supply chain

Procurement Pro supply chain
Supply Chain Management

Can We Really Offset High Materials Costs?

The primary elements that make up a finished product are direct raw materials. They can be any mined materials, like minerals, metals, crude oil, coal, etc. There are also indirect raw materials – anything that supplements the making of finished products from direct materials. The challenges represented by accessing these materials promptly and at a

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Industry Insights

Railroad Strikes, Unionization, and the Electronics Industry…

What Could Go Wrong? So, the railroad strike was averted the day before the walkout, but what would a strike have meant? Freight railroads transport approximately 40% of long-haul cargo and 125,000 railroad workers. The strike would have crippled the country’s supply chain on many levels. Since trains are thought to be most important to

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Supply Chain Management

Continued Pressure on Automotive Supply Chains

According to a recent Reuters article, Global supply chain stress at 18-month low in July, NY Fed’s index at its lowest level since January 2021. However, that is not across the board. A major exception is the automotive industry supply chain. There are few industries as complex as automotive regarding supply chains. Normal supply and

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Supply Chain Management

Can There be Procurement Sanity When the Supply Chain is a Hot Mess?

Over the past few years, supply chains have had virtually everything thrown at them: tariffs, a pandemic, inflation, transportation/logistics nightmares, inability to find staff, and even war. For the most part, these disruptions came out of nowhere, suddenly causing devastating results. This dynamic environment has challenged the post-professional and advanced procurement teams—what is it doing

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Supply Chain Management

Rare Earth Scarcity Adds Fuel to Supply Chain Fires

Chip manufacturers can’t seem to catch a break. Tariffs, pandemics, transportation challenges, and now war have impacted rare earth availability, exacerbating supply chain chaos. Rare Earths and Tech Apps War in Ukraine hampers the availability of such rare earths as neon, krypton, and xenon, all used in semiconductor manufacturing. Krypton is a noble gas used

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Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain-gers

For supply chains, it’s often knee-jerk reactions to the disaster-du-jour that point out the need for rapid, tangible change. But, as we’ve recently seen, disruption in the form of pandemics, natural disasters, and transportation woes are becoming the impetus for examining what the future has in store. Here we’ll discuss a few areas where change

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Supply Chain Management

Rare Earth Elements and the Supply Chain

Rare earth elements are not necessarily rare but are precious and difficult and expensive to mine and separate. Essential to many emerging technologies, they are often classified by the U.S. government as being critical to national security. They are also important to such industry segments as clean energy, electronics, and medicine. There are seventeen rare

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Industry Insights

Labor Shortage—Robots, Millennials, Government Interference and Rethinking Work

I started researching this article on labor shortages to find out why they are an increasing and dangerous thorn in the side of supply chains. What I found was a ton of contradictions. Opinions ran the gamut from political ones along party lines, others involving an “us vs. them” view of age-related approaches to work,

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Supply Chain Management

Supply Chains—From Henry Ford to Artificial Intelligence

There is no recognizable similarity between the first supply chain in history and today’s complex and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven counterpart. One hundred years ago, assembly lines enabling mass production were implemented by Henry Ford, supporting the production of consistent products on a large scale. Today’s global supply chains are based on multiple organizations, processes, and

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Black & Grey Markets

Counterfeit!

According to the European Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the risk of counterfeit goods in the United States or in the EU is roughly one in twenty. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is said to uncover a mere 1% of counterfeit products brought into the country. When counterfeit goods are added

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