One of the primary Material Cost Reduction (MCR) initiatives and probably the biggest savings opportunity for USA Members is on the Launchpad! Five key suppliers for commercial grade dedication (CGD) and reverse engineering (RE) services received a request for proposal. USA and site Supply Chain Managers received bids from all five suppliers and reviewed them as a team. The proposals included many creative supply chain process options for the team to consider in the areas of strategic sourcing, inventory management and control, and procurement engineering burden reduction solutions.
The Proposal Evaluation Team selected ATC as the supplier of choice for CGD activities and several other supply chain process options that will be implemented across the fleet. Reverse Engineering activities will still be a bid as needed to other highly qualified suppliers with existing USA contracts. The team agreed that due to the diversity, experience and qualifications of existing USA suppliers it just made sense to keep those options open for bidding reverse engineering activities.
As part of the contract implementation plan Dave Mueller, ATC Project Manager, and I will conduct meetings at each site beginning May 1. Our first visit will be at Columbia Generating Station, in Washington state. Invited guests will include supply chain, procurement engineering, quality, and information technology that will be responsible for implementation and on-going use of the new contract initiatives. Dave and I will discuss the contract scope, discuss roles and responsibilities, answer questions about the contract, and most important, the development of key inventory reports that will provide the core information to drive savings across the fleet. We will continue meetings through the month of May. Scheduling these meetings was not an easy task and Dave and I appreciate the effort by site managers to accommodate their “Road Show” as it is now being referred to.
The MCR team is anxious to get the contract in place so savings opportunities are achieved for the second half of the year.