Archive for the ‘Supply Chain Procurement’ Category

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What information should we know about our supply chain partners?

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.

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Safety and Environmental certifications are not just about food and food born illness protection.

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

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How safe is your/our supply chain? Help keep us all safe please.

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.

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Is comparative advantage important to your procurement practices?

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Comparative advantage is a theory that advances that in a free marketplace, each entity or country such as the EU or NAFTA or trading countries will ultimately specialize in activities where it has comparative advantage. Examples of such might be technology, natural resources,?? local workers skill sets, agricultural advantages, transportation benefits etc.

Sometimes countries create trade agreements that eliminate the comparative advantage they each may have in favor of benefits that both or multiple countries derive from the agreement where one may have an advantage over the other that creates an imbalance in trade. As an example in the NAFTA agreement, Mexico may have a lower cost labor pool than the United States but the United States may have a transportation advantage that could leverage that low cost of labor. These agreements are called Free Trade Agreements in which both parties agree to lift most or all tariffs, quotas, special fees and taxes, and other barriers to trade between the entities to their mutual benefit.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Before you comment about strategic sourcing!

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Recently Sourcing Innovation has carried a series of posts, comments and rebuttals as to whether strategic sourcing is alive or dead. This author also posted on the subject in a two part series titled Join the argument. Strategic Sourcing alive or dead? Part I of II on September 17th. And Join the argument. Strategic Sourcing alive or dead? Part II of II on September 20th.

As I read through much of the content in these posts I came to the conclusion that most solution providers comment are not seeing the forest for the trees. Officially strategic sourcing has been around as a sourcing term for 25 years. Unofficially it has been around as a process as long has man has been able to hunt and gather. Almost all searches on strategy will at some point refer to some from of military definition. That may unfortunately be a commentary on mankind. We can certainly agree however that from a military perspective we don’t need to look any further than Germany’s failure in the Ukraine during WWII to understand that not following ones own strategy can have disastrous effects.

Strategy is about understanding your subject area and all of the influence points associated with it. The question is; can we have a strategy without tools? The answer is yes. The key for solution providers is to develop and refine their tools so that they are easily usable by practitioners in order to carry out their strategy, goals and tactics which by their nature follow larger and more complex plans.

Let’s take a simple look at how we might be complicating things. From this authors perspective a strategic plan is made up of the following high level elements.

1. Strategy: Strategy is science or art and sometimes more of the later of combining and employing the means by which procurement can plan and direct supply chain improvement measured by level of operational efficiency and improvement.
2. Goals or Objectives: Goals or objectives fall directly from the strategy to drive a desired state or desired outcome of  persons or of  systems as set by the strategy
3. Tactics: Tactics are the conceptual action that drive goal fulfillment and are used by the procurement organization to achieve  specific goals or objectives

So simply it is not up to us to determine if strategic sourcing is dead or alive, it is up to the subject company that builds a strategic plan to makes sure they have a strategic procurement element of their plan that uses the best tools available to analyze and measure their results. And who are we to say that is not strategic.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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The economists say the recession has been over for more than a year.

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Finding new sources of supply has always been an issue. It may even be more important if your current suppliers can not provide what you need because they were forced to down size during recent economic woes.

This author has posted on numerous occasions relative to the importance of a robust retail supply chain and how retail companies might manage their relationships with current and new sources of supply. A significant part of the process is to have alternative sources of supply that you can rely upon. During last years H1N1 flu outbreak, The SafeSourceIt™ supplier database was able to provide multiple sources of surgical mask suppliers to a customer that had not been able to find them elsewhere for resale in their stores. Although this particular issue was caused by panic buying, it is still a supply and demand problem. The question this begs is are your suppliers capable of supplying your needs as demand increases? Did they reduce staff during the downturn? Have they been able to ramp up since then? Have their suppliers? The message here is, don’t wait until a time of panic or increased prosperity to work and plan for spikes in the supply chain that may cause your customers pain.

The SafeSourceIt™ Retail Supplier Database contains over 380,000 vetted global suppliers that are certified in over 25 different areas.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

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E-procurement.What?s in a definition?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

I was reading a blog post from the Doctor over at Sourcing Innovation today titled ?A Hitchhiker’s Guide to e-Procurement: Terminology? and I thought it was great as well as very timely.

Ultimately it is up to practitioners and solution providers of these tools to educate their customers as to what the proper terms are for the tools they are using. As an example E-RFI, E-RFP, E-RFQ. I have numbers of customers that have used other solution providers and not only are the definitions different by customer; they are actually different within a specific company. In some cases everything is referred to as a reverse auction and in other situations the companies have made up their own name for the service or tool.

This author uses Wikipedia and Wictionary quite often as a source and in this case, they have a very good definition that covers most of the terminology in the entire e-procurement space as well as related B2B and B2C internet based or private network based functions. As your company moves in the direction of a computerized supply chain management solution for your company understanding what you are asking for and what you are using will make both your job and that of your solution provider easier.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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E-procurement.What’s in a definition?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

I was reading a blog post from the Doctor over at Sourcing Innovation today titled “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to e-Procurement: Terminology” and I thought it was great as well as very timely.

Ultimately it is up to practitioners and solution providers of these tools to educate their customers as to what the proper terms are for the tools they are using. As an example E-RFI, E-RFP, E-RFQ. I have numbers of customers that have used other solution providers and not only are the definitions different by customer; they are actually different within a specific company. In some cases everything is referred to as a reverse auction and in other situations the companies have made up their own name for the service or tool.

This author uses Wikipedia and Wictionary quite often as a source and in this case, they have a very good definition that covers most of the terminology in the entire e-procurement space as well as related B2B and B2C internet based or private network based functions. As your company moves in the direction of a computerized supply chain management solution for your company understanding what you are asking for and what you are using will make both your job and that of your solution provider easier.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Sustainability needs to be a primary focus of all retail procurement leaders.

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

A recent survey by UN Global Compact and? Accenture releases findings of largest CEO research study on corporate sustainability. According to this survey Chief Executives believe overwhelmingly that Sustainability has become critical to their success, and could be fully embedded into core business within ten years.

According to the survey CEO?s also believe that companies will need to meet the conditions listed below.

1.?Shaping consumer tastes in order to build a stronger market for sustainable products.
2.?Training management, employees and the next generation of leaders to deal with sustainability issues.
3.?Communicating with investors to create a better understanding of the impact of sustainability.
4.?Measuring performance on sustainability ? and explaining the value of business in society.
5.?Working with governments to shape clearer regulation and create a level playing field.

As a procurement leader what can you do in order to be prepared for those questions that may be coming to your desk tomorrow?

1.?Stay educated by seeking sources that offer readily available and fresh content on procurement related sustainability developments.
2.?Make sure that your procurement solution providers are also focused on sustainability.
3.?Ask your procurement solution providers what their environmental support plans are and how to include them in your procurement business plan.
4.?Ask your procurement solution providers what their product safety plans are and how to include them n your procurement business plan.
5.?Ask your procurement solution providers what training programs they can offer to your company in order to educate your associates.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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How sustainable is your supply chain?

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

WELLINGTON, New Zealand.  According to the Associated Press A crate of Scotch whisky that was trapped in Antarctic ice for a century was finally opened today. But the heritage dram won’t be tasted by whisky lovers because it’s being preserved for its historical significance.
 
The crate, recovered from the Antarctic hut of renowned explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton after it was found there in 2006, has been thawed very slowly in recent weeks at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island. 7ed2fe14-e7cb-4557-bef1-43c8709d9217

 

Your comments might be even better if we could enjoy some of this together. This author has had 50 year old Scotch, but never anything this old.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments

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