Value Chain

An article in today’s WSJ, “Companies More Prone to Go Vertical,” discussed the current trend for some companies such as Oracle, Pepsi, IBM, General Motors, Boeing and Apple, to cite a few,  to return to the practice of vertical integration. Vertical integration can be defined as the degree to which a company owns its upstream suppliers and downstream [...]

Firing the customer is something taught in business schools and often mentioned as an approach for small companies to get rid of problem customers. The subject came up again recently in a WSJ article that reported on small businesses, who, despite the recession, are deciding to shed their high-maintenance and unprofitable customers.  
It’s a popular slogan: “Sometimes [...]

It was only a matter of time before the ever-popular Six Sigma would reach the college classroom. I was reading an article about how York College in Southeastern Pennsylvania has begun to offer a course in Six Sigma in its MBA program. This is one of many MBA programs now offering Six Sigma courses. The [...]

Attending the annual AME Lean Conference was energizing and inspiring. The conference delegates are a different crowd. They are practitioners of the lean enterprise. This is apparent if you spend any time with these folks.
You know you’re at a lean conference when delegates:

Complain that the buffet layout is not lean and discuss ways to improve the flow
Admonish [...]

Davis Ballistracchi recently penned an insightful piece for Quality Digest, Why Did Total Quality Management Fail? One of the key reasons is management. They talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. They sit on the sidelines, cheering employees on, but nothing changes because management doesn’t change. Management blocks the change rather than enabling it.
This [...]

Supply managers and buyers have always had the challenge not just of finding suppliers but finding suppliers who are both high-performing and “best value”. Numerous supplier evaluation and supplier performance management software solutions are now available, where ten years ago very few options existed. Most options that I’m aware of are either SaaS (software as [...]

In an April post on Spend Matters, Spend Visibility — Use RFPs with Home Maintenance Contractors, Jason Busch advocated using an RFP to make sure that contractors are bidding the same job and to help make it easier to compare bids. I wish it were that easy. We’re grappling with a trade that seems to [...]

Companies have typically viewed suppliers as a source of cost that needs to be reduced, as supplier costs directly impact the bottom line. And it’s a given that procurement is always under pressure to fulfill the cost reduction mission. But in the process of viewing suppliers as big dollar signs that need to be squeezed, [...]

As the loss of manufacturers and manufacturing jobs continues during the current recession, the debate continues about whether we should even care. The U.S. is now indisputably a service-based economy. And supporters argue that the erosion of manufacturing in the U.S. is not a bad thing. I was particularly taken aback by Robert Reich’s recent [...]

Recently I wrote about suppliers who charge their customers to conduct an on-site audit. The desire to charge stems from the fact that site visits are time-consuming and resource-intense for suppliers. Many suppliers have to host multiple site visits and particularly the smaller suppliers, find them disruptive to their business. A solution has been suggested [...]