Another enlightening presenter at last week’s Spend Management Day in Seattle - which by the way was at the Edgewater Hotel of Beatles fame and Led Zeppelin infamy - was Erik Rupinski from MeadWestvaco’s Supply Chain Solutions group.

Like many companies, MeadWestvaco (MWV) is global in terms of their supply chain, acquisition strategy and sales. Some of Erik’s key insights into coping with various cultures, relationships, and consumer demands:

• Local expertise. MWV puts decision making power in the hand of their category experts in ‘regional centers’, but utilizes technology to guide that process consistently across regions and operations. The approach, as Erik described it, reminded me of Telefonica, another multinational procurement success story that employs a distributed decision making model within a framework to ensures best practices are followed across the globe.
• Make where you sell. Erik alluded to MWV utilizing their LCC operations as a beach head to developing markets. It makes a great deal of sense when you consider the growing consumer appetites of the global middle class. So setting up manufacturing in countries while they are the LCC of choice will make shifting the products to local store shelves that much easier when the country’s markets evolve.
• Become everyone’s favorite customer. MWV is echoing the trend towards a ’sellers market’ in supply chain, brought on by cost inflation, scarcity of supply, rising demand and currency fluctuations. Hence, their goal is to work with their suppliers, asking “how can you grow your business with us?” As anyone who’s tried this approach knows, suppliers are always very willing to answer that question.
• Collaborate to Innovate. Faced with some serious sustainability goals, WMV has worked with their suppliers to reduce use of harsh chemicals, raw materials and energy. My favorite example is the shift they’ve made in beer 12-pack and case containers, which have moved from corrugated cardboard to a far more efficient paperboard.

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.