Servicing SMEs Throughout Atlantic Canada
Over the past couple of decades, China has been extremely successful in becoming a major economic force globally, and has in effect long since established themselves as the “world’s manufacturers”. In fact, it often seems difficult to find products in retail stores throughout North America and the rest of the world that is not Made…
The summer has come to an abrupt end as the fall weather turns a little to the cold side here in Atlantic Canada. In fact, I saw a few snow flakes yesterday, which makes me feel that the summer weather that we are all to quick to criticize maybe wasn’t that bad after all. If…
Well, it’s been a while now since panic first set in with our current economic crisis. Although the panic has somewhat subsided in favour of some more rational thought, we are far from the end of this slowdown, although we do seem to have bottomed out. Although these downturns are indeed somewhat nerve-wracking, it certainly…
Happy New Year to all, and I hope you are as excited about the possibilities for success that await us all in 2009 as I am. Best of luck with your New Year’s resolutions. Over the past several months, the term “nearshoring” has been getting a lot of attention in the media. The panic ensued…
As purchasing professionals, it is tempting to get caught up with our desire and goal of reducing the yearly spend by category for our organizations. In fact, it is often one of our most focused on objectives that are brought up during the dreaded “performance appraisal”. Sometimes, however, we need to reflect at a 50,000…
In this day and age of global sourcing, and the increased competitive battles in the marketplace, product quality seems to be getting its fair share of press. North Americans seem bent on perpetuating the belief that products made in other parts of the world, particularly in China, are of inferior quality, and are even putting…
Ah… the good old days. The suppliers would come and visit, almost begging for our business. We, as purchasing professionals, would make them compete with each other, like it was the “procurement olympics”, or some such significant event. Then, once we got the best price, despite the cries of misery from the successful candidate, we would…
Over the past number of years, the global nature of business, and in particular, doing business with China, has been a hot topic that has gained considerable coverage by the press. If one was to look at any large news source with a reasonable amount of business coverage, we would be hard pressed to search…
In today’s global economy of rising fuel costs, fluctuating exchange rates, labour shortages, and rapidly shrinking margins, organizations without an import strategy are finding it near impossible to compete. Global competition, and in particular competition from low cost labour countries, is resulting in lost customers and deteriorating profitability for many domestic manufacturers. Despite these competitive…
As the years go by, buzz words come and buzz words go. Some we tend to ignore in the hopes that they too will be washed away by the tide of time, never to be heard from again. From JIT, to Quality Circles, to MBO… they come, and they go. Some disappear altogether, while others simply…