Top CPOs
By Staff -- Purchasing, 11/2/2006 7:00:00 AM
The title CPO—chief procurement officer—is taking hold in corporations, reflecting the increasing influence purchasing has on attainment of corporate objectives. 
Garry Berryman
Sarah Lee Corp.
Berryman has held purchasing positions at John Deere, Honda of America, Harley-Davidson (all past winners of this magazine’s Medal of Professional Excellence), and Applied Materials. He believes in strong supplier relationships. "Use all dimensions of a supplier’s capability," he says. "Don’t waste what a supplier can contribute." Berryman believes it’s essential that procurement professionals understand their full roles and responsibility in their companies. They need to know how new products are developed and where procurement fits into the process, he says.
Christie Breves
Alcoa
Alcoa is in the 20th month of a transformation of its purchasing operation into a global best practices organization. The company has gone to a commodity management focus, and procurement center of excellence. Also, under Breves, purchasing established its credibility so much so that management was willing to invest in the resources necessary for transformation. The battle now, she says, is for talent. She is making sure she develops all resources, not just new hires. She wants to develop the skills of people already on the staff and is providing regular training programs to do just that.
 Paul BoxFederal Signal There are at least three critical issues in purchasing, Box says: risk management, commodity volatility and the outsourcing of procurement as a business process. He urges colleagues to become part of the process, not become a victim of it. He believes that his own role is to "connect the dots" as he works across several divisions within Federal Signal. And, he says it’s his responsibility—and that of all purchasing managers everywhere—to identify and deploy talented people within the company.
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 Joe CarsonLucent Carson says the role of procurement is changing, and purchasing professionals have to allow sales teams to help them in this global environment. He also says purchasing is emerging as a strategic function rather than just a tactical function, and that purchasing staff have to be "bold, risk takers, and outspoken." It’s time for procurement to challenge itself, he says. That could involve outsourcing some functions, or questioning internal groups on past decisions, including how they have handled suppliers.
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 Gary MillerGoodyear Tire and Rubber "We have had to learn how to serve our manufacturing organizations worldwide in the middle of a period of volatility that has made the purchase of raw materials, equipment, goods and services extremely challenging," says Miller. He sees as one of the major accomplishments of his organization in the past year efficient globalization so the worldwide and regional purchasing groups can take advantage of reduced cost and efficient delivery anywhere and at any time.
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 John PatersonIBM "Our single major challenge is to buy as effectively and competitively as we can in a global marketplace," says Paterson, who recently moved to China. Another challenge: developing procurement and sourcing skills in markets such as China, India and Eastern Europe. Yet a third challenge is that IBM is on the receiving end of some of the purchasing outsourcing activity in industry. Historically, IBM buyers have purchased only for internal customers. Buying for external customers is different, he says. "We have to get our arms around total spend on a global basis and leverage that spend."
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 Richard MorabitoKodak Morabito came to Kodak after 29 years with Xerox. Among his initiatives: centralizing purchasing and reducing the supplier base. "We took supplier suggestions to come up with a specific process for working with suppliers," he says. "(We did that) so we could help suppliers." Now, he and Kodak are considering a return to a limited decentralization. "We’re still debating what pieces of it should go back to the business units," he says. "There is no right answer in this area. You don’t want to wind up with a duplication of effort. You have to evaluate the situation and decide what’s best for the company."
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 Mitch PlattCon-Way New to his role at Con-Way, Platt’s biggest challenge is reorganizing procurement. Fleet, IT and indirect are all his responsibility (as is accounts payable). He is merging them into one cohesive procure-to-pay group, and is using spend analysis to identify savings opportunities. He is also implementing a more defined, automated sourcing process that is giving him visibility into spend categories that he didn’t have before. One example: waste disposal. The company has 500 sites and each negotiated its own contract for waste disposal. Now, purchasing is negotiating a national agreement for the entire company. They’re also doing the same for uniforms and IT hardware, among other things.
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 Perry MulliganSolectron One of Mulligan’s top concerns these days at EMS firm Solectron is transitioning the supply base to Lean to eliminate waste. In doing that, Solectron has conducted hundreds of kaizan events to identify the waste. Beyond that activity, he sees two major challenges facing purchasing: One key challenge for everyone, he says, is to raise the profile of the purchasing profession. On a more tactical level, he believes that a key challenge is working with OEMs whose forecasts fluctuate wildly—a reality many in purchasing face. "Some companies are reliant on a load and chase mentality, where they feel they can introduce large fluctuations in demand and expect the supply chain has the elasticity to respond to that." But dealing with large fluctuations in demand is expensive and time consuming, he says.
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 Shelley Stewart, Jr.Tyco Stewart, the magazine’s 2005 Supply Chain Manager of the Year, has spent his time at Tyco managing the global supply chain, global sourcing and e-sourcing. "We’ve got a great deal of disparate systems so we have to come up with a sharp method of managing our procurement and driving compliance," he says. The company will also continue to focus on low-cost-country sourcing, he says. "That doesn’t mean (we’ll do) everything in China. We want to put the product in the right regions...for the optimal cost advantage." Under Stewart’s leadership, Tyco is in the third year of a strategic sourcing initiative that will provide a net savings of $650 million. "We’ll continue to focus on this without reinventing our processes," he says.
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Here’s our list of the top CPOs—the purchasing executives with that actual title. Hardly a shy bunch, they have a lot to say about the critical issues in the field and the strategies and best practices for addressing them. Check out the summary of their thoughts, below, then listen to their analyses of the challenges they—and you—face. You can hear them at www.purchasing.com/cpo, where you’ll find our special series of audiocasts. Listen to what they say, then tell us your own thoughts on purchasing’s biggest challenges.
Click here for the second annual Top CPOs audiocast series
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