The USA Supply Chain Management (SCM) Core Peer Team (CPT) held its first face-to-face meeting recently in conjunction with the SCM Winter Conference. The team became an official Core Peer Team this year though they began holding monthly conference calls last October.

USA already has a long-standing Supply Chain Management team, but creating a Core Peer Team focused fully on SCM operational excellence has distinct benefits. Supply Chain is unique in that it touches all areas of the organization including engineering, work management, maintenance, etc., as well as the nuclear supplier community. Having all these touch points gives supply chain professionals a unique perspective, one that’s valuable to the other CPTs.

“Having an effective CPT will allow us to be more valuable to the organizations we serve,” states Bob Tilton, PSEG director nuclear procurement and the SCM CPT leader. “We will do that by concentrating on Supply Chain operational excellence, leveraging the knowledge of our fleet members and completing meaningful improvement initiatives.”

Judging by the revised Performance Objectives and Criteria (PO&Cs) document released by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) last year, this is becoming increasingly important. Several of the new and revised criteria deal with a utility’s interaction with and monitoring of their suppliers, duties that fall to the supply chain organizations.

The SCM CPT is focused on fleet-wide excellence and continuous improvement pertaining to matters of supply chain operations at each member site. The current supply chain team (now dubbed the SCM Portfolio Management (PM) team) will remain a functioning team, but will focus primarily on strategic sourcing, the USA agreement portfolio and maximizing the savings we can achieve as a fleet.

“We want to make sure the two teams are not redundant but are complimentary of each other and are working on different value-added projects and initiatives,” states Tilton. “Both teams are vital to success of the USA fleet and each team brings something different to the table.”

The SCM CPT hit the ground running at this meeting by deciding on its focus initiatives for 2014. The development of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is the first initiative, and is something that every CPT must do. Darell Montgomery, manager supply chain from STP, is leading this initiative.

The team will also focus on implementing Supplier Performance Monitoring software, an initiative that was started last year by the SCM PM team. This will be led by Rob Littles, manager nuclear procurement from Susquehanna. Finally, the team will focus on developing standard documents and templates and conducting assessments related to the new Supply Chain criteria outlined in the revised INPO PO&Cs, an effort that will be led by Bob Tilton.

“We already have an excellent foundation for cooperation,” states Jim Kitchens, USA director of supply chain management, “and with the quality of our members, I’m confident of great things coming from both these groups in 2014 and beyond.”