Monthly Archives: November 2012

Technology Trials 2012 – Part V

In Part IV, after we determined in Part III that you needed to find a new supply management solution, we outlined the critical (set of) question(s) that you needed to answer before you selected a BoB (Best-of-Breed) or FuSS (Full Supply Suite) solution.

Now that we know the critical questions that need to be asked in the selection of a BoB or FuSS solution, we will move on to the next (set) of question(s) that you need to answer before you can start to narrow in on a solution.

(05) What are the globalization requirements?

In particular,

  (05.1)Who are my stakeholders and what do they need??
  (05.2)How many countries will the solution be used in?
  (05.3)How many languages does the solution need to support?
  (05.4)How much support from the vendor will be required?
  (05.5)How much support for the suppliers will be required?

  (05.1)Who are my stakeholders and what do they need??
No solution exists in a vacuum. And you won’t be the only one depending on it. Executives will be depending on the reporting capabilities for insights and compliance purposes. Procurement will be depending on the contract details generated by a sourcing platform. Warehouse Management Systems will require the orders created in the Procurement Systems for m-way matching and inventory planning. Risk management will require compliance and performance information. Finance will require orders. Etc.

  (05.2)How many countries will the solution be used in?
If the organization is a global multi-national, then the solution will probably need to deployed across multiple countries, especially if services are shared across multiple locations. And if the solution is a sourcing solution, and services are sourced from a dozen countries, then the solution may need to be (partially) deployed in that many countries.

  (05.3)How many languages does the solution need to support?
Again, if services are shared across the globe or the solution needs to be used by suppliers across the globe, the solution could need to support a dozen, or more, languages.

  (05.4)How much support from the vendor will be required?
Do you have a cracker-jack IT and/or services support team, or was your solution cobbled together from the trinkets in boxes of cracker jacks? In the first case, your organization might not need too much support from the vendor. In the second, your organization might require extensive support from the vendor.

  (05.5)How much support for the suppliers will be required?
None, some, or quite a bit? In the former case, just about any solution could fit the bill. In the latter case, there might only be a few solutions with extensive supplier support capabilities that could even be considered. In between, there could be any number of suppliers with solution on a sliding scale.

In other words, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered before you even consider sending out that first RFI.

Wow! Charbroiled Burgers More Environmentally Unfriendly than Clean-Diesel Trucks!

I have to admit that I was a little shocked when I came across this article on DC Velocity that referenced recent research from the University of California-Riverside that resulted in a study which found charbroiled burgers produce more particulates than clean-diesel trucks.

Specifically, if a clean-diesel 18-wheeler truck is burning ultra-low sulfer diesel fuel, it would have to travel 143 miles on the freeway to send up the same mass of particulates as a single charbroiled hamburger patty. As per this article on WSAZ News on “new california study finds more particulate emissions from charbroiled burgers than diesel trucks”, clean diesel technology is really cleaning up the trucking industry. Recent research from North Carolina State University demonstrated that trucks in compliance with newer standards showed a 98% decrease in NOx and a 94% reduction in particulate matter emissions.

The study, summarized on UCR Today, also found that commercial cooking is the second-largest source of particulate matter in the South Coast Air Basin. Looks like we need to start installing clean cooking technology now!

Anyway, this gives you something to think about that before your next trip to Hardee’s, for example.

Federalist No. 30

In Federalist No. 30, Hamilton addresses the issue of taxation.

In this essay, Hamilton makes it clear that there must be interwoven, in the frame of the government, a general power of taxation, in one shape or another. After all, money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.

Hamilton also argues that the ends of public happiness will be promoted by supplying the wants of government, and all beyond this is unworthy of our care or anxiety. To support this position, he asks how is it possible that a government half supplied and always necessitous,
can fulfill the purposes of its institution, can provide for the security, advance the prosperity, or support the reputation of the commonwealth? How can it ever possess either energy or stability, dignity or credit, confidence at home or respectability abroad? How can its administration be any thing else than a succession of expedients temporizing, impotent, disgraceful? How will it be able to avoid a frequent sacrifice of its engagements to immediate necessity? How can it undertake or execute any liberal or enlarged plans of public good? In other words, a government must be adequately funded to do its job.

The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as its necessities might require and take the actions necessary to maintain, and defend, the Union.