Interesting times are ahead for companies that purchase significant pulp and paper volumes, a group that includes virtually any manufacturer with packaging needs. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index, from February 2020 to February 2021, pulp and paper prices increased more than 5%. Data published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank shows that corrugated prices increased approximately 11.5% between September 2020 and March 2021. These price increases will soon show up in packaging costs...if they aren’t already.
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Topics:
Manufacturing,
Vendors & Contracts,
Paper,
Packaging,
Vendor Contract,
Vendor Contract Management
Most of us were glad to see 2020 come to an end. Many changes brought about by the pandemic are becoming permanent, causing businesses to respond in new and innovative ways. Suppliers have had to react to pandemic-driven disruptions in creative ways, and the impact of demand shifts along the supply chain has caused procurement organizations to need to quickly adapt.
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Topics:
Manufacturing
In today's challenging market environment, reducing packaging costs is essential. It may not occur to most companies to look at their corrugated supply vendor agreements for potential cost savings — but it should. Strategic Resource Management (SRM) understands these contracts, and we work with companies every day to locate and capture these savings. Working in partnership with our customers, we often reduce annual corrugated costs by double digits.
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Topics:
Manufacturing,
Vendors & Contracts
In our experience, whether it’s a packaging, transportation, temp labor, or a telecom agreement, saying “no changes, here’s my signature” is a classic blunder.
Why?
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Topics:
Manufacturing,
Vendors & Contracts,
Contract Management,
Contracts
Staring down the barrel of budget planning for 2020? For many managers working with a calendar-based fiscal year, the dog days of summer also mean the advent of the annual planning cycle. Given all the uncertainties in the past few quarters, odds are that department heads are being asked to “do more with less,” or at least step up output at a faster rate than costs.
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Topics:
Manufacturing,
Vendors & Contracts,
Contract Management,
Contracts
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In any aspect of business, achieving a sense of efficiency—balancing effort, time, and money to achieve the best outcome—is hard work. This is a particularly unique challenge for packaging and transportation. From excess headspace to improperly scheduled routes, to simply being unaware of emerging shipping and packaging solutions, it’s easy for a business to unknowingly lose thousands of dollars and valuable resource hours per year.
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Topics:
Manufacturing,
Strategic Sourcing,
Packaging,
transport
Negotiating new vendor agreements might be the part of the supplier contract process that garners the most attention, but it’s the careful attention to detail after the contract is signed that promises will deliver hard-fought savings. We don’t mean to say that vendors are always looking to pull one over on you after you have signed on the dotted line. Honest, human errors do occur on both sides of the contract, and maybe more often than we’d like to think.
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Topics:
Insider,
Manufacturing,
Vendors & Contracts
