Category Archives: Compliance

MeRLIN Sourcing, A Platform With a Twist …

INTRODUCTION

When their founders were young men
they paced the fact’ry floors
from Vellore down to Chennai
they must have walked ’em all
cause they learned all of the problems
that plagued the Procurement side.
Those listen, look, and learn guys
sure made a lean platform.

The founders of MeRLIN, who started Rheinbrucke Consulting in 2013, started developing a stand-alone application for direct source-to-contract (and, for those who need it, source-to-pay) in 2018 using their decades of experience supporting direct manufacturing clients. MeRLIN was then frst released it to the market in 2022, after ensuring it actually solved the problems they were seeing and met the needs of the companies they were working with.

(While some companies might take it as a badge of honour to get a “minimally viable product” to market in a year, the reality is that when it comes to manufacturing enterprises, nothing you can develop in a year will actually solve more than a fraction of their problems, and unless what you deliver can integrate tightly into their existing enterprise software landscape, it won’t be adopted, or even bought. That’s why there are so many offerings in indirect [many of whom will succumb to the marketplace madness] and so few that offer true direct sourcing solutions, and fewer still that offer fully integrated source-to-contract / source-to-pay suites.)

PLATFORM SUMMARY

MeRLIN, which bills itself as a Source-to-Contract platform for Direct Material (primarily Discrete Manufacturing) Sourcing, is actually a Source-to-Pay platform where the Procure-to-Pay platform capabilities are baseline (and wouldn’t go head-to-head with best-in-class) and designed for the mid-market (and large enterprise) clients that don’t have a Procurement solution in place already (either through the ERP, AP, or a third party system). Since most larger enterprises have some form of decent P2P, MeRLIN decided to focus primarily on the critically underserved strategic sourcing marketplace in discrete manufacturing and direct sourcing and the capabilities all of the companies the founders worked with in manufacturing were universally missing.

MeRLIN was designed as a modular solution where

  • a client could license just the modules they wanted/needed,
  • common modules, and capabilities, were broken out into their own modules so their was no duplication of functionality, and
  • key modules could be augmented with additional value-added functionality not typically found in average products.

MeRLIN has all the standard modules you’d expect in a Source-to-Contract:

  • (Program &) BoM Management (Requirement for any Direct Solution)
  • Requisition Management (Intake)
  • Sourcing (Event) Management (Sourcing)
  • Supplier Management (SXM)
  • Contract Management & Contract Authoring (CLM)
  • Reports & Dashboard (Reporting & Analytics)

As well as basics for Procure-to-Pay:

  • Purchase Order Management
  • Invoice & Payment Management

But also has modules for:

  • Demand Management (Consolidation of Requirements from Requisitions, Manufacturing Programs, and MRPs)
  • Category Management (Part/BoM grouping & management)
  • Supply Chain Compliance (GSCA / LkSG)
  • Supply Management (Document & Shipment Management)

and the standard suite foundational modules of:

  • Master Data Management
  • Business Administration
  • Security Management
  • System Management

And even modules for:

  • Strategic Project Management (Project Management/Orchestration)
  • Finance Management (Budgets, Prices)

We’re not going to discuss all the modules and instead focus in on just the core Source-to-Contract modules, as they are the modules that are critical to direct sourcing and the modules that will allow you to understand the value, and potential, MeRLIN has for you.

Supplier Management

Supplier Management is designed to onboard, evaluate, approve, and manage suppliers, including their contacts, surveys, ratings, and documents. Qualification starts with a simple request based on supplier name, country, email, and unique (DUNS) identifier. Based on the supplier category, the next step will be to send the suppliers the qualification surveys and pull in the external risk information, send it to technical and risk reviewers, and if that passes, it will go off to compliance to ensure the supplier can comply with all necessary regulations the company is subject to and then, if that passes, the supplier will get a registration invite to provide all of the additional information necessary to do business with the company as well as details on additional products and services.

Supplier Management captures all of the core company information, locations, accounts, questionnaires, risk information and scores, compliance reviews, scorecards, and approvals. For each of these there are standard fields, and as many additional fields can be added by the customer organization as needed.

Compliance Management

Collects and manages the organizational policies, supplier policy statements, compliance surveys, audits, risks, scorecards, and complaints. It can accept all documents, support custom surveys, import third party data from financial and environmental (and other) risk providers, provide you with compliance scorecards, and automatically extract and centralize all “risks” from the surveys based on scores and/or responses in a risk management view.

Moreover, in full compliance with the German Supply Chain Act (GSCA, known as the LkSG within Germany), MeRLIN provides the buying organization, each of their suppliers, and their entire employee base, a unique portal where they can register complaints. They have upgraded their platform to fully support the GSCA and can also support other supply chain acts as well (and future releases will encode more out-of-the-box support, even though it can already be custom figured on a client-by-client basis to support the majority of acts out there).

Requisition

Requisitions can be used as traditional requisitions for purchase orders against existing contracts for goods and services normally used by the company or as intake requests for sourcing. When they are used as intake requests, they go to a central management screen where the buyer can group them by material, bill of material, and/or category to identify sourcing event requirements and then create a sourcing event off of a bundle of them.

