Archive for the ‘Retail Supply Chain’ Category
Thursday, February 10th, 2011
All databases have their start as an information gathering exercise that ultimately is enhanced by those characteristics the owner or developer determines to be useful to the community of interest the database is to be offered to. The information then becomes part of a data model where information sets can be accessed or searched based on a variety of queries or questions. Most developers follow a process called Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration or UDDI as this process.
Universal Description, Discovery and Integration or (UDDI) is a standard established for building online databases of companies and the goods and services they provide, similar to Yellow Pages for the Internet. UDDI is intended to help businesses locate suppliers and products. Sourcing companies supplier databases go well beyond this definition.
Data models can be extremely complex and that is where they become more than a simple on line yellow pages. In fact high quality supplier databases should be able to provide much of the data you might find in the opening pages of a detailed RFI. A simple query like show me all companies within a 500 mile radius of your home office zip code that provide a set of products that meet the following safety certifications. A next step might be summarizing all company information for these companies by a list of attributes such as company description, sale, years in business, officers etc.
How easy would that make your life?
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, E-supply Chain, Retail Supply Chain, Supply Chain Procurement
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Last week more than one third of the United States was hammered by a winter storm that left hundreds of people stranded in airports, without power and without the means to conduct their normal lives. This storm comes on the heels of what has already been an extremely bad winter for much of the northern and eastern part of the country.
The question lies, what type of impact do storms like this really have on the business world and the activity surrounding the sourcing of goods and services.
Any time retailers have to go more than 2 or 3 days with no or very limited sales the impact is enormous. That is lost revenue that cannot be retrieved; not to mention the waste involved for perishable products that were not sold. Loss of this nature must be recouped somehow and often that is in the form of an increase in prices.
The service industry is also affected as poor travel conditions and canceled flights lead to lost revenue in many sectors while some sectors such as snow removal, roof repairs and maintenance companies can barely handle the increases they see. Companies without a good procurement process and or have negotiated strong contracts are left waiting or paying extreme premiums to get attention.
Lost man hours due to driving conditions and increased illness are also a major impact of a storm like last week that certainly affects the areas being hit, but it also affects companies in other parts of the country as they suffer the pains of canceled meetings and delayed activity in the aftermath of the storm. All of this ends up meaning one thing, lost revenue and time that usually leads to increased prices and shorter supply levels.
Whether this storm dramatically affects the slight economic upturn being displayed before it hit remains to be seen but one thing is sure; the ripple effect of the storm will be felt for weeks to come.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, E-supply Chain, Retail Supply Chain
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
Reviewing why retailers do not have continuing success when running prior e-procurement events over again, one area of commonality is a lack of new suppliers. Another is the price being too high for the same event that has already been built and will result in lower savings the 2nd and 3rd time around.
There is a proper way to insure the sustainability of your reverse auctions going forward. Following these guidelines will also encourage senior managements consideration of placing more spend under the control of e-procurement tools and specifically reverse auction tools.
Once you are armed with a robust retail supplier database and related tools such as the SafeSourcing® SafeSourceIt™ tool set:
1. Conduct a detailed category discovery
a. Learn all there is to learn about the retailers way of doing business.
b. Walk distribution centers and warehouses
c. Walk an array of stores and understand all formats of the enterprise.
d. Compile a list of all corporate categories
2. Rank categories by
a. Total spend
b. Importance
c. Sourcing frequency
d. Quality objectives
e. Look for aggregation opportunities
i. Lighters, lighter fluid, flints, fire sticks.
3. Conduct supplier discovery
a. Rank suppliers
i. Size
ii. Experience
iii. References
iv. Environmental certifications
v. Safety Certifications
4. With all of the above in hand; develop a three year game plan
a. Identify suppliers for each event over the three years
b. Develop savings targets by category
c. Develop a three year time line for all categories
5. Role Play internally the first year for a test category
a. Ask the following questions
i. How will you award the business
ii. Review alternate scenarios
iii. Review savings by scenario
iv. Determine which suppliers will be invited back
v. Determine what new suppliers from your database search will be invited next year
We look forward to and appreciate to your comments.
Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-supply Chain, Eprocurement Auction, Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
With the number of food born illness issues during the last couple of years, one area that is difficult to keep up with is food industry safety.
The SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database has grown to over 380,000 global suppliers. During the same timeframe the number of certifications we monitor for these suppliers has also grown. In the food space three standards that are regularly adhered to are ISO 22000, SQF and GFSI? So, what’s the difference?
In essence, SQF and GFSI are programs administered by two separate organizations CIES and FMI that are supportive of each other and use ISO 9000 and its derivative ISO 22000 as standards guideline towards driving food safety in the global supply chain.
According to Wikipedia, ISO 22000 is a standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization dealing with food safety and is a general derivative of ISO 9000 which sets standards for quality management. As such, ISO 22000 guides food safety management systems – requirements for any organization in the food chain. Since food safety hazards can occur at any stage in the food chain from production to consumption it is essential that adequate control be in place that by the ISO are referred to as Critical Control Points or potential points of failure in the supply chain that when managed properly can mitigate the risk associated with the hazard ever taking place.
The ISO 22000 international standard specifies the requirements for a food safety management system which SQF and GFSI are that involves interactive communication, systems management and prerequisite programs and the principles of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP).This is a systematic preventive approach to food safety which addresses physical, chemical and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection which could be much more costly.
Think of the ISO as a standards creating body, and SQF and GFSI as programs that at a minimum focus on holding the entire food supply chain accountable to those and other standards.
We look forward and appreciate your comments.
Posted in Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Supply Chain Procurement
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
So what does drive the price of paper? Well it depends on the type of paper you’re talking about. In this case let’s talk about copy paper, receipt paper and the like. What drives the pricing here is the pulp market and specifically the hardwood pulp market. You probably buy a variety of paper products from the same distributor. Your supplier may buy it from a larger distributor who may in fact buy it from a mill.
What the mills buy to make copy paper is hard wood pulp. That market at present is becoming saturated which is a good thing for paper prices. We took an early hit last year due to Mother Natures impact in countries like Chile but global inventories and shipments are headed up which means your prices should be headed down.
Your contract probably has some sort of escalator or deescalator language in that that offers some protection, but excess inventory is always a reason for companies to be aggressive in their pricing.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
The question this begs, is the statement true? The answer is more complicated than just saying the cost of pulp is going up or down because there area variety of pulps and the same pulp is not used for making copy or print quality paper as is made for making paper grocery bags or paper wraps. The type of pulp used for making copy or print quality paper is hardwood pulp. Hardwood fibers are suited for producing smooth papers for printing and writing. They also can achieve good stiffness and bulking ability, but this depends on the tree species and refining conditions.
The trick with the above scenario is that depending on the tracts lumber companies are harvesting there may or may not be a robust availability or supply of hardwood pulp at any given time. And as such we enter the entire supply versus demand equation.
So is it possible to conduct your own research to qualify the statements of your supplier? It is depending on how far you want to go in doing what commodity traders do every day of the week in order to time their investment with market movement.
CME Group is a good site that would allow you to follow futures on a variety of products. The following link will take you to the hardwood pulp futures market which at the moment is trending down.
Let information be your friend, and if you don’t have time call your e-procurement solutions provider.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Business Sourcing, E-supply Chain, Retail Supply Chain
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
The following is taken directly from a great website “The CPO Agenda” and specifically from an old article titled “How the Stars Shine Brighter”.
The entire article is a great read as to the positive impact that best in class procurement companies can have on their company’s results even during these tough economic times. The specific information I found interesting was a sub section that relates directly to yesterdays post on supplier score cards and is titled.
Sustainability and corporate responsibility.
These have emerged as significant issues for the procurement function and are now factored into most companies’ corporate goals. However, there is still a long way to go until these goals are formally embedded into procurement strategies. Finding the right balance between economic viability, environmental awareness and social well-being is a significant challenge, but a competitive advantage can be gained by companies that locate intersection points for all three.
For Wal-Mart, sustainability has broad economic and social components, including healthcare, economic opportunity and the quality of life of the people who make the products it stocks. The company’s commitment to sustainability centers on three aggressive goals: to be supplied 100 per cent by renewable energy, to create zero waste, and to sell products that sustain natural resources and the environment. The key focus areas for its sustainability efforts include paper, packaging, textiles, jeweler, electronics and chemical-based products – categories selected based on a combination of consumption and the volume of product sold.
