Category: Definitions
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Contracts in Focus: Understanding Contracts as Instruments of Purpose
This morning as I checked my inbox, I had a survey waiting for me from World Commerce and Contracting. The survey sparked me because it asked a set of questions about the purposes of contracts, and I found my answers highly varied across the questions. I will note that I am a believer in contracts… Read more
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Robots vs. Relationships: Will AI Wipe Out Supply Chain Jobs?
A Visual Capitalist article on the impact of artificial intelligence on various job categories wandered across my news feed a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been pondering it ever since. Following the data trail, this data was a visualization of a white paper by the World Economic Forum (WEF) from September 2023, focused primarily on… Read more
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Mastering the Supply Chain Triad: Delivering Excellence in Delivery, Savings, and Efficiency
How often do you hear or think of the old adage “You can have it fast, you can have it good, you can have it cheap: pick two”? Do you think it’s true? In supply chain, the variation on this “iron triangle” is the conflict between the priorities of Delivery, Savings, and Efficiency. This article… Read more
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The Power of Brevity: Crafting Impactful Executive Summaries for Supply Chain Success
One of my clients had a communication problem. It wasn’t the usual “not enough” problem that so often comes up, it was an executive summary problem. The supply chain leader was doing beautiful, in-depth bid analyses with long spreadsheets and each supplier’s column in a different color. They looked like every bid analysis I’ve ever… Read more
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Understanding the Significance of Perfect Orders in Supply Chain Excellence
What is a perfect order? And why is it relevant? Of all supply chain metrics, the pinnacle metric is the perfect order. It serves as a comprehensive measure, encompassing critical components that lay the groundwork for supply chain efficiency. A perfect order is an order that is delivered on time, in full, with no edits… Read more