Two Great New Optimization Resources
For those of you looking for a good introductory overview of decision optimization for strategic sourcing, two new resources hit the bit-stream today.
First of all, there's the "What is Supply Chain Optimization?" (Part I and Part II) podcast, part of the Next Level Purchasing's podcast series that features Charles Dominick (Pro to Know), President of Next Level Purchasing (a Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100 Company) and yours truly. (For more details, see today's edition of the Next Level Purchasing newsletter.) Clocking in at just under an hour, we try our best to convey the basics of strategic sourcing decision optimization and why it's important to you as a sourcing / procurement / supply mananagement professional. For those of you who find the podcast quite dense (it is!), and wish to review one or more sections, you'll be pleased to know that a free transcript (basic or with editorial notes) is available, sponsored by my company, ToP KaTS Consulting.
Secondly, over on the eSourcing Wiki (which, as of today, has 18 wiki-papers on various topics relevant to you as a sourcing professional with more on the way), the Strategic Sourcing Decision Optimization wiki-paper is now available, sponsored by Iasta. Along with an introduction to optimization, including strategic sourcing decision optimization, it also overviews the benefits and ten strategies for success.
When you add both of these resources to the ever increasing archive of decision optimization blog posts here on Sourcing Innovation, I believe (or at least I hope that) you finally have the resources you need to start understanding what strategic sourcing decision optimization is, is not, and why it's important. Especially when you consider that Emptoris gives you nothing and CombineNet primarily gives you academic papers in their learning center, which, although great, are too advanced for those of you looking for an introduction that you can understand as a non-academic and non-optimization researcher.
Michael,
I just read through your paper on e-sourcing wiki - it's very good. And I would agree with your statement that most of the papers available on our Learning Center are very academic.
However, I would recommend the latest paper - Expressive Commerce and Its Application to Sourcing - authored by our founder and CTO Dr. Tuomas Sandholm. The second half of this paper is quite academic with respect to the algorithms and other optimization techniques, but the first half provides a good 'business' perspective on the value of optimization in sourcing, in comparison to basic RFx and reverse auction practices.
BTW, you'll be seeing more of these 'user-friendly' white papers and such from us in the near future.
-Greg
Greg:
You've got some really great stuff - but I fear only the experts can understand it! I would break out the digestible first part of that Expressive Commerce paper into its own whitepaper, and complement it with a few others, for the average reader.
Then I'd break your learning center into two parts: "for business users" and "for optimization gurus". Then, the business users will be able to understand what your solution does and why it's important and the optimization gurus will see that your team really does know it's stuff. For example, some deep details on that new infeasibility algorithm that one of your new crack researchers just developed would go great in the guru section.