Sourcing

Sourcing is primarily RFX based, but auctions are supported as well off of base RFQs. A sourcing event can be kicked off from one or more requisitions, a category, a BoM, or an event template, which can consist of one or more RFIs, questionnaires, and line-items with custom price breakdowns in the RFQ. Associated with the RFQ can be the suppliers, addendums, budgets, stakeholders, terms and conditions, contract template, event schedule, and ongoing Q&A.

In addition to being able to review bids by total cost per unit and evaluation score (by the relevant stakeholders), the application also supports automatic award recommendation by criteria which can include target award by supplier, range of suppliers to split the award between, minimum and maximum shares, and preferred supplier status.

Contract “Authoring” & Management

The platform is primarily “signature” and “execution” management, as authoring is simply the packing up of contract templates, terms and conditions, specifications, and associated addendums for agreement by electronic signature. The electronic signature capability is compliant with USA regulations and most European regulations for private enterprise contracts. Once the contract is signed, the platform can manage the project timeline, stakeholders, documents, events, milestones, and obligations. In addition, the user can define alerts against any event, milestone, document, obligation or other entity on status change or due date.

Reporting & Dashboards

Reporting and Analysis in MeRLIN is through widget-based dashboards that summarize any data of interest in the system. Right now there are hundreds to select from in the reporting library, with more being added as needed. For each of the built in reports and dashboards (on suppliers, spend, process, etc.), the user can apply multiple filter options and save the configuration to their liking. There is no Do-It-Yourself (DiY) widget report builder yet, but more DiY analytics enhancement is on the roadmap.

Strategic Project Management

This is MeRLIN‘s built in project management capability where a user can define and instantiate RFX templates, supplier onboarding workflows, contracting processes from award specifications, procurement processes, and even entire Source-to-Procure projects which collect all of the necessary templates and workflows together. In addition, leadership is provided with a high level overview of sourcing projects.

Master Data Management

All of the system master data templates can be altered by the user including, but not limited to, currencies and conversions, items, locations, plants, prices, suppliers, contract metadata and milestones, and other key items. The customer can control it’s master data and master data identifiers.

Business Administration

All of the templates in the system can be managed and customized in the business administration section including, but not limited to supplier onboarding, qualification, evaluation, and audit questionnaires, product and item templates, requisitions, RFQs, purchase orders, contract terms, contracts, statements of work, email, and workflow templates.

Bill of Materials Manager

A key aspect of Direct Sourcing is managing the Bill of Materials. In the Merlin platform, that can be done through the BOM Manager, which unlike basic direct sourcing platforms, can maintain as many versions of a Bill Of Materials as the organization wants to maintain (for correlation with historical sourcing and procurement and cost estimates during new product design and/or product modification).

These versions can be uploaded from the ERP (or your PLM of choice with custom integration) or created in the BOM Manager, and this creation can be from scratch or from a previous BoM version which can be copied and modified as needed.

The best part of MeRLIN‘s BOM manager is its built-in ability to allow for easy should-cost analysis during NPD and BOM (re)design. Once a BOM has been uploaded or created, the user can click a button to “cost” and it will automatically find prices for every component in the BOM for which it has a price from a contract (first), catalog/commitment (second), or quote (third). Then, the user can push the remaining items to the Demand Management module for quick quote (or import into the internal catalog from a connected source) or simply create a place holder item (with an estimated cost). They can then return to the BOM Manager and re”cost” the BOM to get a complete cost estimate, which can be compared against the cost of all prior BoM versions (that were costed). This allows the organization to understand the costs associated with BOM changes over time (independent of supplier or distributor pricing changes). Gone are the days where you have to use a completely separate application to do BOM cost estimation.

Finally, the next update to the BOM Manager will allow for the user to enter a cost estimate directly in the BOM manager for materials/parts not yet quoted for even quicker price estimates, and those estimates will be clearly marked as internal estimates only.

Other Capabilities

We’re not going to discuss the procurement modules as they are not MeRLIN‘s focus (but we will assure you that they cover the foundations if you don’t have P2P and need it), demand management as you know what forecasting should do, category management (and category strategy management) as that is rather self explanatory, or finance management, as budget and price management is also straight forward.

The Full Picture

The platform is quite deep in all core areas and one could write pages about each module and its deep capabilities, but hopefully this is enough to convey the facts that

  • the MeRLIN platform was designed from the ground up to support direct and discrete sourcing,
  • has the capability to support these projects from inception to contract signing through the very last order against the award, and
  • goes beyond just raw sourcing capability to related capabilities of supplier risk, compliance, and execution (tracking the order to the delivery and qualification)

CONCLUSION

Given the relative lack of true direct and discrete sourcing platforms in the mid-market, MeRLIN is a platform you should definitely be aware of. If you’re in direct manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and related industries, you might want to check them out today.


It’s for discrete wizards,
it’s a platform with a twist.
A discrete wizard
needs a tech assist …

CF Suite for your Consumer-Friendly Source-to-Contract Needs

Founded in 2004 to help public and private sector companies save money through reverse auctions, the Curtis Fitch Solution has expanded since then to offer a source-to-contract procurement solution, which includes extensive supplier onboarding evaluation, performance management, contract lifecycle management, and spend and performance management. Curtis Fitch offers the following capabilities in its solution.

Supplier Insight

CF Supplier Insights is their supplier registration, onboarding, information, and relationship management solution. It supports the creation and delivery of customized questionnaires, which can be associated with organizational categories anywhere in the 4-level hierarchy supported, so that suppliers are only asked to provide information that the organization needs for their qualification. You can track insurance and key certification requirements, with due dates for auto-reminders, to enable suppliers to self-serve. Supplier Insights offers task-oriented dashboards to help a buyer or evaluator focus in on what needs to be done.

