Today’s post is by Troy Lowe; Vice President of Development at SafeSourcing.

My son works at a local family-owned restaurant and told us that they have not had chicken wings in weeks.  When he told us this I was a perplexed?  Why don’t they have chicken wings?  I had been to a major wing restaurant a few days before and they had wings and they were also selling at their usual price.  I decided to do some research and learned that the small family-owned businesses around the country are having a hard time getting chicken products because of a nationwide poultry shortage.  It seems that the rise in consumer demand for the bird has surged during the pandemic.  With all the stay-at-home orders throughout the country over the past year it seems a lot of us have been ordering a lot of takeout chicken meals and sandwiches.  Because of this the poultry producers have not been able to keep up with the pace of the demand.  Other reasons for the shortage were the outbreak of the coronavirus in the meat processing plants, high feed prices and winter storms that shut down some of the chicken farms.  If you are a fan of chicken, analysts say not to worry though the shortage will start to taper off as things are starting to get back to normal and the economy continues to open.  While doing this research I came across the following items that may be in short supply this year as well.

• Gas
• Lumber
• Chlorine
• Ketchup
• Computer Chips
• Metals
• Steel

Interested in learning how SafeSourcing can help your company save money during these shortages and run more efficiently?   For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk-Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Today’s post if  our archives  at SafeSourcing, Inc.

Are you looking for ways to bid a construction job but don’t know how to easily trim costs.  Do you have a favored supplier of your construction materials, but see their pricing is getting higher year after year and you think that you have limited options?

There are couple ways to get your costs down:

First would be to run a request for proposal (RFP) in order to qualify new potential suppliers and their capabilities to support your needs. You will also be able to verify specific pricing relative to materials or to be used during the job.

• Your RFP should be specific to the project you are working on. As an example, if you are sourcing a new roofing project or replacement roofing, then you could invite local suppliers from the area where the job is to be completed as well as the big national suppliers. Supply all with the same exact detail relative to framing/studs, the type of membrane materials, the insulation type, flashing, piping, ladders, lightning protection etc.
• From the completed RFP you will be able to choose a primary supplier and possibly a secondary supplier to work with based on their submission of information and pricing within your RFP.

Secondarily you might also run a request for quote or Reverse Auction in order to compress pricing based on all of the specifics submitted through the RFP from the general contractors or run a more specific RFQ targeting the higher pricing from the RFP, which could items such as labor or material costs.

• As an example, using the roofing scenario, you might choose to run an RFQ on membrane materials only from the manufactures to be used by the general contractor.

By running these e-procurement events you will be able to choose the best qualified supplier with the best pricing as well as present that supplier with your best priced manufacturer of the membrane materials.  The combination of these two types of events will provide you significant savings on two specific fronts within the same category, and resultantly lower your overall construction costs.

The roofing example is just one of many areas within the construction category in which SafeSourcing can reduce costs and aid increasing profitability.

If you would like to learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

Today’s post is from our  SafeSourcing archive

Today, we will look at some of the principles of this dashboard and how you could be using them to help track the health of how your company spends its money.

Establish the baseline – One of the premises with which most dashboards work successfully is that of establishing where you are right now.  Even better than that is being able to go back 1-2 years to see where you have come from.  When you can go back over historical data, you can begin to establish the trends of how you have done and what areas need the most attention.  If a category has consistently increased year after year, then you may need to source a different vendor or item.  Other areas of the company can use this data, too, to determine if a total shift in products or raw materials should be used to get away from those made with material that continues to increase.  The baseline will establish your health before you do anything else.

Pull from other sources – Often times, procurement departments do not have access to the best data they need to make decisions.  This may be because it is held in systems they do not have access to or because the company itself has never had a process to track the details.  By looking to outside sources, you may uncover data that is useful in making decisions, such as going to the suppliers you do business with and asking for historical performance for purchases or pricing.  It could also mean that you research internally for data that isn’t dollars and cents.  You may purchase material handling equipment, but the warehouse uses it.  How the equipment holds up and runs and how the supplier supports you for fixes and replacement parts are just as important in determining your procurement health as is the cost of the equipment in a contract.  The more data you have, the better choices you can make for the company.

