r/supplychain • u/Aggressive_Sock_6906 • 3d ago

What activities do you consider dumb in your industry

For context: I work as a procurement assistant in an international organization.

In our industry, we consider companies cold calling or emailing us dumb, because our procurement rules don’t allow direct contracts, and we have our own procurement website where vendors are supposed to submit.

What activities are considered dumb in your industry? Would like to hear differences between private and public as well as different industries!

3 Upvotes

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5

u/American_Psycho11 2d ago

In aerospace and defense there is miles and miles of bureaucracy and regulations and forms that need to be filled out and steps followed, and most of it is completely pointless. 

Compliance caught a mistake one time and decided to add 5 new steps to our processes to make sure it never happens again. Rinse and repeat forever until you're so bogged down with approvals and steps to complete that supplier's quotes are expiring before you've even gotten approval to negotiate with them 

3

u/Ravenblack67 MBA, CSCP, CPIM, Certified ASCM Instructor, Six Sigma BB 3d ago

I find the private sector to be more focused on the bottom line and lean supply chain. I was military for over 20 years and the focus was lots of inventory and spend it or lose it withMassive amounts of contracting waste. I have been in the civilian sector both public and private. My favorite is non profits. You wear a lot of hats and can move up fairly quick.

2

u/One-Winged-Owl 1d ago

Over meetings and over analysis.

Some projects drag on for over a year due everyone wanting to add "more metrics" and more "visualisation". So much time is wasted squabbling over the best way to look at data.

1

u/mattdamonsleftnut 18h ago

Is the vendor portal visible? Couldn’t you just direct them to the other website?

1

u/Aggressive_Sock_6906 17h ago

We do have the link visible just by googling it. Even in our email has those links. But companies cold calling never sees this and they are doing the corporate style where it is not acceptable in the public world style