The supplier management module presents supplier profiles in a clear and easy to view way, showing company details, registration audit, location, and contact information, etc.. You can quickly view an audit trail of any activity that the supplier is linked to in CF Suite, including access to onboarding questionnaires, insurance and certification documents, events they were involved in, quotes they provided, contracts that were awarded, categories they are associated with, and balanced scorecards.

When insurance and certifications are requested, so is the associated metadata like coverage, award date, expiry date, and insurer/granter. This information is monitored, and both the buyer and supplier are alerted when the expiration date is approaching. The system defines default metadata for all suppliers, but buyers can add their own fields as needed.

It’s easy to search for suppliers by name, status, workflow stage, and location, or simply scan through them by name. The buyer can choose to “hide” suppliers that have not completed the registration process and they will not be available for sourcing events or contracting.

e-Sourcing

CF eSourcing is their sourcing project management and RFx platform where a user can define event and RFx templates, create multi-round sourcing projects, evaluate the responses using weighted scoring and multi-party ratings, define awards, and track procurement spend against savings. Also, all of the metadata is available for scorecards, contracting, and event creation, so if a supplier doesn’t have the necessary coverage or certification, the supplier can be filtered out of the event, or the buyer can proactively ensure they are not invited.

Events can be created from scratch but are usually created from templates to support standardization across the business. An RFx template can define stakeholders, suppliers (or categories), and any sourcing information, including important documentation. In addition, a procurement workplan can be designed to reflect any sign off gates as necessary when supporting the appropriate public sector requirements some buying organizations must adhere to.

Building RFx templates is easy to do and there’s a variety of question styles available, depending on the response required from the vendor (i.e. free text, multichoice, file upload, financial etc.) RFx’s can be built by importing question sets, linking to supplier onboarding information, or via a template. The tool offers tender evaluation with auto-weighting and scoring functionality (based on values or pre-defined option selections). Their clients’ buyers can invite stakeholders to evaluate a tender and what the evaluator scores can be pre-defined. In addition, when it comes to RFQs for gathering the quotes, it supports total cost breakdowns and arbitrary formulas. Supplier submissions and quotes can be exported to Excel, including any supplier document.

The one potential limitation is that there is not a lot of built in analysis / side-by-side comparison for price analysis in Sourcing, as most buyers prefer to either do their analysis in Excel or use custom dashboards in analytics.

In addition, e-Sourcing events can be organized into projects that can not only group related sourcing events, and provide an overarching workflow, but can also be used to track actuals against the historical baseline and forecasted actuals for a realized savings calculation.

e-Auctions

CF Suite also includes CF Auctions. There are four styles of auction available for running both forward and reverse auctions; English, Sequential, Dutch, and Japanese auctions, which can all be executed and managed in real time. Auctions are easy to define and very easy to monitor by the buying organization as they can see the current bid for each supplier and associated baseline and target information that is hidden from the suppliers, allowing them to track progress against not only starting bids, but goals and see a real-time evaluation of the benefit associated with a bid.

Suppliers get easy to use bidding views, and depending on the settings, suppliers will either see their current rank or distance from lowest bid and can easily update their submissions or ask questions. Buyers can respond to suppliers one-on-one or send messages to all suppliers during the auction.

In addition, if something goes wrong, buyers can manage the event in real time and pause it, extend it, change owners, change supplier reps, and so on to ensure a successful auction.

Contract Management

CF Contracts Contract management enables procurement to build high churn contracts with limited and / or no clause changes, for example, NDAs or Terms of Service. CF Contracts has a clause library, workflow for internal sign off, and integrated redline tracking. Procurement can negotiate with suppliers through the tool, and once a contract has been drafted in CF Suite, the platform can be used to track versions, see redlines, accept a version for signing, and manage the e-Signature process. If CF Suite was used for sourcing, then if a contract is awarded off the back of an event, the contract can be linked with the award information from the sourcing module.

Most of their clients focus on using contracts as a central contract repository database to improve visibility of key contract information, and to feed into reporting outputs to support the management of the contract pipeline, including contract spend and contract renewals.

The contract database includes a pool of common fields (i.e. contract title, start and end dates, contract values etc.) and their clients can create custom fields to ensure the contract records align with their business data. Buyers can create automated contract renewal alerts that can be shared with the contract manager, business stakeholders or the contract management team, as one would expect from a contract management module.

Supplier Scorecards

CF Scorecards is their compliance, risk, and performance management solution that collates ongoing supplier risk management information into a central location. CF Suite uses all of this data to create a 360 degree supplier scorecard for managing risk, performance and development on an ongoing basis.

The great thing about scorecards is that you can select the questionnaires and third-party data you want to include, define the weightings, define the stakeholders who will be scoring the responses that can’t be auto-scored, and get a truly custom 360-degree scorecard on risk, compliance, and/or performance. You can attach associated documents, contracts, supplier onboarding questionnaires, third party assessments, and audits as desired to back up the scorecard, which provides a solid foundation for supplier performance, risk, and compliance management and development plan creation.