Correlating Data Points – With data from several sources, you can put the final piece in play.  Just like the new Apple Health Dashboard can correlate calories consumed from MyFitnessPal and burnt from MapMyRun, to the blood pressure measurements taken from an iHealth wireless device, you should be looking for solutions that can help correlate the key data points you are receiving from external and internal sources.  When you correlate which resource runs projects quickly but with good savings you can begin to examine what they are doing differently than other team members, for instance.  The correlations of savings and the time it takes to realize the savings is just one correlation we can provide.

At SafeSourcing, we can help your company establish a procurement dashboard to monitor your company’s spend health with our SafeDashboard™.  For more information on this tool or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is  from our archives at  SafeSourcing.

1. Customer-focused

The customer ultimately determines the level of quality. No matter what an company does to raise quality improvement—training employees, integrating quality into the design process, upgrading computers or software, or buying new measuring tools—the customer determines whether the efforts were worthwhile.

2. Total employee involvement

All employees participate in working toward common goals. Total employee buy-in can only be obtained after fear has been driven from the workplace, when empowerment has occurred, and management has provided the proper environment. The employee must feel confident when making critical decisions and know the organization will back that decision. The employee will feel more empowered to always strive to get better knowing their importance to the success of the company.

3. Process-centered

A central part of TQM is a focus on process thinking. This is obtained through constantly putting the customer first. TQM focuses on the improvement of products and services that meet the needs and exceed the expectations of key customers. This process involves understanding the companies’ vision, customer feedback, process improvements and quality of product or service.  The steps required to carry out the process are defined, and performance measures are continuously monitored in order to identify unexpected discrepancies.

4. Integrated system

Although a company may consist of many different useful specialties, often these do not follow the same expectations. What is true for the staff must also be the same for the management. The same goes for the quality of service we give both the client and our suppliers.

Every company has a unique work culture, and it is virtually impossible to achieve excellence in its products and services unless a good quality culture has been nurtured. Thus, an integrated system connects company improvement elements in an attempt to continually improve and exceed the expectations of customers, employees, and others.

5. Strategic and orderly approach

A critical part of TQM, and the management of quality, is the strategic and orderly approach to achieving a company’s vision, mission, and goals. This process, called strategic planning or strategic management, includes the creation of a strategic plan that integrates quality as a core factor. The execution and follow through is crucial for this to be a success. Come up with a game plan, test it and make adjustments to achieve precise results.

6. Continual improvement

A major push of TQM is continual process improvement. Continual improvement drives a company to be both analytical and creative in finding ways to become more competitive and more effective at meeting expectations.

7. Fact-based decision making

In order to know how well a company is performing, data on performance measures are necessary. TQM requires that an organization continually collect and analyze data in order to improve decision making accuracy, achieve consensus, and allow forecast based on past history.

8. Communications

During times of company change, as well as part of day-to-day operation, effective communications plays a large part in maintaining morale and in motivating employees at all levels. Communications involve strategies, method, and timeliness. Without good communication, things get missed or wrong information is submitted.

The web site below gives further details.

https://www.isixsigma.com/methodology/total-quality-management-tqm/introduction-and-implementation-total-quality-management-tqm/

Robert, or any member of the experienced team at SafeSourcing, would be happy to discuss how SafeSourcing can help you with your eProcurement planning. For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post  is from our Archives at   SafeSourcing.

While working for J. Alexander’s Restaurant, we were required to take a TQM (Total Quality Management) class. I was very impressed with their methods and philosophy and was a believer from the start. It really changed the way I approached customer service and have held onto these beliefs since. Here are some of the features of TQM. I hope you will Learn it, Live it and Love it!

Total Quality Management (TQM), also known as total productive maintenance, describes a management approach to long-term success through customer satisfaction. In a TQM effort, all associates of a company participate in improving processes, products, services, and the values in which they work.

