Key Metrics and Supply Alert
Staff -- Purchasing, 11/3/2005
- Ford Motor Co. is seeking bilateral, long-term contracts with select suppliers that will change cost reduction approaches and technology procurement agreements. In its first phase, Aligned Business Framework aims to reduce by 50% the suppliers from which Ford sources new business.
- Chief executive officers of large companies in the U.S. and Europe would like to see their business managers more involved in technology decisions. McKinsey & Co. survey finds CEOs less than thrilled by information technology decisions being made by chief information officers with no input—due to a lack of interest—by purchasing, engineering and manufacturing managers.
- PURCHASING and Aberdeen Group are co-producing the Chief Procurement Officers' Summit Conference at the Westin Hotel at Copley Square in Boston on November 16 and 17. The CPO Summit will discuss supply management technologies, offshore sourcing strategies, spending analysis successes and best practices in supplier development and improvement. More information and registration details are available at www.purchasing.com and www.aberdeen.com.
- The popular notion that globalization in the form of cheap imports from India and China have suppressed inflation for good is a fairy tale, says Federal Reserve governor Donald Kohn. In fact, Fed researchers have found that goods from emerging countries such as China have only had a "modest disinflationary effect," Kohn says in a speech at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
- Business travelers are struggling to find hotel rooms near the battered Gulf Coast—even rooms pre-booked before hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Data developed by Smith Travel Research for USA TODAY
newspaper finds that hotel rooms in Houston, Memphis, Atlanta, Dallas, Little Rock, and San Antonio have been jammed. Hurricane evacuees are in these rooms under a federal program administered by the Red Cross.
- The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries says "there is enough evidence to indicate that oil demand growth will probably slow down further in the months to come." But the OPEC oil cartel also says a recent easing in crude prices might not last. "Any further unplanned refinery shutdowns or unexpected improvement in demand this winter could allow speculative activity to push prices back up," OPEC cautions.
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