by Mary Ruth Williamson, CEO | Mar 17, 2026 | Direct Materials Sourcing, News
Industrial commodity markets are entering a volatile phase — and “volatile” is doing most of the heavy lifting in that sentence. This evolving industrial metals outlook for 2026 is directly impacting how manufacturers approach sourcing, supplier selection,...
by Mary Ruth Williamson, CEO | Mar 11, 2026 | RFQ/E-Sourcing
Most direct materials RFQs don’t fail at the negotiation table. They begin to fall apart wherever someone put together a loosely worded email, attached a drawing, and called it a sourcing event. An email asking for a price isn’t a structured RFQ. A...
by Mary Ruth Williamson, CEO | Mar 5, 2026 | RFQ/E-Sourcing
Most manufacturers have run RFQs. Far fewer feel like they got what they were promised: real savings, clearer decisions, better suppliers, and fewer headaches. That’s not because competitive sourcing is broken. It’s because RFQs are often treated as a transactional...
by Mary Ruth Williamson, CEO | Feb 25, 2026 | Manufacturing Procurement
Multi-plant sourcing is where procurement stops being a “function” and starts being an operating model. As manufacturers expand across geographies—organically or through acquisition—what worked at a single plant often becomes structurally inefficient at scale....
by Mary Ruth Williamson, CEO | Feb 18, 2026 | Manufacturing Procurement
Most sourcing advice assumes scale. It assumes predictable demand, consolidated volumes, stable specifications, and repeatable purchasing patterns. That logic works in high-volume environments. It breaks down fast in high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) manufacturing—job...
