Daily Archives: April 27, 2007

The Top Three VII: A Great Line-Up

As I indicated in a recent post, I have lined up a number of leading bloggers to bring you their top three. In anticipation of the great posts to come, here is a partial list of bloggers lined up for next week, in addition to the sourcing and procurement regulars (and possibly a few more guest bloggers):

I’m sure when we contrast their top three with the issues that sourcing bloggers like myself, Tim Minahan of Supply Excellence, David Bush of eSourcing Forum, and Jason Busch of Spend Matters regularly blog about, we’ll be able to paint a detailed picture of what Spend/Supply Management 2.0 really needs to address.

The Top Three VI: Straight to the Bottom Line

Today I’m thrilled to bring you a guest post from Doug Smock, editorial director of GlobalCPO.com and co-author of On-Demand Supply Management and Straight to the Bottom Line.

First I’d like to thank Michael for the invitation to participate in the blogathan. I’ve spent most of the last three years since I left Purchasing magazine writing two books about what I consider to be the biggest issues in the procurement world, and have already vented my spleen about such critical issues as CEO involvement/buy-in as well as world-class metrics (since 99.9% of all procurement departments I’ve visited have terrible metrics).

For this, I’d like to touch briefly on the need in American companies for greater cross-functional collaboration between procurement and engineering. The primary goals need to be reduction of specifications’ complexity, introduction of new ideas throughout the supply base, better understanding of “could” costs, improved management of products through their entire lifecycle, and dramatically improved product quality and user-friendliness.

When I first joined the staff of Purchasing magazine in 1977, we used to run a special issue called Value Engineering in which we ran reports of how teams of purchasing and engineering professionals met to reduce costs or improve performance of existing, or even brand new, products. I once visited Buell Motorcycles in East Troy, WI, and saw how product development began with a talk by founder Erik Buell on his vision for a new sports bike: the cost target, speed, look, and feel. Engineers and purchasing professionals then broke into platform teams and met with key supplier partners to develop components. One team replaced a 21-part front section of assembled metal pieces with a sleek-looking, stronger and cheaper single made through an outsourced metal molding process. When I returned to Purchasing as Chief Editor in 2000, I couldn’t really understand why the Value Engineering issue had disappeared. It also seemed to disappear at many companies in the blitz of wonders related to dotcomism.

That’s a shame because what suppliers bring to the table is incredibly powerful in this process. I saw it recently in the newly designed Cabrio and Duet line of laundry products from Whirlpool, where suppliers proposed solutions to technical problems that internal engineering teams felt were irresolvable. I hate to kick a dog when it’s down, but this to me is the most lamentable of all of the problems with the American automobile industry. Bob Lutz, currently chairman of GM North America and former head of Chrysler, once famously commented: “I was amazed (and a bit appalled) at the lack of functional integration at the companies I worked for.”

I know the blogs focus a lot on software, but I’d like to see a little more emphasis on blocking and tackling at the company level.


Editor’s note. Bold was introduced to help draw out Doug’s key ideas. Also, our blogs do occasionally tackle more than just software, and two posts in particular I’d like to point out are Jason Busch’s Selling the Value of Procurement to the Business and Tim Minahan’s Selling Supply Management to the C-Suite: Make it Personal. Also, keep your eyes on the eSourcing Wiki. More content is on its way, including a wiki on perfecting your pitch for a procurement project to pointmen.