Data Analytics

Powered by Qlik, CF Analytics provides out-of-the-box dashboards and reports to help analyze spend, manage contract pipelines and lifecycles, track supplier onboarding workflow and status, and manage ongoing supplier risk . Client organizations can also create their own dashboards and reports as required, or Curtis Fitch can create additional dashboards and reports for the client on implementation. Curtis Fitch has API integrations available as standard for those clients that wish to analyse data in their preferred business tool, like Power BI, or Tableau.

The out-of-the-box dashboards and reports are well designed and take full advantage of the Qlik tool. The process management, contract/supplier status dashboard, and performance management dashboards are especially well thought out and designed. For example, the project management dashboard will show you the status of each sourcing project by stage and task, how many tasks are coming due and overdue, the total value of projects in each stage, and so on. Other process-oriented dashboards for contracts and supplier management are equally well done. For example, the contract management dashboard allows you to filter in by supplier category, or contract grouping and see upcoming milestones in the next 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days as well as overdue milestones.

The spend dashboards include all the standard dashboards you’d expect in a suite, and they are very easy to use with built-in filtering capability to quickly drill down to the precise spend you are interested in. The only down-side is they are OLAP based, and updates are daily. However, they are considering adding support for one or more BoB spend analysis platforms for those that want more advanced analytics capability.

Overall

It’s clear that the Curtis Fitch platform is a mature, well thought out, fleshed out platform for source to contract for indirect and direct services in both the public and private sector and a great solution not only for the global FTSE 100 companies they support, but the mid-market and enterprise market. It’s also very likely to be adopted, a key factor for success, because, as we pointed out in our headline, it’s very consumer friendly. While the UI design might look a bit dated (just like the design of Sourcing Innovation), it was designed that way because it’s extremely usable and, thus, very consumer friendly.

Curtis Fitch have an active roadmap, following development best practices, alongside scoping workshops, where they partner with their clients to ensure new features and benefits are based on user requirements. Many modern applications with flashy UIs, modern hieroglyphs, and text-based conversational interfaces might look cool, but at the end of the day sourcing professionals want to get the job done and don’t want to be blinded by vast swathes of functionality when looking for a specific feature. Procurement professionals want a well-designed, intuitive, guided workflow, a ‘3-clicks and I’m there’ style application that will get the job done efficiently and effectively. This is what CF Suite offers.

Conclusion

While there are some limitations in award analysis (as most users prefer to do that in Excel) and analytics (as it’s built on QlikSense), and not a lot of functionality that is truly unique if you compare it to functionality in the market overall, it is one of the broadest and deepest mid-market+ suites out there and can provide a lot of value to a lot of organizations. In addition, Curtis Fitch also offers consulting and managed auction/RFX services which can be very helpful to an understaffed organization as they can get some staff augmentation / event support while also having full visibility into the process and the ability to take over fully when they are ready. If you’re looking for a tightly integrated, highly useable, easily adopted Source-to-Contract platform with more contract and supplier management ability than you might expect, include CF Suite in the RFP. It’s certainly worth an investigation.

Keep Your Procurement On PACA with FSMA with Procurant!

We don’t cover specialist Procurement providers much here on SI because many don’t have much in the way of domain specific product functionality (and differ primarily on domain knowledge, terminology customization, and service offerings), but some, like Procurant, go beyond the basics and offer domain specific functionality of relevance that the market needs to take note of. Especially when such functionality can help an organization be compliant with current and, most importantly, incoming regulations they are not ready for.

Procurant, marketing itself as a strategic platform for perishables that does Procurement AND Food Safety, offers the following core functionality:

  • P2P (Procure to Pay) for Perishables
  • Inspections (recording and auditing)
  • Traceabillity that is mobile-enabled and FSMA 204 compliant
  • Market Intelligence
  • Food Safety (workflow and remote sensor integration) (not covered in this article)

It’s the one-stop solution for retail grocers, especially those with US operations, that need to manage their perishable supply chain in a manner that is both PACA and FSMA compliant. (And if you’re a grocery retailer that does NOT know what those acronyms stand for … Uh-Oh! Better find out and give Procurant a call ASAP — because failure to comply can not only result in fines but [supply chain] shutdowns.)

Procurement/Procure-to-Pay wise there isn’t much that’s unique in core functionality (as the uniqueness is with the integrated support for the perishable space), but it’s all there, and we’ll start with the core so you can be confident the core is on par with other best-of-breed Procurement solutions.

With respect to quote management, the platform contains integrated RFQ / price request that makes it really easy to not only request (updated) quotes from suppliers, but get a commitment on that price (for a certain time or volume; i.e. one week or 100 pallets). When you get a commitment, the system tracks orders against that commitment, and then lets you know when the quote has expired because the commitment has been used up (and if you still need more product, you need a new quote with a new commitment).

With respect to order management, the solution makes it easy to select products for orders from the built-in catalog, from order templates (guides), or from demand forecasts (which can pulled in from the forecasting/demand management system OR created natively in Procurant using weighted average outbound for the last 12 weeks, with more forecasting algorithms coming in a future release). The platform even supports the definition of automatic (replenishment) orders, should the organization choose that functionality. Once the order is assembled, it’s very easy to send it to the supplier for fulfillment.

