Supply Chain by the Numbers: Week of June 26 , 2009
 

-June 26, 2009
   
 

This Week's Supply Chain by the Numbers - Procurement Spending, Trucking Jobs, VF Corporation, Bertin
   
 

The Supply Chain and Logistics Numbers Worth Knowing This Week: Siemens Embraces Centralized Spend, Truck Drivers Out of Work, Denim Collaboration, World Bank Beefs Up Deforestation Consequences

   
 
 
 

60%

The increase in total procurement spending that industrial giant Siemens will now manage on a centralized basis, as the company hopes to counter rough seas for its top line with aggressive cost cutting. It is planning to move from 29% centralized spend currently to 47% by the end of 2010, reducing the prices it pays from suppliers in the process.

 
 



 

121,000

The estimated number of jobs lost in the trucking industry; the vast majority of them truck drivers in the first five months of 2009. That represents an amazing 8.7% of the total US jobs lost in 2009, and presages potential driver shortages again when the economy recovers.

 
 
100%

The amount of the denim fabric output that blue jeans giant VF Corp. takes from a re-opened textile plant in Liberty, SC, in an unusual relationship in which VF closely collaborates with the privately owned mill, as most other US denim textile makers have closed this decade. By using the mill and a few other US sources, VF avoids high duties when it imports finished product back from offshore producers.

 
 
 
 
$30 million

The remaining line of credit that was just canceled by the World Bank for Brazilian meat producer Bertin, which is among the companies cited in recent investigations regarding illegal deforestation in the Brazilian rain forests. A Greenpeace report says Bertin and other companies supply beef to several well known Western companies such as Tesco, in yet another complex sustainable supply chain scenario.