’t just keep the business running. It should move the business forward.
Improve your supply chain value...
Do you know the answer?...
Are your processes efficient? Are they good enough to implement AI without just “speeding up garbage”?
Are you getting the right value from your spend? Are you negotiating everything you can and should? Are you drowning in ambitious savings goals?
Where are your biggest risks? Do you have enough contracts and are they robust enough to survive today’s wildly volatile supply chain world?
What should you fix first? When everything is on fire, which opportunity has the most value? Which quick wins will quiet your stakeholders fastest?
If you know the answers to all of these questions, you can stop reading now. If not, this is where I can help.
Results Driven
Driving Results
Know what’s happening in your supply chain, what matters, and what you should do about it. ➡️
Maximize your spend leverage without hiring another full-time executive. ➡️
Prepare to implement AI agents that actually increase efficiency and accountability. ➡️
Create measurable change in your bottom line. ➡️
Trusted Advisor
Leadership Experience
Passwall Solutions is your trusted advisor, from someone who’s been there. I’m here to tell the truth about where you are, what’s working, what’s not, and what to fix first. Then I can help you fix it.
I’m not a software vendor. I’m not an e-auction platform. I’m not a giant consulting firm with a team of (smart but inexperienced) analysts. I’ve actually run this stuff.
I started as an engineer, so I still think like one.
I was the first VP of Supply Chain for a company that would be a Fortune 200 company if it stood alone (instead of the Fortune 10 position its parent company holds).
I led a large team across the US and ran thousands of e-auctions.
I wrote Transform Procurement: The Value of E-auctions which became a bestseller in three categories and won two literary awards.
Contact me to figure out what’s really happening and where to find your value.
Make the changes you need to move forward.
Our Services
Break Through the Supply Chain Wall
Supply Chain 360
Supply Chain 360
Get an objective view of what’s really happening and if your supply chain is as good (or bad!) as you think it is.
Quick Kaizen
Quick Kaizen
Fix the processes that are holding your team back. Get ready to implement AI in a way that doesn’t just speed up a bad process.
e-Auctions
e-Auctions
Capture more value from your supply base, without destroying supplier relationships. E-auctions are a chainsaw: use them right to harness their power safely.
Consulting
Consulting
Build the capability to sustain value. Make sure you have the right size team, in the right seats, with the right tools to keep maturing your supply chain.
Learn with us
Insights...
Here's where you'll learn how to cut costs while improving efficiency.
ISM Twin Cities 2026: Procurement’s Next Flywheel, AI’s Limits, and a Whole Lot of Commodity Risk
Conferences are valuable learning, but sometimes it’s hard to get to them. I have the privilege of being a sponsor for the ISM Twin Cities conference, so I was able to attend last week. In the interest of sharing the wealth, today’s article is a write up of the first three sessions I attended, what they mean for procurement professionals, and my thoughts on things. I’ll write up the second three sessions next week, covering where AI belongs in an organization, risk management (with Moody’s), and how to make yourself more valuable to the C-suite.
Today’s article covers:
Building a procurement flywheel: How teams can turn past successes and failures into a repeatable cycle of continuous improvement
Using AI without losing the human touch: How 3M is using AI to connect suppliers with innovation opportunities and why approved supplier lists can sometimes limit breakthrough ideas
Negotiating beyond the car lot: Why procurement negotiation training works best when it mirrors the real-world purchases professionals make
Preparing for a costly 2027: What commodity trends, data center demand, tariffs, weather, and global conflicts mean for procurement costs
Your Process Map Doesn’t Need to Be Pretty, It Needs to Be Useful.
Do you do your process mapping in Visio? What if instead you pulled out the Post-its?
Today let’s talk about process mapping: The major process I follow, why a process map exercise adds value, and why I go old school with Post-its and Sharpies. (My side note today: does sticky note brand matter?)
Today’s article covers:
-How to make process mapping more effective, from defining the process to why Post-its beat polished software.
-Four major steps in process mapping and which one I sometimes skip
-The value of process mapping exercises for any team (not just procurement)
-The tools: why I use Sharpies and Post-its
Which Supply Chain Problems Are Actually Worth Solving?
Today’s article is about figuring out which problems to solve and which processes to improve first, because trying to solve all of them at once means solving none of them. I include an extremely concrete 2×2 matrix, which will feel a little familiar (impact vs. effort), but allows you to quantify the chaos and justify to leadership why their pet project won’t be the first thing you focus on.
Today’s article covers:
-The impact side of decisions: financial, risk, frequency/volume, business criticality/alignment, and customer/employee impact.
-The effort side of decisions: Cost, timeframe, existing resources, difficulty, and risk help determine how hard each solution will be to implement.
-A clear 2×2 matrix to identify whether solving a problem is for delegation, a quick win, a strategic move, or should be skipped.