On Oct. 17, PURCHASING Magazine will host an industry roundtable discussion among Chris Gleason, supply base manager for MRO corporate, Deere & Co., Dorothy Barnes-Miller, supply chain lead/capital equipment buyer for Harley Davidson's Milwaukee Powertrain facility and site lead at Capital Drive for the company's Indirect Materials Alliance, and Paul Kemp, purchasing manager, MRO/Capital at Tropicana. The experts will talk about "Driving MRO Profits."

The roundtable is part of the SupplyChainLinkExpo, a two-day virtual conference and tradeshow hosted by PURCHASING Magazine and the Cahners Supply Chain/OEM Group. The discussion will take place on the show's Source Pavilion.

The SupplyChainLinkExpo will also feature interactive Webcasts, keynote addresses from major industry players, exhibits, an industry mall, a show daily and more. To register, go to www.supplychainlinkexpo.com.

The MRO roundtable will be moderated by Susan Avery, senior editor at PURCHASING Magazine. The industry participants will discuss the supply strategies they have in place for MRO and how their strategies benefit their companies. The conversation will also focus on how these professionals work with their suppliers to come up with creative ideas for continuously improving upon their earlier accomplishments.

As supply base manager for MRO corporate, Gleason leads Deere's corporate team for MRO, which encompasses 14 products, including perishable tooling, hydraulics and pneumatics, safety supplies, and tool room supplies. For MRO, Deere takes a silo or commodity management approach through which Gleason's team selects MRO suppliers based on their ability to provide all of Deere's North American plants with full integration services. In his post, Gleason is responsible for implementing supplier agreements, continuous improvement, standardization and strategic utilization (Deere's term for compliance and ongoing maintenance and administration of supplier agreements). Deere is the recipient of PURCHASING Magazine's Medal of Professional Excellence for 2001.

Harley-Davidson won PURCHASING Magazine's Medal of Professional Excellence in 2000. Through the company's Indirect Materials Alliance (HIMA), three suppliers provide Harley-Davidson with a majority of its indirect materials, products, and service requirements. The goal of the alliance, says Barnes-Miller "is to improve operational integrity, which includes manufacturing uptime and productivity, total lifecycle cost reduction and end-product quality."

At Tropicana, Kemp implemented a strategic supplier program for MRO in the mid 90s. The program was so successful that it has been extended to the company's capital equipment buy as well. For its $20 million annual MRO spend, 14 suppliers provide Tropicana will nearly all of the goods and services that keep the company up and running. And suppliers help purchasing keep the total spend in check: Over the past six years, as the company's annual revenue rose 70%, spending on MRO has fallen by 50%.