Supply Chain Management

Jul 11, 2017

Retreads are Good For Truckers…and Good for the Environment!

Over the road (OTR) trucking involves the use of hauling 53’ trailers behind a truck. The American Transportation Research Institute estimates that of the total cost per mile of driving… 

Jun 29, 2017

Blockchain has real potential to reduce 'old school' procure to pay transactions

IBM’s new white paper “Making Blockchain Ready for Business”, in which they conducted a roundtable with a number of executives provides some important clues as to how the technology will… 

Jun 27, 2017

Assessing the True Return of Procurement Transformation on Total Shareholder Return: A Tough Proposition

In my earlier book with Gerard Chick on “The Procurement Value Proposition“, we advance the notion that buildoing a business case for investing in people, process, and technology improvement in… 

Jun 14, 2017

10 Pieces of Career Advice for Supply Chain Students from a Seasoned Expert

I had the opportunity today to listen to a fantastic presentation to a group of Lenovo executives, while working with their SAIL Executive Development program.  Kirk Skaugen, Executive VP and… 

Jun 7, 2017

The Top 3 Reasons for Label & Packaging Errors in Food Manufacturing

This week’s guest blog is from Marvin Magusara, who contributed insights into an area often maligned…. packaging!  The role of packaging is an important contributor to total cost of ownership,… 

Jun 2, 2017

Managing Supply Chain Relationships with German Managers

Germany companies are becoming more commonplace in not just automotive supply chains (BMW, Bosch, Daimler), but in chemicals (BASF), pharmaceuticals (Bayer), industrial manufacturing (Siemens), and software (SAP).  There are a… 

May 23, 2017

The Strength of the Pack is the Wolf… The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack!

In a recent article in Supply Chain Navigator, I spend some time discussing the interesting relationship between the introduction of wolves in Yellowstone Park, and the evolution of digital supply… 

May 22, 2017

Data Governance is real success story in analytics.

I recently published a white paper with Balaji Soundararajan and Joe Yacura, focused on the topic of data governance. The paper was published with the support of Bravo Solutions, and… 

May 9, 2017

Learning to Work with Machines That Learn What the Experts Know

It is no secret that future generations of managers are being asked to learn all about the different processes in the end-to-end supply chain, and be able to come together… 

Apr 29, 2017

Hilarious Sourcing Videos

I had an opportunity to watch some hilarious sourcing videos recently that I discovered on a sourcing blog by Citro Strategy. The three scenarios depict the actions of “hardball negotiating” procurement…