Letters

Bigger Supplier Squeezes

[Re: The Big Squeeze, April 2002, Page 68] You have ignored a crucial aspect of the "master huckster," procurement-based manufacturing crisis: the economic effect upon manufacturers when the procurement company the end user has forced upon the supplier goes bankrupt.

[In March] one of the nation's largest procurement-scheme firms, [Integra Integrated Procurement Solutions Inc., Northbrook, Ill.], filed for protection from creditors (us lowly suppliers). The end users that contracted Integra to manage their procurement still expect product from us-in fact, they expect that we will happily shift our business from one failed huckster to one that is still solvent. Our response has been blunt: We will not play the game this way any longer. We urge our customers to buy direct.

I have long viewed the procurement-scheme style of management as one that shifted responsibility away from the end user and to the supplier. It seems that companies in America do not embrace manufacturing correctly. We need more concentration on the manufacturing process and less focus upon the procurement method.