Moreover, as Procurant ‘s P2P also contains integrated support for carriers and logistics (due to the need to monitor the entire produce supply chain and ensure food safety every step of the way), in Procurant, you can also assemble orders by truckload, as you don’t want to be under-shipping if not absolutely necessary (as it takes the same amount of energy to maintain the temperature when refrigeration is necessary whether the truck is almost full or almost empty) and it’s easier to trace when you decide who is shipping what, when, and on which truck. One great feature of the platform is that it’s super easy to assemble an order for a carrier. It’s just a matter of dragging and dropping order line items until the platform notifies you that the last line won’t fit in the truck (as you can encode a max # pallets, weight, and volume by truck and as soon as one limit is reached, the platform lets you know). No complex training on a sophisticated TMS required.

As a result of this deep support for logistics and carriers, purchase orders can be incredibly detailed and include shipping dates, carrier, load reference number(s), and even cross docks.

Also, order management is multi-state and the system will track and notify if there is an:

  • order modification by the buyer
  • order modification by the supplier
  • order cancellation by the supplier
  • order reconciliation by the supplier (on being notified the goods received didn’t match the PO)

and all changes by any party are maintained in a secure, unalterable, audit log.

With regards to order management, the buyers can choose whether or not the supplier can split orders, remove items, or add substitute orders. Whether or not they can change prices (or just quantities to match availability), and even when modifications will be accepted. Similarly, the administrator can determine the order creation capability the buyers have access to … whether or not they have (to use) guides, whether they can create cross-dock orders, etc.

With respect to invoice management, it’s super easy for a supplier to flip a PO to an invoice. All they have to do is enter the actual quantity shipped by line item and submit. The invoice then goes into a wait state until a receipt is entered, at which point if there is a discrepancy, the invoice is sent back to the supplier for correction before it goes into the normal processing queue, where it would be held up until the discrepancy was resolved, which could delay payment considerably if the organization has long approval chains for corrections and exception processing.

The platform also tracks supplier fill rates, so you can quickly see which suppliers are fulfilling the POs they accept and living up to your expectations and which suppliers are not. It also has price watch capability, and can alert you whenever PO or quote prices exceed current (or historical) prices by a certain percentage.

And, of course, there’s a dashboard which summarizes current tasks and open orders and great search and filter functionality to find just the orders, invoices, or quotes you are looking for.

The platform also integrates the inspection reports from their inspection app and, for any fulfilled order, you can quickly bring up the full report that summarizes the inspection (packaging, appearance, condition, flavor, and quality) on each item delivered as well as the number of items rejected. Also integrated with the Procurement platform is the Inspection Module that contains the overall inspection summary dashboard, dill downs by supplier, scorecards by supplier, and other key reports and data points on inspections. The inspect application is a mobile app that workers can use at the warehouse on or the dock to inspect the quality of goods as they come in and, if necessary, reject them on the spot.

What’s really cool is the Track and Trace capability where, for any item, you can see the entire journey from the source lot to the warehouse or the store shelf, as appropriate. You just need a GTIN, lot number, order number, SKU, or product description and, optionally, a date range and you see the store shipments, receivings at your warehouses, vendor shipments, and base lots. And you can click into each store shipment, receiving, vendor shipment, or lot and see complete details (such as the ship to, date, and receiver for a store shipment; order #, sales order, Lot, shipper, shipment date, and cases for a vendor shipment; etc.). And with their next release, the (default) output report formats will be usable for FSMA compliance. (Again, if you do grocery retail and you don’t know why this is critical, you better find out soon!)

Finally, their Market Intelligence Capability in Procurant Connect provides Commodity Pricing, Weather, and Transportation analytics and tracking. The commodity pricing tracks price movements across all commodities by region; the weather pane integrates forecasts down to the county level; and the transportation analytics tracks average load fees by lane (defined by city pairings), as well as price changes and shipper / transportation availability (surplus, slight surplus, adequate, slight shortage, or shortage).

Procurant can integrate with your ERP and AP (payment) system, your TMS (or onboard carriers natively, which is something not many P2P systems can do as carrier management is critical in perishable supply chain management), and your supplier master (for supplier onboarding) if it’s not your ERP.

All-in all, Procurant is a fantastic solution for the perishable supply chain procurement and one that absolutely has to be on the short list of any grocery retailer that needs to get a handle on their perishable supply chain in a manner that will allow them to be fully PACA and FSMA compliant.

SmartCube: Putting a Nice Box Around Industrial MRO for Commissioning and SPIR Procurement for Projects

There are dozens (and dozens) of Procurement Solutions out there, especially for indirect procurement, as that’s where it all started. There are also a dozen or so good solutions for BoM (Bill of Material) direct procurement for manufacturers who need to source to build the products they are selling. However, when it comes to acquiring MRO assets, and spare parts to maintain them, there are very few solutions — and even less for managing procurement and inventory from a (commissioning) project perspective.

Most Procurement Professionals assume that this is handled by the ERP/MRP or the asset management platform but the reality is that the ERP/MRP will only track product specifications for approved products and materials, the asset management will only track assets that are actually delivered, and most of the sourcing is done old school — email and Excel spreadsheets, which is not a great solution. First of all, it is very time consuming for both parties to fill out all the information manually and send documents back and forth. Secondly, it is very error prone as the technical specifications will require detailed part numbers, identifiers, standards, etc. where one miskey can totally invalidate an entire record that might have taken days to put together. Thirdly, as the sheet is not in a version control system, it’s hard to control who can access it when and ensure updates are properly maintained and not missed or overwritten. Fourth, given that an average asset will require 10 or 15 associated spare parts, and multiple assets will need to be acquired at a time, an average sourcing process will take a minimum of two weeks (if not much [much] longer).

