Many firms are aware that they are dealing with too many suppliers. So they figure that the first thing they need to do is reduce the number of suppliers. The benefits of a smaller supply base lie in the area of reduced costs: lower prices by leveraging volume with fewer suppliers, fewer transactions to [...]
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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 [...] Attracted by the potentially high cost savings and the direct impact on the corporation’s bottom line, some firms plunge directly into strategic sourcing activities without first fully understanding their spend. While they will probably achieve cost reductions, these firms are not reaping the full rewards of strategic sourcing and these savings may be short-lived. Why? Firms [...] 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 [...] I was recently interviewed by Nick Zubko, Purchasing Editor at IndustryWeek magazine, for an article on supplier scorecards. The resulting article, “Who’s Keeping Score?”, summarizes the actions needed to ensure supplier scorecards that are meaningful and actionable and is available online and in the February 2009 issue. To summarize the key points, the article explains that companies need [...] As the saying goes, statistics can be made to prove anything – even the truth. Or, everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise (Bertrand Russell). The customer sends the supplier its monthly scorecard. Wait, the calculations seem completely wrong. We did better than [...] In the benchmarking world, one of the axioms is to “steal shamelessly” from other companies, meaning: don’t be afraid to borrow ideas from others (not steal proprietary information). When it comes to supplier performance metrics, one of the first questions firms ask is: What metrics do others use? The idea is the borrow supplier [...] In my last post, I listed 11 reasons why supplier scorecards fail. I’d like to write about the first reason – measuring what is easily measured instead of measuring what is meaningful or important. This assumes that you already know what is important for your company to measure, but that’s a future topic. Let’s look [...] Scorecards have become the Holy Grail of supplier performance management. I find that most companies have some kind of supplier scorecards. And if not, they are in the process of developing them or want to develop them. Expectations for results are high. However, very few firms are satisfied with either their scorecards or the results [...] What steps can you take to avoid supply risk? Be methodical and be proactive. Segment the supply base for risk. And look beyond just the obvious categories. First, look at all types of suppliers who have risk potential, depending on your type of business, such as: direct material suppliers, suppliers providing important services, and transportation [...] |
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