Tag: Priorities
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From Tactical to Strategic: Why Procurement Needs to Chase Value, Not Just Savings
The inimitable Mathew Schulz posted on LinkedIn last week about how the best procurement pros chase value instead of savings. This got me thinking about savings vs. value, and the differences between a procurement team who thinks tactically vs. one who thinks strategically. One reason I left a previous employer was that a change in… Read more
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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
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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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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
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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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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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Navigating Supply Chain Worries: Turn Concerns into Action
The award for “most eye-catching headline of the week” in my news feed goes to sponsored content from GS1. The headline was “Stop doom-scrolling your supply chain” and (as sponsored content) is advocating for increasing visibility tools. The article cites three main areas of supply chain concern remaining: geopolitical factors, climate change/natural disasters, and logistics… 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