by Janice Marquardt | Aug 12, 2025 | Contracts, Processes, Savings
There’s only one place I’ll use the word “vendor” instead of “supplier” regularly: Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI). Why? First, because this is an industry-wide and well-accepted term for having a supplier (or vendor) take charge of your stocking levels, refill used...
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 | Apr 1, 2025 | Definitions, Processes, Savings
Back in January, we talked about tail spend and ways to reduce your spend with the bottom 20% of suppliers. But what if you don’t really know which tail spend items/suppliers to keep and which to get rid of? What else should we think about when classifying our...
