by Janice Marquardt | Jul 22, 2025 | Contracts
After a hard-fought battle, you finally have contract terms and conditions with a supplier. Awesome! But now you want to use that same supplier for a different material or different scope of work, and the idea of renegotiating that contract again is daunting. It’s...
by Janice Marquardt | Jul 8, 2025 | Definitions, e-Auctions, Savings
On a call with a client today, they asked me how a “lump sum” bid is different from a “unit price” bid. This led to a larger discussion about risk vs. cost in a supply chain and this client team said to me, “You should write an article about this topic.” So here we...
by Janice Marquardt | Jul 1, 2025 | Processes, Savings
A few months ago, I had the immense privilege of working with the team at Iowa State University’s Center for Industrial Research and Service (CIRAS) to assess the supply chains at eight small Iowa-based manufacturers. The lessons we learned and their common threads...
by Janice Marquardt | Jun 17, 2025 | Creative Solutions, Definitions
AI is the biggest buzzword of the day. To Joël Collin-Demers’ point, if you can substitute the word “computers” or “technology” for AI in a sentence, it’s probably not true AI but instead is a clever use of technology. While technology is still valuable and...
by Janice Marquardt | May 27, 2025 | Contracts, Processes
I frequently see companies early in their supply chain maturity journey using blanket purchase orders almost like a “light contract.” At first I found this somewhat odd, but for a company with a small supply chain, it makes sense. Blanket orders don’t require nearly...
