Last Friday, President Obama signed into law a $2 billion extension to the “Cash for Clunkers” program, after the initial $1 billion in funding was consumed in the program’s first week.  The Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) program, the official name of this legislation, offers consumers up to $4,500 to trade in gas […]

When Danny Boeykens, a partner at MÖBIUS, a European boutique consulting firm, read my posting on “Supplier Risk Management and the Automotive Supply Chain,” he pointed me to a Financial Times article by Richard Milne that provides a European perspective on this problem.    As stated in the article, “When Edscha, a German manufacturer of sun […]

I came across a white paper from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) called “Seizing Opportunity: Linking Risk and Performance”.  In one place, the paper highlights a “global automotive manufacturer” that was “experiencing significant losses due to a key risk in its supply chain:  supplier bankruptcies.”  The company faced the direct costs of those failures, as well as the […]

While conducting an Internet search, I came across a course offered by The Quest Team to sales people in the semiconductor industry.  The course is called “Combating Aggressive Supply Chain Management:  Strategies and Tactics for Leveling the Playing Field”.  Here is part of the course description: “The SEM industry has been hit with increasingly aggressive […]

I’ve heard that the Chinese symbol for “crisis” is composed of elements that signify “danger” and “opportunity.”  A professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania says this is untrue, which is too bad because it is such a good story.  It is also exactly the situation that GM finds itself in.  […]