Wal-Mart helps its suppliers to develop goals and set expectations, assist with knowledge around sustainability practices, and evaluate and manage results. Suppliers are expected to “do right” by workers and the environment, examine the entire product lifecycle in order to develop sustainable merchandise and significantly increase energy efficiency throughout the supply chain, especially in the area of logistics and shipping.
Key scorecard metrics include greenhouse gas emissions produced during manufacturing, the product-to-packaging ratio, packing cube utilization, recycled material usage, renewable energy use at supplier facilities and raw material recovery rates. The involvement and commitment of the world’s largest retailer toward sustainability practices throughout the supply chain will accelerate the rate at which many companies come to adopt sustainability-focused practices.
As always, we appreciate and look forward to your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, E-supply Chain, Retail Supply Chain
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
Many times the ideas for my blog posts come from conversations with customers. Often times those thoughts make it into our product development plans. In fact listening to our customers is one of our most important jobs.
During a visit with a customer several months ago, the head of procurement complimented me on our companies efforts related to food safety and in particular commented on the 27 safety certifications we hold our 380,000 global suppliers accountable to in our SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database. He followed that with the statement that since they did not sell fresh foods, that area of our business did not apply to them.
This particular retail customer does sell food products, cosmetics, private label bottled water and also bags the products they sell to their customers in plastic bags. I think most of you can see where I’m going with this. Plastic bags are a growing area concern for many areas of the country and in fact outlawed in an ever increasing number of areas due to their negative environmental impact. Food packaging can contain BPA. Dog food has contained products such as melamine. Toys have been found to contain lead.
So, let’s see that’s clothing, packaged foods, pet food, toys and beverages. I guess we have to be careful with all of the products we buy. Suppliers need to be held accountable to a variety of standards and certifications while also providing traceability beyond the one forward and one back standard supported in the industry today.
E- procurement solutions providers need to be prepared to discuss how they intend to accomplish this for their customers in order to limit end user consumer risk, but also limit risk associated with litigation and other recall related costs that have a direct impact on company profit.
At SafeSourcing, all of our associates support our R4 program of Recycle, Reuse, Replace and Reduce and will be glad to have a detailed discussion relative to product safety and environmental impact and how our tools proactively address these opportunities.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments
Posted in E-procurement Solutions, Global E-procurement, Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Supply Chain Procurement
Thursday, November 25th, 2010
According to the Mayflower Society, as history has evolved, any of the 102 Mayflower passengers who arrived in Plymouth on the Mayflower and survived the initial hardships is now considered a Pilgrim with no distinction being made on the basis of their original purposes for making the voyage.
The Mayflower Pilgrims and their fellow travelers were authors of the first true governing document created in a New World colony. The Mayflower Compact is considered to have set the stage for the Constitution of the United States.
These were the same pilgrims that were responsible for the holiday we celebrate today called Thanksgiving.
We wish you and yours a peaceful and happy extended holiday weekend.
Posted in E-supply Chain, Retail Supply Chain
Monday, November 1st, 2010
The specific question is how safe is your supply chain. How safe is it when transporting r products to your stores from warehouses all over the country and in fact all over the globe. Are there enough checks and balances in place to insure that the only products on a boat, train, truck or jet are the products that should be there?
The recent threats from Yemen should make all supply chain logistics providers ask the same questions every time something ships relative to their own and 3rd party logistics providers they may provide these shipping and delivery services. Unfortunately most companies will not have an answer readily available on this subject. In fact most companies will tell you when they order something how soon they would like to receive it and where but will never ask how the product will get there and by whom.
It’s crazy to think that we don’t know what’s on a plane until four hours before it gets to the U.S. This according to an article in the Arizona Republic titled Yemeni arrested in mailing of powerful bombs by Eileen Sullivan and Ahmed Al-Haj of the Associated Press. We have to do better. The terrorist never rest and we must remain diligent. So think about where you products come from and how they get from their point of origin to your stores. This is part of having a traceable supply chain but in this case we need to know what is shipping, when it’s shipping and who has access to to it during the entire process.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Posted in B2b Supply Chain, Retail Supply Chain, Sourcing Safe Foods, Sourcing Safe Products, Supply Chain Procurement
