Email Jim at jim.thompson@ipulpmedia.com

Eh, maybe not. Unless you are buying a lock washer like I mentioned last week. Lock washers should be in your automatic ordering system and never show up as a human decision once reorder quantities are established.

For the bigger stuff (say $500,000 and up), go reasonably slow. Use AI to gain knowledge, but don't use it to go quicker.

Remember this:

IN NEGOTIATIONS, THE PARTY IN A HURRY ALWAYS LOSES.

Think of procurement as a dance, not a modern dance, but a waltz or minuet.

I have two stories, and they happened to occur at the same mill, decades apart, with different players.

I've told the first one before. We (I was at this mill back then) were told by headquarters to buy a certain piece of equipment. Our budget was almost spent, but we were told this is what we must do. We invited the sales person from Europe to come to our mill. Politely listened to his sales presentation. He gave us a price; way more than we had in our budget. We thanked him and offered him an office so he could work on his numbers, call home to his headquarters, and so forth. We all agreed to get back together later in the day. The time came and we reconvened. He had cut his price in half! My boss and I never had to say a word.

Years later, same mill. The doctor blade salesperson who regularly calls on the mill was called into purchasing. Purchasing read him the riot act because the mill did not get a certain blade on the schedule they wanted. The helpful salesperson responded with this..."Keep your blade caddy full and you won't have this problem." Purchasing agreed. Salesperson sold him a half million dollars' worth of blades on the spot. The salesperson told me that some of the blades he sold them that day were changed on about five-year cycle. The mill went bankrupt before those blades were used.

When I was thinking about this column, I was thinking how AI might help us speed up procurement. I think it can on some things in the future, but today, be very, very careful. Don't "do AI" just for the sake of doing AI.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

For a deeper dive, click here.

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