Last week’s webinar by Jim Polak, PPG’s Director of General Purchasing, didn’t disappoint. If you didn’t catch the webinar (replay available here) or read the preview on Spend Matters, Jim is a procurement visionary - and I’m not using that term lightly. He went from 0 to 60mph (well really more like 0 to $7.5 [more]

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Occasionally, a sourcing team finds itself in a sole source situation with minimum leverage. Despite hard work, good intentions and an initial list with several potential suppliers, the team filters the non-qualified sources…and winds up with only one supplier left. In that scenario, you still want to find competitive cost reduction, but you’ll have no [more]

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For every procurement department success story (you know, the one about rising up out of the company basement to a level of respectability and influence) there are many, MANY more still struggling to gain traction, attention and results. Jim Polak, General Purchasing Director at PPG Industries, is responsible for steering his department from the latter [more]

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Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the American Metal Market and World Steel Dynamic’s Steel Success Strategies conference in NYC. Attendance leans very heavily towards suppliers (I’d ballpark it at about 70-80% of the attendees). But for all of us - from buyers and suppliers to consultants and media - the views expressed [more]

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I posted here recently about a webinar I was presenting with Purchasing.com’s editor-in-chief and a panel of 3 D & C-level procurement professionals from mid-sized companies (the replay is available here if you’d like to check it out). The discussion ranged from spend management approaches to organizational challenges. But one of the most interesting [more]

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