Supply chain Relationships

Jan 30, 2013

Bangladesh Working Conditions: A Human Rights Issue? Or a Supplier Capacity Issue?

The recent press in the Wall Street Journal and other papers on Walmart’s fire in Bangladesh is raising the ire of corporate responsibility groups and human rights groups alike.  … 

Dec 13, 2012

Newest Partners to Join the SCRC: Avaya, John Deere, and Stop Hunger Now

Today the SCRC office received confirmation from Avaya that they will be joining the SCRC effective January 2013. Our staff will be meeting with their representative early next week to… 

Oct 11, 2012

Ralph Lauren's Supply Chain: A Lot More Complex Then You Think!

Jeff Holcomb, Senior Vice President of Customer Operations and US Transportation at Ralph Lauren’s offices in Greensboro, NC spoke in my MBA supply chain class last week.  He told the… 

Aug 27, 2012

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

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… 

Aug 7, 2012

Key Forces to Consider that will Impact the Future Global Logistics Environment

Today’s global logistics environment is characterized by increasing complexity and a much greater number of parameters shaping the logistics environment. The speed of trends is breathtaking and increasingly complicated –… 

Apr 4, 2012

Random Thoughts on the Impact of Frugal Innovation on the Supply Chain

In this week’s Economist, an article by Schumpeter provides some interesting views on the emerging concept of “frugal innovation”.  He cites the example of the Tata Nano, a $2,000 car… 

Apr 3, 2012

What Will the Role of the CIO Look Like In the Next Five Years?

I recently spoke with Todd Taylor from Apptivo, who is writing a book on IT technology management.  Apptivo provides IT business technology management, and is focused on transparency of IT… 

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 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 9, 2012

The Future Role of the Chief Procurement Officer

I had an interesting discussion with Stephen Hall from the Procurement Leaders Group this morning. Stephen is putting together a feature for Procurement Leaders Magazine on ‘The End of the…