Supply Chain Management Article Library

Oct 22, 2003

E-Procurement and the Purchasing Process

Many organizations are beginning to re-evaluate their purchasing processes, and identify new types of e-procurement tools that will meet their needs. This summer, Karl Mundt and Mark Benson have been…

Oct 14, 2003

Success with Hub and Spoke Distribution

Federal Express, UPS, Norfolk Southern and Yellow Freight have all successfully implemented hub and spoke distribution to achieve a competitive logistics advantage (1). They have found that this method of…

Oct 7, 2003

Have You Spoken to Your CFO about SCM Recently?

Many managers I speak with often complain about the problems associated with convincing CFO’s of the importance of SCM initiatives. Recent research, however, suggests that this is about to change.…

Oct 2, 2003

Managing Supply Chain Relationships

As we begin the new year, many companies are standing back and re-evaluating the health of their supply chains. In this column, we continue with the eight-part series on transforming…

Sep 23, 2003

China: The Next Frontier for Supply Chain Management

An academic colleague of mine who teaches at the China-Europe International University in Shanghai, Professor Linda Sprague, has been living in China and teaching university in Beijing for the last…

Sep 16, 2003

Transportation Cost Trends

Supply chain managers know that the cost of fuel and the cost of labor are important determinants of the cost of transportation services. Recently however, seemingly less obvious but important…

Sep 11, 2003

Is Your Procurement Organization Ready for Outsourcing?

It is notable that the success of an outsourced project is not only dependent on technological capability, but is more dependent on the service organization to effectively communicate with its…

Sep 4, 2003

From Push to Pull – Perfecting the Means

What is “hybrid mode” supply management? A recent SupplyChainBrain.com article that covered a study by AMR Research describes it as a mixed manufacturing mode that lies somewhere between a make-to-stock…

Aug 28, 2003

Measuring the Maturity of Procurement Practices

Many companies today are deploying a myriad of procurement strategies, including: Applying reverse auctions to all commodities Apply strategic alliances with all commodities Outsourcing of key business processes Leveraging and…

Aug 20, 2003

Purchasing Manager Survey Says…

Business people have long used survey-based reports to observe markets and aid forecasting. In this regard, reports of purchasing manager surveys, in particular, are popular because they quickly furnish both…