Servicing SMEs Throughout Atlantic Canada
Well it’s finally here… I think we have officially entered the Supply Chain Management era. As with most shifts in thinking in the business world, our profession started out as a new “buzz word” that people began to throw around, not really understanding what is was or what it meant. What is Supply Chain Management…
Supply Chain Management is becoming talked about more and more, and has become the common language of our profession. We once talked more with terminology such as Purchasing or Logistics, but the shift to Supply Chain terminology is becoming more apparent with the passage of time. I have even heard it referred to as “the…
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…