Evaluating suppliers can be educational for the supplier. When suppliers are asked to comply with customer requirements that are considered industry best practices, they may have the opportunity to learn more about those practices. You may wonder how a company can end up with suppliers who are unaware of best practices that are customer [...]
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Since the WSJ came out last week with an article about Starbuck’s implementing lean, a lot of people have been expressing dismay at this new development. Known for its friendly baristas who brew your favorite coffee drink with care, Starbucks has embarked on a lean journey that, from the descriptions, looks like it might [...] Last month, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Phil Angelides, Chairman of Apollo Alliance, along with other business, labor and clean energy leaders introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009,” a bill intended to facilitate the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production. The purpose of the [...] In a recent post, “GM’s Failure: What Happened to Lean,” I wrote about the origins of lean at GM and the NUMMI partnership with Toyota. Now, it seems that NUMMI is on Toyota’s chopping block and that Toyota seriously considering shutting down the plant. The NUMMI venture, begun in 1984, helped Toyota make a beach [...] 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 [...] Some people are heaving sighs of relief that Chrysler is emerging from bankruptcy in the arms of Fiat and that GM is officially in bankruptcy soon to emerge as leaner and meaner entities. However, many are left holding the proverbial bag. Who are they? The unsecured creditors who are lining up to salvage whatever [...] As the pundits pile on the eulogies and praise from the glory days and offer endless criticisms of GM’s catastrophic decline, people will be writing books and analyzing the decline and failure of GM for years to come. But let’s look at GM from a lean enterprise point of view. GM tried to adopt [...] 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 reading the recent blog post at the Spendmatters: Beyond Shedding the Deadweight in Procurement and Operations. Instead of just cutting headcount, particularly in procurement, Jason Busch suggests other ways to approach cost reduction. Among the suggestions are: driving better efficiency by fully using software solutions in the Procure-to-Pay cycle; using third [...] The failures at Peanut Corporation of America are tragedy in every way. This supplier failed to meet both regulatory and customer requirements. Its customers failed either to uncover or report the failures, and people died as a result. Now a healthy, everyday product is suspect, and faith in the U.S. food processing industry has [...] |
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