SmartCube has developed two tools to handle 1) the pre-commissioning Procurement of components and systems for major projects (such as new plant creation or plant renovation, utility construction, ship construction, etc.), as well as the commissioning process and 2) the material/part master, and the procurement projects needed for the ongoing support (as plants will require production line maintenance and upgrades, utilities will constantly require new regulation and control systems, ships always need upgrades, etc.) along with the procurement and management of the spares required to keep the components and systems running when something breaks.

This is done through their two primary offerings of I-SPIR, which they bill as an interaction and collaboration platform to allow multiple project partners and collaborators to input, collect and share spare parts information (SPIR) between all stakeholders in real time for asset-intensive industries, and I-MAT, that they bill as autonomous warehouse management & material master cleansing & coding platform for any asset heavy industry.

SmartCube I-SPIR

First, some background. SPIR stands for Spare Parts Interchangeability Record, which is basically a list of equipment and spare parts that a manufacturer or supplier recommends that a project owner or asset manager should purchase in order to develop and maintain their industrial plant or process. Once the purchase suggestions, or modifications thereto, are accepted, the project owner then matches the purchases to the material master data in the ERP, if there are appropriate product records, or pushes the appropriate records to the material master.

SPIR is a lot more than just a slight modification to the direct procurement process, because it’s not purchasing materials and parts to build products for sale, but components and systems to keep a process running or a plant (utility, or vehicle) operating. It’s also a well-established systematic supply chain process used for tracking and recording information on various replacement parts used in industrial operations. The process involves:

  • Inventory Management: inventory must be established and properly maintained, and it must include what (parts), where (storage facility, room, and shelf), who (is responsible for), how many (quantity) and why (associated components or systems)
  • Identification: every component needs a unique identifier (and any manufacturing identifiers it’s associated with)
  • Documentation: specifications, function(al requirements), compatibility, and any standards met
  • Interchangeability Assessment: a thorough assessment that takes into account design, materials, operating requirements, and other relevant factors
  • Recording: that identifies parts that a given part can be substituted for, which includes a link to the assessment as well as information on the manufacturer, supplier(s), and lead times (for restock)
  • Maintenance: the record must continually be reviewed, updated as needed, and deactivated when the part is no longer needed or approved

When it comes to identifying components and associated spare parts, and executing SPIR projects, the process is similar to a traditional sourcing process:

  • Identify the need
  • Determine the specifications
  • Research potential substitutes
  • Evaluate compatibility
  • Select the replacement and make the award
  • Update records

It’s Procurement, but Procurement with needs not typically addressed. That’s why a specialized system is needed that takes into account all of the specialized aspects not addressed in traditional direct Procurement systems. That’s the system that SmartCube has created for Industrial MRO with its I-SPIR solution. The module has the following primary components.

Projects & Packages

In the I-SPIR platform, projects correspond to systems and packages to related sets of one or more modules (and each module will require one or more spares to maintain it).

SPIR Processes

Once a project has been defined, the system makes it super quick and easy to request spare parts for one or more components or systems. Setting up a SPIR project is simply a matter of:

  • selecting the master project
  • selecting the responsible individuals (for QA, Evaluation, Assessment, DCC, PRE, Coordination)
  • selecting the supplier
  • providing the basic SPIR info (Doc ReF, PO, Due Date, System & Area of intended use)
  • uploading any necessary documentation
  • sending it to the supplier

Once the supplier receives the SPIR, they can select the part they are willing to provide simply by specifying their ID, the original manufacturer name and OEM part number (if they are acting as a distributor) if they already have the SPIR in their system or it’s in EQHub, a third party SPIR database that contains pre-vetted products with validated information which, when imported, is tagged as already validated information (which can allow an organization to accept the part without having to go through a full evaluation). If the part does not already exist in the system or EQHub, a popup will allow the supplier to enter all of the required information, which will then have to go through a full evaluation process on the buyer’s end.

When the SPIR is returned, the system walks the individuals on the buying team through the process, which consists of:

  • Quality Assurance: is the data valid and are the specifications appropriate
  • Evaluation: classify the Spare against key asset tracking attributes of redundancy, repair/discard, consequence, and criticality and define/override the auto-suggested quantities
  • Assessment: asses the overall purchase against the inventory and finance requirements
  • DCC: verify the DCC data
  • Final Approval and Order: final approval and place the order

Tag Management

The platform makes it easy to manage asset tags and provides downloadable templates for quick upload. This simplifies integration with ERP/MRP/Asset Management systems and material masters.

Dashboard

The main entry point summarizes the projects the user has ongoing and their current states for easy project location, access, and management:

  • To Do: tracks the SPIR requests that need to be opened, re-submitted, evaluated for quality, concluded, etc.
  • New: new Projects & SPIRs recently opened and awaiting supplier submission
  • Open: Projects that are open where team members need to assess submitted SPIRs
  • Overdue: Projects that are overdue
  • Rejected: SPIRS that have been rejected (and need to be returned or recast to new suppliers)
  • Submitted: tracks the supplier submissions (that need to go through the SPIR process)
  • Concluded: SPIRS that have been concluded

SmartCube I-MAT

SmartCube‘s other major offering is their materials “master” management and inventory platform that was specifically designed for supporting material and inventory requirements during (new) plant/site/rig construction and commissioning, plant/site/rig retrofit/upgrade and commissioning, cross-platform / site based material and inventory management (where the organization doesn’t have an ERP/MRP integrations that support that), and other temporary or permanent material and inventory management scenarios not adequately handled by the ERP.

