Author: Janice Marquardt
-
Supply Chain Tools: Index-linked Pricing
One of the best tools to share price risks between buyers and suppliers is index-linked pricing. Most procurement professionals have heard of and used commodity indices to tie pricing to the wider market, but in short they are a third-party tracking tool for commodity pricing. The consumer price index is a common and popular index,… Read more
-
Are Supply Chain Rebates Evil?
I first encountered supply chain rebates a few years into my supply chain career, and confess they baffled me. How could a savings mechanism where a supplier cut their customer a check retroactively ever be sustainable? Yet one of my suppliers was using them consistently, and successfully arguing for their value with my supervisor and… Read more
-
How to Become a Corporate Vice President
All my career I wanted to be a Vice President. Everything I did professionally drove toward that goal, including: While all of these are good and align with the advice I was given by more senior leaders, I think they got me into people leader/management positions. They did not get me the last step from… Read more
-
Why is Supply Chain Management Important?
Why is Supply Chain Management important? I stumbled across this question recently, and it got my wheels turning on why my chosen profession matters. While people I talk to now generally know what supply chain teams do (we get you the proverbial or literal toilet paper), there’s more to it than that. I’ve worked for… Read more
-
What makes a Utility Supply Chain unique?
Supply Chains in different industries have a lot in common – including price sensitivity, negotiations, the importance of resiliency, warehouse space issues (always either too much or too little), and the typical process of bid to purchase order to receipt. However, different industries have different considerations and tolerances beyond these basics. For a company sourcing… Read more
-
Building Your Dream Procurement Team: Roles, Responsibilities, and Staffing Levels
We’ve been talking about supply chain structure and reporting chains recently, so let’s chat a little about front-line procurement roles. Today we’ll talk about role descriptions, and also talk about staffing levels needed when building/rebuilding/reevaluating a team. Role Descriptions When searching Indeed for supply chain roles, I found a list of 18 roles. I had… Read more
-
Supply Chain Structure: One Central Team or Decentralized Services?
Recently we’ve been talking about which C-suite role a supply chain team reports to, both the more common executive leaders and the less common ones. So today we’re going to talk a bit about the structure of a supply chain team in an organization. In particular, we’ll cover four structures: No formal supply chain, decentralized,… Read more
-
Demystifying Supply Chain: The Essential Roles of Procurement, Logistics & Warehousing
What is the difference between “supply chain” and “procurement”? One of my favorite silver linings after COVID is that when people ask me what I do, I now answer “Supply chain” and they reply, “You’re the people who get us toilet paper!” Or sometimes I can see them simply thinking it. Yes, we get you… Read more
-
C-Suite Smackdown Continued: Who Else Could Lead Your Supply Chain?
Continuing our conversation from last week, let’s talk about some of the less common spots a supply chain team can fit into an org chart. Last week we looked at having the supply chain leader report to the CEO, CFO, COO, CRO, and CAO. This week, let’s look at the Chief Lean/Optimization/Continuous Improvement Officer (CLO),… Read more
-
C-Suite Smackdown: Where Should Your Supply Chain Leader Report?
An experienced executive and mentor of mine once told me, “Every org chart fixes some problems and creates others.” I saw this happen firsthand when I was the leader of a 150-person team, with members from multiple businesses within a conglomerate company. The discussion of that organization and centralized vs. non-centralized supply chain is for… Read more