Toyota consistently ranks among the most respected global corporations and is well-known for their manufacturing prowess and strong supplier ties. That’s exactly why this week’s news about the accelerator problems for 4 million vehicles came as a shock to so many of us. The impact of this episode will be long-term, far-reaching, [...]

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Regardless of who might have authorship rights (Pimco? Ariba? Others?), the concept of “The New Normal” has definitely caught on in both the mainstream media and spend management circles .
However, it’s important to remember that “the New Normal” doesn’t translate directly to “permanent low GDP growth” as has been put forth by some investment advisors.
Instead, [...]

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A lot of Supply Excellence readers are members of the Strategic Sourcing & Procurement Group on LinkedIn and may have seen the lively discussion in December on how the Group can become a more valuable resource in 2010. Out of that discussion, the idea to have regular conference calls to tap into the Group’s collective [...]

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We have had an issue with our hosting server. The good news is, it’s been diagnosed and should be fixed shortly. The bad news is, we had to revert to a backup of the database and lost the posts and comments from January 15th through yesterday.
I apologize for any disruption, inconvenience or loss of content. [...]

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Buyers of chemicals always need to know what’s happening in their markets, and more importantly what will happen, to make informed purchasing decisions. The problem is that forecasting chemicals markets is more of an art than a science, and well-structured (but subsequently erroneous) predictions have made some of the best analysts look like novices [...]

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