The words of British engineer Lord Kelvin ring as true today as they did over a century ago: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Every field develops metrics in order to understand performance. Such metrics are core elements of Key Performance Indicators (or KPI), which has applications in Purchasing. There, the objective […]
The recent Deloitte Global CPO survey 2018 contained several surprising results. Foremost among them for me was the low level of purchasing engagement between businesses and functions, that is, the purchasing stakeholders. Purchasing stakeholders, by my definition, are the people in businesses or functions who are affected – either positively or negatively – by purchasing […]
On a daily basis, we see artificial intelligence (AI) impacting our lives, and its advancement is not slowing. It’s already at work in iPhone’s SIRI and Amazon’s Alexa. It’s just around the corner in self-driving cars (an area where my engineer son works) and in motorcycles. AI powers search algorithms for Google, Alibaba, SAP’s Leonardo, […]
Today’s blog draws a comparison between Marketing & Sales and Purchasing in relation to the critical factor of segmentation. The overall objective of segmentation is to identify high-yield segments, that is, those segments most likely to be profitable or show good growth potential. According to Wikipedia, “Market segmentation assumes that different market segments require different […]
Purchasing professionals have two core issues when looking to refine a supply strategy for their commodity: understanding the market and determining their best approach. This article will advocate using micro-consulting, which can speed up this process immensely. However, before talking about this, let’s review a purchasing professional’s main needs. Purchasing Needs For any commodity, there […]
The life of a purchasing executive is filled with doubt. I know because over the years, corporate purchasing managers have bombarded me with questions. Do I have the right tools for purchasing? Do I have all work processes in place for purchasing? Is my staff adequately equipped to perform strategic sourcing? Is my purchasing organization […]
Most manufacturing industries consume chemicals or plastics as raw materials or auxiliary materials in their production plants. To simplify this discussion, I will refer to chemicals and plastics together as chemicals. Since 2012, the peak year for oil prices, Crude Oil prices have fallen, and all chemicals users have enjoyed lower prices for Crude Oil […]
Every year, consultant companies survey purchasing leaders to understand their main objectives for the year, and regularly, risk management is listed as one of the five most important. The American National Standard for Security provides organizational resilience guidelines for security, preparedness, and continuity management (ASIS SPC.1 2009). These help companies define the overall framework for […]
Chemicals – Global Market Outlook This is the third of a series of articles related to global Chemicals & Plastics, links to the previous of which can be found here: Market Analysis: Chemicals and Plastics, U.S. data for Chemicals & Plastics with past and future demand along with their growth rates. Plastics – Global Market […]
In a recent article published at MyPurchasingCenter called Market Analysis: Chemicals and Plastics, I provided U.S. data for Chemicals & Plastics with past and future demand along with their growth rates. In this follow-up article I will share global market data for Plastics with regional details for installed capacity, current and future demand, growth rates, […]