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Supply chain symposium:
International event covered the hot topics in procurement
Lisa Wichmann
Toronto—More than 200 supply chain professionals
gathered in Toronto last month for the fifth annual
International Symposium on Supply Chain Management.
Canada had coast-to-coast representation at the event,
and there were delegates from the US, Turkey, Bermuda
and Australia.
The symposium—organized by the Purchasing Management Association
of Canada (PMAC), and the McMaster eBusiness
Research Centre—covered the most current issues and
challenges in supply chain management, such as decisions
around outsourcing, technology, and vendor management.
The event opened with a keynote address from David
Swiggum, vice-president of customer fulfillment (Americas)
with IBM Canada.
Swiggum gave an overview of how IBM’s supply chain looked in 1993—fragmented and cost-heavy with no client-facing processes.
“We had a million little silos,” Swiggum said. In 2002,
IBM combined its supply chain operations into a single
organization, resulting in cost savings, more flexibility and
better cycle times.
The transformation made for an interesting presentation,
but equally significant were the skills Swiggum highlighted as critical. He described one supply chain professional at IBM who
speaks several languages fluently, so is well positioned to work in an increasingly global field.
The procurement leader of tomorrow must also be
able to jump back and forth between manufacturing, distribution,
and other departments in the organization; bringing a broad view to
supply chain management.
“Cutting costs while you improve sales, selling time, customer satisfaction and the number of audits passed…takes real creativity
and focus,” Swiggum said.
Following the keynote, delegates attended seminars on green procurement, risk management, software and third party partners. One of the presenters was Christopher Carter, a public sector principal with A.T. Kearney Ltd. Carter talked about efforts at organizations such as Public Works & Government Services Canada (PWGSC) to leverage spend data.
“What you’re doing is creating a common language,” Carter said, referring to systems that group spend data by parameters such as category, commodity and number of vendors.
The systems give managers an immediate view of how much is spent in each area. He emphasized technology is an enabler in these projects, but not the solution. Instead, procurement managers should enlist
senior executive support to get early efforts at spend visibility
off the ground.
“When it comes to waiting until you have all these systems in place before you do spend analysis, that’s not a good idea,” he said. At
one organization, a team of four students helped create a “spend cube” dealing with billions of dollars in procurement, so only a minimal
investment was required.
The efforts focus on achieving accuracy and visibility of spend, to better leverage volume, contract compliance and inventory controls, Carter said.
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