SM/MetalMiner Conference: The Intersection of Trade Policy, Global Sourcing Strategy and Total Cost

Spend Matters and MetalMiner are pleased to announce our foray into the world of procurement and supply chain events. But we're doing it with a twist. We already think there are great shows from folks like Procurement Leaders, SIG, ProcureCon (much improved recently, according to our trusty correspondent Bill Busch, who attended the last one), ISM and others. In contrast to many of these general-purpose and often networking-driven events, ours will focus on highly targeted and educational content in the form of detailed market updates and forecasts for metals, energy, contingent labor, technology, etc. Yet we'll take a slightly different approach towards this path in our first event, tackling a subject near and dear to our industrial readers: US, China, and global trade and sourcing, with a hybrid focus on policy, supply risk and total landed cost forecasting and calculations.

Our initial event, slated for February, is labeled as a first-of-its-kind "Business-to-Business US Trade Policy Debate Featuring Global Sourcing Strategies, Scenarios, Risk Mitigation Techniques and Total Cost Tactics." The purpose of this trade policy and global sourcing summit (conducted via an in-person conference that will be streamed live on the web, white papers and webinars) is to educate and engage multiple manufacturing audiences in three distinct areas related to international trade and global sourcing. Three live sessions (and virtual tracks, complete with additional offline learning materials) are designed specifically to appeal to various manufacturing organizations and job roles:

1. The first session/track, an executive level panel discussion will provide a public policy overview and debate as to the merits of current trade policy reform, legislation, WTO rulings and likely outcomes of key public policies and regulatory initiatives.
2. The second session/track, geared toward SVP's, VP's and personnel charged with designing and implementing global sourcing strategies will feature a scenario-planning workshop to showcase likely outcomes of the current trade policy debate and potential strategies US manufacturers will need to take to minimize risk factoring into account both policy and commodity prices.
3. The third and final session/track will provide more tactical total landed cost model analyses -- conducted as a workshop to provide tools and resources to sourcing practitioners operating in a volatile global sourcing environment.

We think there's something in it for everyone and are planning both an in-person event and a virtual component with a long tail over many months. The in-person component of the event, held in Chicago, will be by invitation only at a private club, and attendance will be strictly limited. The online event components will be open to qualified practitioners. If you'd like more detail or are interested in sponsorship options (Nucor Corporation has already signed on as the Chief Sponsor), please drop Lisa a line: lreisman (at) aptiumglobal (dot) com.

We'll be sharing more details in the coming weeks.

- Jason Busch