The platform is designed to serve as a part and material master as well as an inventory master for the locations and projects not managed by the ERP/MRP (which, for organizations running on the BIG ERPs like SAP or Oracle, or older ERPs, are any temporary/construction/retrofit/commissioning project where inventory needs to be managed separately and off-site in a yard, on a rig, etc. until the project is done). It’s very easy to load products and materials into the SmartCube I-MAT platform as it allows for easy CSV upload (in addition to direct ERP integration if you so desire, both for initial load and final push when you are done with the project).

In addition, as part of their latest release, they have automatic (potential) duplicate detection and simplify the process of merging duplicates and cleansing the material / product master. They also make it one click to deactivate products (and make it clear when a certain product should not be ordered).

Upon implementation, it’s really easy to define (and upload):

  • Vendors: that are providing the products and materials
  • Tag Numbers: standard (asset) tag numbers (for system integration)
  • Projects: the projects currently being managed through the system
  • Product States: Evaluating / Accepted / Offsite / InTransit / Not Found / Destroy / etc.
  • Locations: Onshore / Offshore / Yard / Europe Warehouse / USA Warehouse / etc.
  • Imports: upload a file and track the imports
  • Deactivated Products: for easy identification and management
  • Users: and their associated permissions

Once the data is loaded, it’s really easy to search for any product using a free-text search on all key fields, or an in-depth filter-driven search on each supported product field. In other words, filters aren’t just limited to material/part name, number, tag, project, vendor, etc. It’s also easy, once a search and drill down is performed, to select all or a subset for batch editing where all products are missing the same data or need the same field updated.

Once a product is selected, it’s easy to bring up, and if necessary, edit all of the associated data, which includes all of the standard part/material fields, as well as perform standard inventory operations. The system understands the standard actions of:

  • Add Stock: increase the stock at the selected location
  • Move/Transfer Stock: move the stock from its current location to the selected location
  • Withdraw Stock: mark the stock as withdrawn and used

In addition, you can (re-)set the status of any product at any time for any reason (which you can capture) if you have the appropriate authority. Plus, when you move or transfer stock, you can indicate the type of transfer and withdrawal (if you define multiple types of transfer and withdrawals, such as consumption, returned, trashed, queued for destruction, etc.).

Plus, coming soon, if you are doing a transfer from one location to another that requires shipping (such as from a rig to onshore or one country for another), the platform will automatically export data for manifest creation in third party shipping systems (either through an API integration or through a flat file CSV export for loading in the third party system).

The entire system has been designed to be incredibly easy to use and support the primary requirements of a temporary project not supported by a traditional ERP/MRP material master or inventory management system:

  • easy off-site management
  • collaboration
  • high quality data

… and eliminate the need for error-prone spreadsheets and shadow processes that were created to get around the limitations of systems that were setup for managing acquisitions and inventory for traditional production line utilization, which is not the case in facility/plant construction and/or upgrade.

Both solutions are delivered as SaaS and no integration with ERP’s are required. Last but not least, the amount training needed is very limited as the design focuses on ease of use. Once a decision is made to use one or the other solution (or both) you can be up and running in matter of days if integrations are not required. Integration with ERPs and other systems is typically only a matter of a few weeks.

As explained in detail, if you need to do a lot of sourcing for pre-commissioning, commissioning, and asset-maintenance, SmartCube is a system you should add to your (very) short list as traditional indirect (and even direct) Sourcing/Procurement systems just weren’t setup for the type of sourcing and (temporary) inventory management you need to do (while SmartCube checks all the necessary boxes and then some).

The Prophet‘s 2024 Procurement Prediction Number 10

A “CFA-like” Credential Emerges in Procurement and Supply Chain B+.

The Prophet says that the procurement and supply chain industries, similar to most others, excluding finance, are lacking any certifications/credentials, by those “in the know,” as a superior qualification for a job than even a top degree from a world-class or specialized university which is totally true.

The Prophet also says that organizations such as CIPS, ISM, SIG, etc., might disagree with this viewpoint which is also totally true. The Prophet does note that he supports all of these organizations, which the doctor does as well, and that he believes their training materials are highly valuable, which the doctor doesn’t across the board. (the doctor has seen some of their training materials. While some of their training materials provide a very good foundation, some of their training materials are not so good. Most of these organizations are very weak when it comes to analysis, tech-backed processes and practices, government/industry specific compliance requirements, risk management in today’s increasingly fragile global supply chains. etc. But when so many Procurement departments are struggling with the basics, understanding what their role is, and how ethics should enter the equation, we do need these organizations and that is why the doctor supports them while reminding you to do your homework when it comes to training. Use them for their strengths, not their weaknesses.)

The Prophet then suggests that in 2024, credentials will take on new meaning, and the best ones, particularly those challenging to obtain and requiring rigorous exams (which many fail), similar to the CFA in finance, will begin to take on a new significance in Procurement.

the doctor agrees with the principle, but does not agree it will happen this year, or even next year. Why? This will only happen with industry regulation, and that only happens in two situations.

