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 [...]
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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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] In an interview in the IFPSM ezine, Bernt Ejbyfeldt, senior vice president of purchasing at Volvo Car Corporation, was asked whether Volvo planned to provide financial assistance to help its struggling suppliers. Ejbyfeldt said that Volvo wasn’t in a financial position to make loans to help its suppliers. So he suggested that suppliers help [...] I recently wrote a post for the Spend Matters blog, “12 Reasons Why Supplier Scorecards Fail” (updated, with one additional reason than my original post on this site in December 2008). There were some insightful comments, including one about the customer’s role in supplier performance success. Rob Handfield made a pertinent comment that it [...] Companies embark on supplier scorecards for many good business reasons. They are concerned about supply risk, supplier quality, supplier responsiveness. They know that they should be measuring, understanding and improving supplier performance and mitigating risks. It’s the right thing to do. But as I’ve mentioned before, companies are often focused on the metrics themselves [...] The latest victims of the economic downturn seem to be suppliers in the electronics supply chain. As reported in the May 18th WSJ article “Clarity is Missing Link in Supply Chain“, as business began to contract, Best Buy dramatically cut back their forecasts to electronics companies such as Toshiba just before the holiday season last [...] I was recently interviewed by business columnist Jamie Herzlich over at Newsday for an article she recently wrote, “Small Business: Choosing the Right Supplier.” (May 14, 2009) Many businesses are struggling with the challenge of how to choose the right suppliers. According to Ms. Herzlich, many business owners are unaware of what to look [...] I was recently following a discussion on Elsmar Cove, a forum for quality professionals (free, but registration is required), on the subject of an approved supplier list (ASL). Someone wanted to know whether having an approved supplier list was a “shall” under ISO standards and whether you had to evaluate every single supplier for [...] |
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