Total Quality Management Principles: The 8 Primary Features of TQM

Total quality management can be summarized as a management system for a customer-focused company that involves all employees in continual improvement. It uses strategy, data, and effective communications to integrate the quality discipline into the culture and activities of the company.

Tomorrow in Part II we’ll take a look at the 8 features of total quality management

Robert, or any member of the experienced team at SafeSourcing, would be happy to discuss how SafeSourcing can help you with your eProcurement planning. For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.

We look forward to your comments.

Todays post is from Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc

After approving this month’s newsletter, I sent the following to our team.

The services that SafeSourcing provides are so important to our customers. Many companies do not understand how much help SafeSourcing can provide. In our May newsletter Gayl Southard our Vice President of Administration points out the ever-changing business landscape that the pandemic has caused.

Two specific examples are the price of Lumber and the price of Chlorine. In some cases, lumber is up 50% with no reduction in pricing on the near-term horizon. The question this begs for companies and individuals; is why pay a 50% premium when you might only need to pay 25% if that. If buyers sourced their lumber in a different way and recognized that cost mitigation is just as important as savings versus your old pricing. If you know companies or individuals whose costs are going up and out of control for any product or service, please tell them about SafeSourcing.

The following is an excerpt from our May Newsletter being distributed this week. that is produced by Gayl Southard, Vice President of Administration at SafeSourcing. Our circulation for the newsletter is about 6.5K subscribers.

The price of lumber is generating profits for sawmills; however, do-it-yourselfers, renters, and home buyers are footing the bill.  The record three-month profits in 2021 are even fatter than last year.  These companies have emerged as the biggest growing businesses during this wood boom.    Plywood and lumber are flying off the shelves at hardware stores and are being bid up by home builders.  “Lumber futures delivery later this month ended Monday at $1,575.60 per thousand board feet, an all-time high and more than four times the typical price this time of year.  Futures have risen by the daily maximum allowed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during nine of April’s 21 trading sessions.”1

The first of May the futures shot up $75.50, the biggest jump in a single day.  Mill owners say they are backed up with orders into June.  Builders are reporting high home sales.  When COVID hit last year, many sawmills sent their worker’s home.  Forty percent of North America’s sawmills came to grinding halt.  Now things have taken a dramatic turn in the opposite direction.

1 Ryan December, WSJ, 5/4/2021

If you would like to learn more as to how SafeSourcing can help reduce your costs immediately or would like to subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter, please contact a SafeSourcing customer servicers account manager.

Today’s blog is by Gayl Southard, Vice President of Administration at SafeSourcing Inc.

The phrase “Pushing the envelope” was a termed coined by test pilots such as John Glenn and Chuck Yeager in the 1950’s. “ Each aircraft they flew was said to have an ‘envelope’ of performance. In other words, it was designed to fly safely up to a certain speed for a certain distance and a certain altitude. The job of the test pilots was to “push the envelope” by making the plane go faster, farther, and higher.”1

Harvey MacKay says that what “pushing the envelope” means to him is pushing oneself to maximize your advantage to be better, faster, and smarter in order to get the results you want in business and in life. Today having a great product isn’t enough…people expect things faster, better and cheaper. All parts of your business need to be up to speed. This is particularly important with customer service. You need to handle complaints quickly and efficiently, therefore resulting in a satisfied customer. If you make customers No. 1 they will make you No. 1. Businesses have to keep up or get passed by.  Walmart and Kmart are good examples to learn from. Walmart has continually made changes and reinvented themselves, whereas Kmart remained stagnant struggled (after being acquired by Sears) and went in and out of bankruptcy.

We now live in a world of instant gratification. Consumers expect speed. It is important to get your workforce, employees, contractors, and vendors up to speed by training them to execute tasks faster, innovate, and share best practice ideas. It is important never to sacrifice speed for quality. Train correctly, and constantly to move at a fast pace.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk

Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

References….…………….

1. Harvey Mackey, WSJ, 7/12/2020