  1. when an industry-led body gains enough support from the majority of professionals in an industry to make it a de-facto requirement in any employer of any size to get a high-level procurement job; no organization yet has that weight, and we’re not going to see the NLPA, SIG, APS, etc. all fold into the ISM, and definitely not into CIPS, which is pseudo-global (as it has made progress in some of the Commonwealth); this means that we’d need to see a new industry initiative that gave all parties representation and allowed them all to contribute to the standard and exam — for this to form, a certification to be adopted, and a test accepted will take years
  2. when a government forces a requirement that can only be met by a certification (and either creates their own or adopts one); governments move slow, and when we have the situation in the US where
    1. the republican focus is on ripping democrats apart for what they didn’t do, rolling back human rights to the fifties, and installing a wannabe dictator as President-for-Life
    2. the democrat focus is on shaming the republicans, selectively protecting the human rights they want, and taking up the former republican war mantle (since Trump just wants to be a dictator, which doesn’t profit the military complex) and doing everything they can to back Ukraine and Israel (including risking World War III with their Middle East bombing of Yemen vs. just destroying every Houthi vessel launched into the water)

    and the situation in the UK where

    1. the conservatives are too busy trying to keep Dishy Rishy from making them the laughing stock of the political world (as he’s so far disconnected from the common person he has no clue)
    2. the liberal (democrats) are too busy trying to counter the conservative support for the global wars and lack of focus on the situation at home by being extra woke (and we know how that fared in America) …
    3. when we look at the NHS mess and postal service mess and their apparent unwillingness to do anything meaningful about it (for longer than should be humanly possible to ignore a crisis), it seems that good procurement is the last thing on their mind

which are the two countries that would need to lead such an effort (as the EU is very focussed on climate change and AI and struggling to hold itself together now with active protests in about a third of its member states on any given day; heck it’s too focussed on attacking the farmers, already forgetting what happened when Stalin called the Farmers the enemy of the state. (See this article, for example).

Thus, while such regulation is sorely needed, it’s not likely to happen, if it happens at all, until the later part of the decade (unless, of course, The Prophet and the The Public Defender want to once again band together and take up the charge and lead the effort to bring all the necessary parties together).

The Prophet was dead on with three of the primary reasons we need it.

  • GPAs are no longer a measure of academic performance in many universities.
    The Prophet notes that, according to the Yale Daily News, “Yale College’s mean GPA was 3.70 for the 2022-23 academic year, and 78.97 percent of grades given to students were A’s or A-’s,” including the hard sciences and engineering! He also notes that the Michigan State Broad Business School (which includes the Supply Chain and Procurement degree programs) also experiences significant grade inflation, with 80% of students in 3 out of 5 undergraduate classes earning a 4.0. (Source)
    The situation is even worse in China where you don’t even get accepted to some Universities unless you are an A- or better student, and where you are under intense pressure to maintain that A, to the point where a student will drop out (or commit suicide) rather than risk being thrown out for not maintaining it. Now, this would be great except for the fact that As are often contingent on rote memorization and learning to do the work the “state way”, not always with any free thinking whatsoever. (And then graduating ONLY if they think you’ll agree to share what you learn when they allow you to go outside China for that Post-Doc/Professor position).
    The situation is better in Canada [except Quebec], but there are some Universities / Departments that are under great pressure to remain competitive to maintain grant and industry funding, and others where the professors are so overworked that they don’t even bother to confirm that a Master’s student in Engineering can manually calibrate an oscilloscope or a Master’s student in Computer Science can appropriately identify and test for all boundary cases in a simple procedure. (Remember, the doctor has been a Professor, and maintains regular contact with Professors and knows this to be truth.) How could you trust either to validate your equipment or your code? (He couldn’t!) (Regarding Quebec, the current premiere is taking Quebec’s status as a nation within a nation and essentially discriminating against anyone who is not French and willing to speak French as a first, and only, language. [See this article, for example.])
  • DEI/affirmative action preferences, which still exist (despite the supreme court ruling and their illegality if they enforce admitting or hiring a less qualified candidate), have removed objective academic criteria in both degree-based programs and industrial training programs. This has resulted in candidates who might only be a D being admitted to programs because of their minority status while non-minority candidates with Bs were excluded.
  • The best talent may no longer be pursuing traditional college or graduate programs. There needs to be an objective means of evaluating hard and learned skills for those who cannot afford or do not wish to invest time in university studies, especially those who have taken industry training programs or annex courses specific to what they need as well as obtained relevant real world experience under a mentor. (There’s a reason there used to be apprenticeships; some learning onlly happened under the guidance of a mentor.)

The only other reason that needs to be mentioned in the doctor‘s view is

  • without a certification, how can you know that any candidate, no matter how experienced and skilled they appear, knows all of the foundations you need them to know? With so many different definitions of sourcing, procurement, and purchasing; so many different thoughts on what an individual should know about analytics, supplier identification, supplier vetting/onboarding/management/development, negotiation, contracting, global trade, logistics, risk identification and management, compliance, finance / finance support, etc., how can we have a solid baseline with a (multi-level) certification program?

It would be great if 2024 is the year that we saw this certification, but while we desperately need it, the doctor believes that, unfortunately, it’s still years away. (But he will challenge The Prophet to step up and make it happen!)