Name: John Boucher

Title: Vice president global supply chain management

Company: Manufacturers' Services Ltd., Concord, Mass.

Reports to: Bob Donahue, president and chief operating officer

Professional background: Boucher came to Manufacturers' Services Ltd. (MSL) in 1995 after holding senior operations and materials management positions at Digital Equipment Corp. and Circuit Test Inc. He joined MSL as vice president of worldwide materials and was charged with the task of developing the company's corporate supply chain business architecture. He also created and deployed many of MSL's key operational management processes worldwide. Boucher was promoted to vice president of global supply chain management in February 2000.

Current responsibilities: Boucher is responsible for global supplier management at MSL and the company's corporate materials organization. His team manages aggregation of worldwide spend for all production and MRO expenditures and is responsible for strategic supplier selection, contract negotiation, and ongoing supplier performance evaluation. Boucher is also responsible for MSL corporate materials functions including demand and supply planning, inventory management, warehouse operations and inventory controls across worldwide operations. Boucher chairs MSL's Supply Chain Council, which manages the company's business and systems architecture and information technology investments.

On pressing trends in the purchasing industry: "It's critical to have the capability to look at key elements of your supply chain on a global and real-time basis to minimize the communication time among all links in the supply chain," Boucher says. "In addition to speed, there continues to be a need for more and more component reference data required to fine-tune and deploy virtual intelligent supply chains. Cross-referencing customer component part numbers to manufacturer's OEM part numbers, aggregating spend, and integrating purchasing efforts across multiple companies during product design is critical and will continue to be high on the supply chain management priority list over the coming year."

How purchasing decisions improve the overall business: "With component cost representing 70%-80% of direct product cost in electronics manufacturing, purchasing decisions have a major impact on product cost, margins and return-on-investment capital. Leveraging total company spend and aggregating across fewer supply partners lets buyers focus on balancing inventory across the supply chain and obtaining improved pricing, flexibility and service. Purchasing organizations that make the right decisions on supply partners will also play a big role in their companies' winning of new business. It's becoming clear that an EMS company cannot be successful without an excellent purchasing organization."

Supply chain management changes in the past five years: "Our supply chain management responsibilities continue to expand with materials functions (focused on inventory) and supply line functions (responsible for supplier management) consolidated under one supply chain management team. Information technology tools, data and supporting business processes have become the primary focus for our supply chain management teams. Cross-company partnerships are the rule today, not the exception. Information quality is tops on the priority list for tuning the supply chain. Supply chain management also has shifted more toward vertical integration of the business among many partners from design to aftermarket repair services."

Changes in buyers' responsibilities: "Ten years ago, a buyer's job was essentially a functional support position focused primarily on supplier selection, price, delivery and quality. These positions were traditionally placed in cost centers within manufacturing operations. Today, our buyers continue to be commodity focused, but their roles have expanded to include management and optimization of virtual supply chains among our customers, manufacturing operations and supply partners. Using information technology as their primary tools, buyers optimize and position the supply chain with information vs. inventory. Our buyers today have a significant role in customer satisfaction and effect both P&L and balance-sheet performance."