How to secure your supply chain through strategic sourcing.

...its not just about price.

Thursday September 23rd, 2010

Effective strategic sourcing and supplier management should be critical core competencies for all supply chain professionals.  Regardless of title and responsibilities, it is very important to understand the categorization of your suppliers and ensure effective supplier performance management occurs throughout all levels of the supply chain.

It does not have to be rocket science as to-how best categorize suppliers. The more specificity and analytics that are required, the more cumbersome it is to effectively manage the supply base. Some large companies (e.g. Apple, Intel, Disney) have used a tremendous amount of internal resources trying to right-size the supply base, manage approved vendor lists and figure out detailed spend per commodity code.  Lots of energy was spent, but it is not clear that a detailed data scrub results in more effective supplier management.

Strategic sourcing needs to be within the context of over-all spend and equate to the desired outcomes you want to achieve.  Strategic sourcing should be viewed as a value add function that helps the employer achieve their mission and operational goals.



Join Gary Hopper and learn about “best practice” seven-step sourcing methodology, specific tools and tactics:

• Develop spend analysis
• Determine business requirements
• Conduct market analysis
• Develop category strategy
• Complete supplier evaluation
• Select suppliers & negotiate agreements
• Manage supplier performance

Areas of Focus

• Supplier management core competencies
• Collaboration with strategic sourcing managers
• Supply base criteria and when to use supplier scorecards and business reviews
• Deal with challenging single and sole source supplier relationships

Who Should Attend?

All supply chain professionals wanting to enhance their knowledge of strategic sourcing.

Related material

If this topic interests you, you might enjoy the following articles available exclusively to APICS members:

• Beyond Piece Price  - Learn about successful global sourcing from Supply Chain Strategist Lori Sisk, who is interview by APICS magazine's Douglas R. Kelly. October 2007, APICS magazine
• The State of Strategic Sourcing - By David Jacoby, CPIM, CIRM. 2005. APICS International Conference Proceedings
   

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