Like many industries, plastics have been hit hard by the recession. Dropping demand and lack of credit have buyers cutting back on orders and running through existing inventory. And to compensate, plastics suppliers have drastically reduced their output so they don’t flood the market and depress prices even further. Same story, different commodity, right?
But some [...]

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The NYTimes ran an interesting article on Google’s attempt to mine the “deep web”, that area beyond strings of simple keywords where complex questions are answered. It’s no easy task. Logic, analysis and context are tough things to perfect and scale for web crawling bots. So despite recently indexing their trillionth website and revolutionizing access [...]

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We’ve all seen the cable news coverage and painful pictures coming from Hurricane Ike’s impact zone on the Gulf Coast. And while the press focuses on the human element for obvious reasons, anyone concerned with transportation and logistics needs to be informed on the storm’s repercussions to those systems and markets.
I’m afraid the news is [...]

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If your organization has an International Purchasing Office (IPO), you likely jumped through quite a few hoops to get the doors open. Management buy-in, staffing, budget realities, goals, regulations and logistics are just a few of the challenges involved. So, a hearty pat on the back is in order…but don’t get too comfortable because you’re [...]

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My colleagues in Category Management recently collaborated for the cover story on ISM (Institute for Supply Management). Their article outlined the 5 Best Practices for Category Management and gave some great advice that companies either already follow or should. The fifth and final tip - coping with globalization & the total cost of ownership - [...]

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