Procurement Experiences and Trends!

Where is procurement, outsourcing, sourcing, supply chain, and purchasing going? What is happening in the marketplace? What are companies thinking at the executive level and what type of actions are they taking?

First off, we will outline a few of our observations about what we are seeing first hand. Secondarily, we will include information from other procurement professionals and procurement firms about their experiences, what they forecast, and what they are seeing.

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Inspirational Supply Chain Quotes

Here we present a series of thought provoking and inspirational Supply Chain quotes.

“If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.”  ~ Henry Ford, founder Ford Motor Company

“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.” ~ W. Edwards Deming

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Truck Drivers – Unsung Heroes of the Supply Chain! (Infographic)

Anywhere you go anywhere in the world you will find truck drivers delivering goods.  Roads and highways are filled with trucks of all shapes sizes.  Tractor trailers of all configurations are everywhere on the roads.

If you are driving a car you may be annoyed by all of these trucks.  Or if you are an environmentalist you may be concerned by the fuel consumption of these behemoths.

But the reality is that these truck drivers are the backbone of our societies and our economies.  They deliver the goods that we need to live the lives that we enjoy.  Without them the economy would stop and life as we know it would not be the same.

Truck drivers are truly the unsung heroes of the Supply Chain!

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Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing!

Although additive manufacturing and 3D Printing for both plastic and metal materials has been around for years, the investment, developments, breadth of applications, adoption rate, and beneficial case studies are expanding at an extremely rapid rate.

New processes, materials, devices, design applications, are emerging every day. Now, there are cloud sites that store portfolios of designs, much like Pandora does for music. All of this is creating an amazing amount of opportunity creating more efficient supply chains, new product types, de-centralized manufacturing schemes, and easier approaches to mass-customization.

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10 Signs You Should Reboot Your Lean Program!

How many people make a New Year’s resolution to adopt a Lean program and “Lean” yourself out only to abandon it shortly thereafter?

One of the top New Year’s resolutions is to start exercising. In January the local gyms are filled. But by February those gyms are much emptier and many of those well meaning people are still at home.

What do you do when your Lean program at work suffers the same fate? How do you know when your improvement program needs to be improved?

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What’s the Difference Between Blockchain and Supply Chain?

The phrase “Supply Chain Management” was first coined in 1982.  The idea of a  “Blockchain” was conceived in 2008 although the concept of a chain of blocks began as early as 1991, and use of the word Blockchain itself has only become popular in the last few years.

Blockchain has rapidly become a very widely used term, at first intended to describe the enabling technology platform behind Bitcoin.  However as awareness and knowledge of the technology has been increasingly understood the words Blockchain and Supply Chain are more often used together.

As people become more familiar with Blockchain, and consider it’s applicability in their strategic Supply Chain plans, we thought it important to clarify how Blockchain and Supply Chain are different yet mutually supportive.

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