Archive for February, 2009

The Senate takes action on Federal Food Safety Oversight.

Friday, February 6th, 2009

This author has indicated that the product safety area in procurement best practices becomes more sensitive every day.

However, safe products are not just about food. With that said what is taking place in the senate today is a positive step toward improving the oversight on all products.

Today in Washington the Senate took up the issue of food Safety Oversight. Following is the agenda and planned attendees.

Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry
Full Committee Hearing Notice

Examination of Federal Food Safety Oversight in the Wake of Peanut Products Recall
Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009

Time: 10:00 a.m.
Place: 216 Hart Senate Office Building
Panel I

Dr. Stephen Sundlof
Director, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for
Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Rockville, MD

Rear Admiral Ali S. Khan
Assistant Surgeon General and Deputy Director of the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-borne, and Enteric Diseases, Center for Disease Control
Atlanta, GA

Panel II

Ms. Gabrielle Meunier
Mother of affected child
South Burlington, VT

Ms. Caroline Smith DeWaal
Director
Program on Food Safety, Center for Science
in the Public Interest
Washington, DC

Mr. William Hubbard
Former Senior Associate Commissioner for
Policy, Planning and Legislation, Food and Drug Administration
Chapel Hill, NC

A related question this author has posed in a number of my posts is who in the supply chain is culpable for damages as a result of breakdowns in product safety that result in illness, injury or death. A wonderful blog to view that speaks too many of these matters is The Marler Blog. Bill Marler is an accomplished personal injury and products liability attorney. He began litigating food borne illness cases in 1993. I hope you find his site educational.

As always we appreciate and look forward to your comments

Is Category Discovery and important step in building an e-negotiation strategy?

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

This author believes that to many e-negotiation programs fail because their strategies are not well thought out in advance of the execution stage.

The following are some practical thoughts that companies should consider which will take their e-negotiation program well beyond tactics to create a sustainable process going forward.

Category discovery is the basis of any quality implementation of an e-negotiation strategy. It is essential that this process begin with a company?s executive management?s sponsorship. This process will include working with all category managers, buyers and other procurement knowledge workers to uncover opportunities suitable for e-negotiation tools such as Requests for Information (RFI), Proposals (RFP) and Quotations (RFQ). A fundamental requirement for any successful category discovery process is an adequate source of suppliers interested in participating in e-negotiation events regardless as to whether they impact cost of goods or the expense line. Suppliers can then be vetted against product specifications and incumbent suppliers gathered during the during the discovery process. The success of this process may and probably should also include store visits, distribution center visits, supplier visits, product evaluations, contract reviews, spend data collection and other related information necessary to completely understand specific category dynamics. Any process is only as good as its original goals set to determine an events success. These factors that may go well beyond simple price reduction such as impact on quality, finding secondary sources of supply or cost avoidance. Analysis of these success factors and areas of improvement which have been properly benchmarked to the original goals included during the discovery and resulting category to market strategy will drive a sustainable process and as such may well be the most important step after an e-negotiation event has concluded.

As always we look forward to and appreciate your comments

Change comes to Washington

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

As our 44th President of the United Sates Barrack Obama promised so often during his campaign, all things including Food Safety are open to review under his administration.

From this author?s perspective, it?s about time. One of the great frustrations that many citizens suffer endlessly with the government is bureaucratic back talk and promises of what?s to come. If the present administration can have an impact on food safety, this author welcomes it even though I did not vote for the democratic ticket.

An article in USA TODAY by Elizabeth White is titled Obama promises ?complete review? of FDA operations and a by line of Congress to take look at outbreak of Salmonella. In the article our new President discusses that one of his daughters eats peanut butter every day for lunch and he does not want to worry whether she is going to get sick from her lunch. Amen to that.

Further, the article goes on to state that Congress appears to agree and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry will hold a meeting this week on food safety oversight.

We already know that over 550 people have been taken ill and as many as eight people have died from this outbreak. This is the 2nd largest outbreak in decades trailing only last years outbreak associated with tomatoes and peppers which affected over 1000 people.

This author has offered many suggestions as to possible solutions to the issue of food safety that range from traceability to best practice scorecards that hold suppliers accountable to a variety of safety programs from ISO to GFSI. If it takes the new administration to drive the desired level of focus on this issue, so be it.

As always we look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Are you thinking through e-procurement self service?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

That is if you want to drive the greatest possible savings across the broadest range of categories in the shortest amount of time; and have a sustainable process moving forward.

The question one needs to ask is; what type of event services does my e-procurement provider offer? If your company is deciding to try self service, which is to be 100% self-sufficient, you need to know if your provider offers readily available classroom education that can be conducted on-site in order to train your team in all the nuances of event support. These skills are the foundation that allows e-procurement providers to support large volumes of events in a full service mode, which drive greater savings over the long term. Knowledge transfer in this area is one thing; the passion, skill and headcount to carry out these practices on a day by day basis are what drive results.

Typically event services falls into two broad categories:

1. Event management
2. Event monitoring and support.

Event management provides end to end e-sourcing support that begins with a companies overall strategy and ends with the actual execution of the e-procurement event. This is a true cross category effort that includes a rather lengthy list of services that may include buyer training, supplier selection, category discovery, supplier communication, the strategy for taking a category to market, training and overall supplier expectation management.

Event monitoring and support is actually the tactical implementation of the over all e-procurement event management process. This may include all communications with suppliers on the day of an event including making sure they have access to the system, get logged in properly, don?t have problems placing quotes, monitoring supplier and buyer system communications techniques during an event such as notes and texting and being available post event for questions as needed.

These services are normally provided by people behind the scenes with a very specific skill set. If you plan to do self service it would be very wise to make sure you have them covered at the same quality level.

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments.

In response to the two most recent food borne illness outbreaks in the last nine months, how can we possibly monitor these types of events?

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Who has the time to monitor their supplier?s safety performance?

When we think about safety and eco standards in the supply chain, I honestly believe that all companies say quietly to themselves; how are we supposed to monitor this with everything else we have to deal with in procuring products?

I have written on this subject before, and as a TQM ands Six Sigma advocate, believe in the statement that you can not manage something that you do not measure.

The issue becomes more complex when you consider that data is required from your organization relative to the historical performance of existing suppliers, data from the supplier as to their own assessment of their historical performance and finally external data that neither may have at their finger tips.

When we talk about safety, the question that retailers need to ask suppliers is pretty simple. What certifications do you carry relative to food safety such as Safe Quality Foods (SQF), Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), American Humane Certified and many more? Another area to question should be regarding USDA and FDA inspection history.

Although Green Initiatives fall into the social consciousness area of a company, there are a variety of questions that can be asked in this area as well such as Green Seal, Eco-logo and Green Star certifications and participations.

It may be easier for retailers to rely on their e-procurement providers for this data if the provider has it included in their supplier database or some other knowledge source. Pre-populated e-procurement templates can act as a form of scorecard for existing suppliers and potential news sources of supply. This is actually a type of automated RFI process which can save companies a lot of work and time when trying to find additional sources of safe and eco friendly supply or when trying to drive cost down with existing suppliers. These data may also help to protect retailers from harmful litigation when products end up not being as safe as promised.

Can your e-procurement provider provide these types of data on demand as a normal byproduct of your standard e-procurement process at no additional cost? Ask them?

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.