Supply Chain View from the Field

Category Archives: Supply Market Intelligence

1. Thinking Differently About Procurement: The SCRC Meeting Theme on April 29-30, 2013

   March 14, 2013
   by: handfield
   categories: Global Supply Chain, Strategic Sourcing, Supplier Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Supply Market Intelligence

   Our next SCRC meeting will focus on “The Future of Procurement”, and will be held on April 29-30, at the NC State University Club in Raleigh, NC.  We will be hosting a number of senior executives reflecting on this theme, including Ron Reising from Duke Energy, Pat Murzyn from Caterpillar, Bill Knittle from BP, Jason [...]

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2. Controlling the extended supply chain: Horse Bolognese, anyone?

   February 10, 2013
   by: handfield
   categories: Global Distribution, Global Supply Chain, Retail Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Quality, Supply chain Relationships, Supply Market Intelligence

   A recent article in the Guardian shows how uncontrollable supply chains can be.  Managing tier 2 suppliers, in this case, became problematic when supermarkets found that the beef they were selling was not what they thought it was….. Several supermarkets in the UK announced that what they thought was beef in the food they were [...]

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3. Handfield’s Supply Chain Predictions for 2013

   January 1, 2013
   by: handfield
   categories: Forecasting, Logistics, Retail Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Strategy, Supply Market Intelligence

   Well we made it through 2012, and it actually turned out to be a reasonably good year, in terms of supply chain news and events.  There were a few disasters of course, but this now seems to be a commonplace theme for global supply chain planners  (the world’s logisics network are impacted at least once [...]

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4. Exploiting social media to drive sustainable supply market intelligence

   September 13, 2012
   by: handfield
   categories: Procurement Sustainability, Supplier Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Risk, Supply Market Intelligence, Sustainability

   As organizations seek to become more sustainable, they are recognizing the limitations they face with current data systems that collect and consolidate technical information on your suppliers and their process inputs and outputs in the supply chain.  Such systems ideally need to be able to construct value stream maps, life cycle analysis, carbon footprints, and [...]

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5. The Power of Bloomberg in Creating Supply Chain Intelligence and Risk Alerts

   August 27, 2012
   by: handfield
   categories: Strategic Sourcing, Supply chain analytics, Supply Chain Innovation, Supply chain Relationships, Supply Chain Risk, Supply Market Intelligence

   Supply chains are difficult to study.  People do not want analysts knowing about their supply chains.  So creating market intelligence around supply chains is extremely challenging.  Yet analysts rely on supply chain information.  They study market reports, and they react to announcements.  Research by Hendricks and Singhal shows that stocks can drop by as much [...]

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6. Airbus, Boeing, and CAT Discover Supplier Integration Comes Down to Hard Work

   July 11, 2012
   by: handfield
   categories: Aerospace Supply Chain, Category Management, Strategic Sourcing, Supplier Relationship Management, Supply Market Intelligence

   The article in today’s WSJ refers to the new approach being used by Airbus and Boeing to “integrate” suppliers.  Supplier integration and collaboration are terms that are thrown around a bit too much for my liking, primarily because they don’t reflect the true hard work that underlies this term. Boeing discovered this in 2007 according [...]

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7. Just when you thought the global economy was stabilizing…

   February 15, 2012
   by: handfield
   categories: Forecasting, Global Supply Chain, Supply Chain Management, Supply Market Intelligence

   Many economic forecasters have a certain number of “givens” in their economic projections, including the fact that the economies of Brazil, China, and India will remain stable….let’s take a look at some of these “given assumptions”…. As noted in earlier blogs, there is significant doubt about the challenges associated with economic growth in China. The [...]

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8. P&G slashes marketers in lieu of free social media

   February 1, 2012
   by: handfield
   categories: Business Process Outsourcing, Customer Relationship Management, Supply chain analytics, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Talent, Supply Market Intelligence

   A recent article in business insider portends bad news for marketing folks.  Procter and Gamble’s prodigious CEO, Robert McDonald, announced that he is going to lay off 1600 marketing people in order to “moderate” his ad budget because Facebook and Google can be “more efficient” than the traditional media that usually eats the lion’s share [...]

