Supply Excellence — Top Supply Tips: You’re Still Writing the Book

Top Supply Tips: You’re Still Writing the Book

August 17th, 2007 · by Tim Minahan · No Comments · costing, supplier management, supply management

Earlier this year I released a compilation of The 100 Greatest Supply Management Tips of All Time! The recommendations in the e-book were pulled from real-world approaches used by supply management professionals. In fact, several of the tips came directly from Supply Excellence readers and posts.

I intentionally included tips that were not complex and that did not require a huge budget, top executive support, or years to deploy. The goal was to provide practical, easy-to-understand, and proven tactics that you could start implementing today.

The e-book was intended to be a living project to foster the exchange of best practices and to elevate the supply management discipline. To continue the effort, I encouraged Supply Excellence readers to offer your own favorite tips for improving supply and contract management performance.

To make things more exciting, I offered a free pass to Aberdeen Group’s CPO Summit conference in Boston this November to the person who submitted the best new tip for improving supply management performance.

Thank you to all who submitted tips. They were all very insightful and useful. In the coming days, I will be sharing the top 10 submitted tips and asking Supply Excellence readers to vote for your favorite.

In the coming days, you be will asked to rate each tip on a scale from 1 “Not Useful at All” to 5 “Extremely Useful.”

The initial round of voting will determine the three finalists. Supply Excellence readers will then vote for the winning tip. And, as promised, the winner will be joining me and a host of supply management executives at the CPO Summit this fall.

On with the show. Here’s the first tip:

Calculate what every week in lead time costs your company, look at inventory carrying costs and other cost elements incurred by having inventory on the books (lead time). Extrapolate what a supplier’s poor lead time performance is costing you. Tell suppliers how you will “bill them back” for the add costs their poor lead times performance add to your bill.

Rate this tip here.

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