Dec 7 2014
Bridging the Gap between Buyers and Suppliers | Robert Moakler | IndustryWeek
“Creating high performance, collaborative alliances between buyers and U.S. suppliers will ensure rebuilding a strong and sustainable American supply chain.”
Source: www.industryweek.com
Robert Moakler reiterates the well known fact that collaboration between suppliers and customers is a win/win, and offers an e-sourcing platform as the better mousetrap that will make it happen.
As COO of an “online marketplace exclusively developed for the American manufacturing industry,” Moakler is forthright about where he is coming from. But is lack of technology the reason why adversarial, arm’s length relations between suppliers and customers remain the norm?
My own findings on this matter — summarized in Lean Logistics, on pp. 342-350 — is that each side stands to gain a short-term advantage from unilaterally breaking a collaborative relationship, and that the business history of the past 25 years shows examples of this happening.
On the customer side, a new VP of purchasing can instruct buyers to use the information suppliers have shared to force price concessions. Conversely, suppliers can leverage intimate, single-sourcing, collaborative relations with a customer to charge above-market prices.
None of these behaviors is viable in the long term, but not all managers care about the long term, and the toughest challenge in establishing collaborative relations is defusing well-founded fears about the future behavior of the other side.
While wishing Mr. Moakley the best of luck in his business, I don’t believe technology is the problem.
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
December 10, 2014 @ 11:49 am
Hi Michel
Technology doesn’t and cannot solve a basic human relations problem. Buyers and suppliers are ultimate other people the key to having a co-operative relationship, is having a good human relationship based upon a long-term mutually beneficial relationship with the other party. You cannot achieve that when all you look for is a quick gain today, getting it requires both parties to respect each other and to work toward a better tomorrow together, business doesn’t have to be win-lose, it can and should be win-win. Any organization that bashes it suppliers regularly is also bashing its consumers regularly, short-term greed is not only bad in the long-run, it in fact negatively effects the current marketplace as well.