The Doctor at Sourcing Innovation created another cross-blog series, asking a number of us to give our Seven Grand Challenges for Supply and Spend Management. Some insightful posts have already tackled topics like spend data, currency, trade barriers and supply chain risks. But rather than echoing their lists, which I believe are largely right on [...]

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So far the steel industry trends to watch next year have been extensions or acceleration of current conditions - Industry Consolidation and Vertical Integration. Both are extremely important for buyers to monitor since they have short and long term impacts on steel price and supply. But our third trend to watch in 2009, Steel Futures, [...]

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Following close on the heels of the first 2009 trend to watch - Steel Industry Consolidation - is the continuing move towards Vertical Integration. Historically, many of the challenges steel mills faced in the past were due to their lack of control of supplies of raw materials. For example in the early 90’s, when raw [...]

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I know we’re a little early for 2009 prediction posts, which usually come sometime between Thanksgiving gluttony and sloppy Auld Lang Syn sing-alongs. But I wanted to get these off my chest for a couple of reasons. First, the steel markets are extremely volatile, so it pays for buyers to stay out in front of [...]

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