mpotepa

Mar 22, 2012

Prediction: More volatility in oil and commodities

There appears to be more unrest in the world this week, which of course brings with it the increased nervousness of analysts and speculators.  One of the real questions arising…

Mar 11, 2012

Making Joint Ventures and Outsourcing Deals Work

In a recent conference in Charlotte hosted by Moore & Van Allen, I saw on a panel with Phillip Grigsby, SVP of Commercial Transmission at Duke Energy, and JoAnn Carlton,…

Mar 10, 2012

More Thoughts on New Contracting Models for Government Acquisition

The significant challenges associated with federal acquisition policies are well documented.  Many  problems with government acquisition are related to contract management, often mentioned as a core competence for federal contract…

Mar 9, 2012

Applying Strategic Sourcing in Government Acquisition

The problems with the federal procurement process are well documented in the literature.  Bloggers have also suggested that new approaches be adopted by federal acquisition contract officers to apply the practice…

Feb 29, 2012

Category management begins and ends with stakeholders

While not always the case, companies often use category teams to develop supply management strategies. Supply management strategies often apply to categories—general families of purchased products or services. Examples of…

Feb 25, 2012

Senator Raymond Burr Shares His Thoughts

I sat on a panel this week in Charlotte on “Strategic Transactions – Planning for 2012 & Beyond”, hosted by Moore & Van Allen.  One of the first speakers was…

Feb 19, 2012

Applying Life Cycle Analysis to the Keystone Problem

Environmentalists have been up in arms about the Keystone pipeline over the last few months. As a result, the Obama Administration first delayed the decision, and then rendered a decision…

Feb 16, 2012

Reverse Logistics: What happens to all of those product returns you've been making, anyway?

David Theleman, Vice President of Business Development at Genco Lifecycle Logistics presented in my MBA class today, and gave a fantastic overview of the emerging area of reverse logistics. Once…

Feb 15, 2012

Just when you thought the global economy was stabilizing…

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…

Feb 13, 2012

Who Said Sustainability is Easy?

In recent posts, we’ve talked about the challenges of driving sustainability across supply chains. To the uninitiated, it seems as if this is an easy decision, as it’s simply the…