Indirect spend varies greatly and improving vendor performance in commodities as well as complex manufactured products can vary dramatically from one industry to another. Very little information is available about the variance in supplier quality as deliverables become increasingly complex.

A key element of this effort is to define appropriate measures that allow "apples-to-apples" comparisons of different vendors – regardless of the complexity of the products they deliver. Defining a single rating to characterize the performance of any vendor will be difficult. However, we expect to develop useful benchmarks to assess the efficiency of specific levels of complexity.

This project will establish benchmarks to help purchasing departments quickly assess vendor performance as a function of product complexity relative to other industries and organizations.

John Deere is seeking interested companies to participate in the benchmarking project.

By participating in this project, your organization will take part in the following:

· Regular written status reports

· Telephone conference calls on work in progress

· Access to benchmark data that provide normalized measures of performance

· An assessment where your processes stand relative to other plants.

By taking part in this research, your organization will gain preferred access to the benchmarking results. Published reports of this research will include only normalized data. All identifying information regarding each organization will be removed from the data records prior to publication.

For more information, or to learn how to participate, contact Aquent IT Solutions.