Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Supply Chain Syllabi Suck – But Should You Be Designing One?

It’s an interesting question, and one I have to ask after coming across Adrian Gonzalez’ recent post over on Logistics Viewpoints on A Supply Chain Course Designed by You. While I agree that the average life of a supply chain text is two to three years where case studies are concerned (but not where core principles are concerned as some of the classics by Robert Rudzki and Dick Locke are still holding up eight and seventeen years later), I don’t necessarily agree that syllabi go out of date that fast, or that you are the best person to be designing one.

I also agree that trends do develop every day, that most traditional syllabi are about two decades out of date, and that an instructor should update the syllabus as required before every course delivery, but I’m not sure it should be based solely on student requests. While an instructor should attempt to address as many student questions as possible, they should be restricted to the subject matter of the course. More specifically, if the course is on sourcing and procurement technology, the instructor should not go off on a tangent on proper multi-tier supply network design, which should be a different course.

However, the real reasons that an instructor should not design an entirely student driven course are the following:

  1. Every student will likely have a different problem that he or she believes he or she needs addressed that is
  2. based on a different understanding of what proper supply management for (what) a proper supply chain (is) and
  3. that problem is not necessarily the root problem or representative of the core theory, and practical solutions, that need to be addressed.

If the student knew what she needed to learn, she would not be a student, she would, at the very least, be a mentor, if not a teacher herself. For those of you with a martial arts background, you would not be deshi, you would be yudansha or sensei yourselves. Because you have not gone before, you don’t know the way you need to go. That’s why you need a teacher, a guide, to show you the way and teach you the basics you need to know in a cohesive, relevant framework appropriate to the course. A well-designed course by an instructor who is trained in the theory and experienced in the practice will weave together the foundations with relevant examples in such a way that the student will learn to identify what the root problems are, what solutions might work, and what questions should be raised, and addressed by the instructor — who will have no problems weaving the answers in, on the fly, to the lectures at hand.

In other words, I don’t think the methodology proposed by Adrian is necessarily the right process for designing a course, but I do think it’s a great process for tweaking a course, and, more so, for determining what course(s) a student should be taking. In other words, an organization or institution offering Supply Management and Supply Chain training should, before allowing students to enrol in a course,

  • request that the students fill out a questionaire that outlines their key questions and topics of interest a month or so in advance,
  • analyze the responses and determine potential best fits between the students and the courses being considered, and
  • create pre-course discussion groups, facilitated by the likely instructor, a few weeks in advance and invite the students to participate in the group to gather consensus on key topics, issues, and questions that should be addressed — and figure out if the course is really for them.

Then the provider can let students register, knowing that there will be good fits, and the instructor can tweak the course to be as relevant as possible to the needs and interest of the students, using the most relevant case studies and focussing on the secondary topics of common interest once the core material has been covered.

Of course this is just the doctor‘s opinion (and his only real qualification for this argument is that he has been an Assistant Professor in Academia and an Industry Trainer), and it will be interesting to see the results if 30 (thirty) practitioners take Mr. Gonzalez up on his offer.

Could Strategic Sourcing Save the US Government?

It’s a hard question to answer, but when you consider the fact that Joe Jordan, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy just said that our government is the largest purchaser in the world, but it buys as if it were 130 mid-sized businesses. We’ve got to leverage our buying power, you’ve got to think about it. Especially when a recent report from the IBM Center for The Business of Government by David C. Wyld estimated there are 8.9 Billion in Savings to be had in US Federal Government Spending Alone just by using public sector reverse auctions on a mere 75 Billion of Federal Spend identified as appropriate for reverse auctions.

When you think about the fact the the U.S. Government Budget for 2012 consisted of 3.796 Trillion of Expenditures, with 716 Billion going to defence, 56 Billion to International Affairs, 31 Billion to Science, Space, and Technology, 23 Billion to Energy, 43 Billion to Natural Resources and Environment, 19 Billion to Agriculture, 103 Billion to Transportation, 32 Billion to Community and Regional Development, 361 Billion to Health, and 62 Billion to Administration of Justice (which adds up to 1.446 Trillion, where you know manpower costs are probably less than half, you have to believe there is at least 750 Billion of Federal Spend that is appropriate for strategic sourcing. At least. Slap on the expected 12% expected average savings if the Federal Government bought strategically using its buying power, and we would expect there are at least 90 Billion in what is likely low-hanging fruit savings opportunities just waiting to be plucked. At least. Now, it’s true that this wouldn’t even cut 10% off the deficit, but if the US returns to a balanced budget in the near future, and strategic sourcing saves the company 12% of sourceable spend, then even if sourceable spend is only 50% of the entire spend, the company will be saving 150 Billion a year, and that adds up quite fast!

According to Jordan, strategic sourcing could perhaps apply to $150 Billion of $500 Billion under his (direct) purview. It’s only a fraction of the total spend that eventually needs to be strategically sourced, but it’s a good start if addressed. That would likely give the government savings of 15 Billion to 18 Billion and an incentive to force strategic sourcing through all the agencies that receive and/or control government funds.

And the savings will be magnified if the office really does improve the government’s records on contract past performance and takes advantage of inspectors’ general work in exposing waste, fraud and then suspends and debars “bad actor” contractors from getting work. (While some governments don’t believe past performance should be used against bidders in future RFPs, those of us in the private sector know that is the among the stupidest ideas ever and you don’t give a non-performer more work.) It’s one thing to overspend on a contract by 10%. It’s another thing to overspend by 100% because you awarded the contract to an entity that could not deliver.

And if Jordan is convinced that the office needs good, timely and robust past performance information and uses this as an incentive to evaluate the use of data to drive fact-based analytics in the acquisition process and moves to spend analysis and decision optimization / support systems, the savings opportunities for the U.S. Federal Government are an order of magnitude above what even the biggest corporations can hope to save with advanced sourcing efforts. For the US Federal Government, strategic sourcing is definitely worth the effort it will require.

And, for sure, this is another arms race the UK doesn’t want to win.