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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In the context of last week’s surprisingly positive job numbers (so surprising in fact that President Obama had to do a last minute rewrite to his speech Friday), two news stories have shared additional good news for US manufacturing. They’re largely anecdotal evidence, but perhaps they show a return of manufacturing jobs to the US [...]

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Last week on SpendMatters, William Busch covered the shutdown at a Canadian Ford Motors factory that was caused by labor unrest at an auto parts supplier facility in India. I provided my views in the Comments, but wanted to share them here as well, since Supply Excellence readers may also have some insights on the [...]

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This post may be venturing off into “rant” territory, which is largely uncharted water for me. But an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about the negative impacts that the Buy American Clause is having on some of the very businesses it’s supposed to help shows the fallacy of drafting government policy-by-marketing-slogan.
The Journal tells the [...]

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Editor’s note: This is the conclusion of the interview with Cheryl Berklich, a Director of Purchasing and Client Services at Performance Management Group who specializes in supply chain management in the auto dealership industry. Our own resident supply chain finance expert, Drew Hofler, posed questions to Cheryl about the health of the auto dealers [...]

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