Director’s Blog

Aug 3, 2011

Who's Next After the Lawyers are Reverse Auctioned?

Yesterday’s WSJ shared an interesting story about the application of reverse auctions to the legal profession. For those of you who don’t know what these are, we have a long… 

Jul 21, 2011

More supply chain disruption lessons learned from 3/11

Michael Koploy’s recent blog on the after-effects, losers, and winners from the Japanese 3/11 incident provides some interesting points for thought… One of his key points is that companies who… 

Jul 20, 2011

The Most Commonly Used Supply Chain Software Tool Is…..

EXCEL. This may sound surprising, but based on my most recent discussions with supply chain executives reveals a surprising reliance on spreadsheets. This is happening in light of increasing complexity… 

Jul 13, 2011

Tsunami-Driven Energy Shortages Are Driving Sustainable Thinking in Japan

In a recent discussion with a group of Japanese supply chain executives, the discussion came up regarding the current state of the economy after the massive tsunami of March 2011.… 

Jul 9, 2011

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

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… 

Jul 9, 2011

Is IT strategic spending aligned with Corporate strategy ?

The SCRC team recently conducted a benchmarking study focused on IT spending in the manufacturing sector. In our opinion, the current roadmap for IT in many companies is NOT aligned… 

May 26, 2011

Marching to the ERP "Death March"

I coined this phrase from Pierre Mitchell from The Hackett Group – I think it’s probably one of his favorite terms when discussing the on-going SAP/Oracle/”fill in the blank” ERP… 

May 20, 2011

Re-thinking Healthcare Transportation

I recently had an article posted in the Journal of Healthcare Transportation. The article goes into one area of healthcare that is often overlooked…..transportation. When you think about it ,… 

May 17, 2011

Insights from the ISM Meeting…..Inflation is on the rise (despite our Fed Chairman's views otherwise)…

I attended a session led by four procurement leaders at Alcoa, Manpower, Merck and Kraft who spent time discussing some of the current challenges on the environment, including most notably… 

May 6, 2011

Benchmarking Sustainability of Promotion Products: And the Winner is …..Bank of America!

An MBA student team at NC State University (Akhil Bhatia, David Olmsted, Karthik Sudhakaran, Meryem Uluskan) recently conducted a benchmarking study of sustainable best practices for promotional materials. Through research, analysis,…