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9. Reacting to Disruptions: The real test for belonging to the “world class supply chain” club?

   January 20, 2012
   by: handfield
   categories: Commodities forecasting, Contract Management, Global Supply Chain, Supply Chain Risk, Supply Market Intelligence

   Many people are quick to point to the AMR Top 25 supply chains as the benchmark for supply chain excellence. In my mind, the real test of how “world-class” a supply chain is, is how they react under duress and severe supply chain disruptions. There is no doubt that as we go into 2012, there [...]

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10. Are you really a customer’s of choice?

    January 15, 2012
    by: handfield
    categories: Category Management, Contract Management, Customer Relationship Management, Supplier Relationship Management, Supply chain analytics, Supply Chain Management, Supply chain Relationships, Supply Market Intelligence

    Within the context of the current financial crisis, the importance of sustaining critical supply chain relationships has received more attention than ever. Despite the return to a “buyer’s market” in some sectors, the need to build and sustain supplier relationships is not obviated. Indeed, in an environment of heightened supply chain financial risks, supplier performance [...]

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11. Planning for Uncertainty in 2012

    December 14, 2011
    by: handfield
    categories: Category Management, Commodities forecasting, Contract Management, Supply Chain Management, Supply chain Relationships, Supply Chain Risk, Supply Market Intelligence

    As I look back on 2011, I’m reminded of the success stories and disruptions that occurred, but am also thinking about who is going to win in the year ahead. On the economic front, 2011 was really about another year of uncertainty. A global economic recovery remains underway, although it is alarmingly long and slower [...]

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12. Time for Creative Thinking on the Economic Front

    December 5, 2011
    by: handfield
    categories: China Supply Chain, Forecasting, Global Supply Chain, Supply Chain Management, Supply Market Intelligence

    Steve Allen, Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of the Graduate Program in the Poole College of Management spoke about the current state of the economy at the SCRC meeting on December 1-2, 2011. In this lecture, he outlined some key thoughts for executives to consider in a glum market, and provide some thoughtful statistics [...]

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13. $30B of Waste in Iraq….We’re not in TCE Anymore Oliver…

    September 1, 2011
    by: handfield
    categories: Contract Management, Supply chain analytics, Supply Chain Management, Supply chain Relationships, Supply Chain Risk, Supply Market Intelligence

    The Wartime Contracting Report came out today and announced $30B in waste in Iraq, and focused on the fact that there was a lot of graft and corruption taking place. Is this a surprise? A chat with Tim Cummins at IACCM leads me to think not….In military contracting environments, there is often a lot of [...]

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14. Thinking about human supply chain intelligence

    August 17, 2011
    by: handfield
    categories: Category Management, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Risk, Supply Market Intelligence

    The value of supply chain intelligence coming from street level knowledge is a recurring theme that people are struggling to understand. The military is a good case study of how one can start to think about this phenomenon. I recently interviewed a former Marine who served in Iraq, who described some of the activities regarding [...]

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15. HJ Soft: the emerging Chinese competitor to SAP and Oracle….

    July 9, 2011
    by: handfield
    categories: Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Systems, Supply Market Intelligence

    As part of our recent study, we also studied a large Chinese government-owned manufacturing entity that has begun moving into the construction industry space . Obtained detailed information on this company (we’ll call it “Company C”) is challenging, even though we had a Chinese scholar working at the SCRC who interviewed managers at their location [...]

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16. The Impact of Social Media in Supply Chain Intelligence

    May 5, 2011
    by: handfield
    categories: Supply Chain Management, Supply Market Intelligence

    In a recent post, Luciano Cunha on the Warehouse Management Systems Guide poses some interesting questions about how companies may begin thinking about application of social media in the supply chain context. Specifically, he notes that “The absolute real-time nature that is inherent in social media can act as a blessing and a curse for [...]

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