Click here to read previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Apple has spent some time in the negative spotlight around the actions (or lack of actions) of its suppliers in the area of worker health and safety. Even recent coverage, such as the NYT story that describes in gory detail the results of an explosion at a Foxconn facility that tore apart the face of a college-educated technician working on equipment used in the manufacturing of iPads and iPhones, points to continued negativity in the mainstream press toward Apple's practices around health and worker safety. But is this negativity justified? We believe it likely is, if you adopt the perspective that Apple must adhere to global health and safety standards on the shop floor rather than Chinese ones (or lack of ones, for that matter).

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In the first post in this series we covered and quoted many of the announcement factoids and underpinnings of the new National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security announced by the White House last week. We'll continue to share some of the most important elements in this post, focusing first on some of the motivations behind the development of this strategy, and then how the White House intends to translate policy and supply chain analysis into action after planning is complete. We apologize again for quoting so extensively from the news rather than offering our own reporting and analysis, but we think there's no need to cloud the release with additional commentary.

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Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2 in this series.

One of the more substantial areas of disclosure in Apple's reporting its 2012 Supplier Sustainability analysis is in the area of conflict minerals. Apple provides a level of detail that is lacking in the rest of the report, especially when it comes to examining multi-tier behaviors and sub-SKU level material traceability. We might even describe Apple as an early leader in this area based on what we know are the early stage efforts of most other companies in complying with conflict minerals (Dodd-Frank) requirements. Specifically, Apple notes that it requires its suppliers "only use materials that have been procured through a conflict-free process and from sources that adhere to our standards of human rights and environmental protection."

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Spend Matters would like to welcome a guest post from Vantage Partners. See previous posts in this series here: Part 1 and Part 2

Buyers can enable providers to help them reach their goals in a number of ways. In this third part, we explore two additional outsourcing goals -- allowing the buyer to focus on core capabilities and moving more items from fixed to variable costs -- and how the buyer can help the provider enable them to achieve these goals.

Focusing on Core Capabilities
We often hear buyers say that they have outsourced certain "non-core" functions so that they can focus their attention and efforts on more important or strategic activities. When you charge functional experts with managing the service provider relationship, the result is often micromanagement. Rather than focusing on core activities, retained managers end up putting even more time and energy into the very work they said they outsourced.

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Click here to read the first post in this series.

Based on Apple's 2012 Supplier Sustainability report, both in absolute and percentage terms, the largest increase in Apple's auditing programs appears in the "repeat audit" areas. This should not be a surprise, but rather a logical extension of marshaling supplier development efforts to focus on the largest suppliers that Apple continues to do business with. However, the level of first-time audits also hit an all time high for Apple, suggesting that they continue to work their way down to smaller and lower-tier suppliers. It would be fascinating to see the breakdown in results by supplier based on size, number of times audited and specific region, but alas, Apple does not provide us with these details. But it is worth noting that Apple did introduce two new categories of audits that it broke out separately for 2012: Process Safety Assessments and Specialized Environmental Audits. Of its total audits, roughly 10% (27 in total) comprised the former and just over 5% comprised the latter, of these two newly broken out categories.

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If you want to appear as boring as possible to the pretty little thing sitting next to you at a cocktail party, tell her (or him) that you're in the vendor management field. Trust me, nothing kills social conversation more with a procurement outsider than showing passion toward supplier onboarding, supplier performance KPIs or supply chain risk management. You'd be better off introducing yourself as Lewis Skolnick -- or our resident Lewis Skolnick and lead author of this paper, Thomas Kase -- and wearing the plastic pocket protector than committing this social mixer sin. Not that I'd know anything about this from personal experience, mind you, but I'm basing it on more than just a few passing observations. But the good news for the few of us in the world who care passionately about vendor management and supplier information management is that we've created a new insider's guide to getting the technology piece right. Now, we don't recommend you quote from our latest Spend Matters Compass series report as part of your favorite pick-up line, but we think you'll find Supplier Information Management Technology Fundamentals -- Part One invaluable in the office.

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While we've been critical of Apple in the past for not giving enough focus to the actions of its suppliers that violate Western cultural norms and laws (see stories here and here, just as a start), it's refreshing to see Apple come clean in its latest report and list of supply chain violation disclosures, including publishing its list of suppliers, an action which will give watch groups the upper hand in closer monitoring for future violations. In a recent wire story, Reuters did a solid job covering the basics, including noting the broader disclosure of 156 suppliers which "represent 97 percent of the company's supply chain."

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Spend Matters is excited to announce the publication of our latest Perspective: Getting Past the Existential Connectivity Funk: Stop Waiting for the Supplier Network Revolution. Here at Spend Matters, most of our research titles are quite boring. But we hope this one caught your attention (give yourself some extra points if you already picked up in the literary analogy). We chose this title because in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, two chaps philosophize, debate and engage in quite a lot of self-pity while aimlessly waiting around for a figure they call Godot (who never in fact arrives). The entire play, depending on one's perspective, is an exercise in either rhetoric or existential thinking. But regardless of your vantage point, it's pretty clear that the protagonists accomplish just about nothing by the end. Inaction -- and the status quo -- end up ruling the day.

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Last week, Ariba and ThomasNet announced a new partnership to expose the ThomasNet directory of suppliers (paid advertisers) to buying organizations using Ariba Discovery. While terms of the deal were not disclosed around how ThomasNet Discovery suppliers will pay to show up in searches and respond to RFPs on Ariba Discovery -- let alone more complicated fee scenarios, such as when a supplier is a supplier on both systems but is discovered via a search on Ariba Discovery rather than the ThomasNet portal and must pay to respond to individual RFPs based on their lower-level Standard or Advantage-level membership with Ariba -- it's clear that the relationship came with some material forethought and technical integration between the two platforms.

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