Carlos Cordon | Opinion
is professor of operations management at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland, where he specialises in supply and demand chain, manufacturing and process management, and outsourcing. A Spaniard, Professor Cordon’s articles include The Next Game in Purchasing: Be the Most Attractive Customer to Key Suppliers, with colleague Thomas E. Vollmann.
Dick Russill | Executive coach
is perhaps best known as creator of the “centre-led action network” (Clan) organisational concept, which has been adopted by many purchasing functions. As a business adviser, he works with companies in many sectors to help improve their performance and profitability. Dr Russill is a visiting lecturer in negotiation at Hong Kong University and author of the book Purchasing Power (Pearson Education).
Andrew Cox | Outsourcing mistakes
is CIPS professor and director of the Centre for Business Strategy and Procurement at Birmingham Business School in the UK. The centre, which was founded in 1993, runs a leading MBA programme and carries out research in many areas of strategy and operational delivery. As chairman of Robertson Cox Consulting, Professor Cox works with leading blue-chip companies and major public-sector organisations.
Jon Hughes | The sourcing challenge
is executive chairman of Future Purchasing, a change consultancy, and one of the leaders of the Future Purchasing Research Foundation, whose members include Henley Management College in the UK and the MAI Institut de l’Achat at Bordeaux Business School in France, where Hughes is an associate professor. He has worked with many household name companies and their CPOs in a number of countries.
Neil Deverill | Supplier relationships
has, since 2002, been executive vice-president, group procurement and supply chain, at the South African mining giant Anglo American, which recently announced that it more than doubled its $250 million cost savings target last year. Deverill has previously headed purchasing functions at Electrolux in Sweden, within the British government in London, and at Philips in the Netherlands.
Craig Lardner | Global team-building
leads the global supply management function at industrial gases producer the BOC Group. An Australian, he joined the company in 1974 and spent 20 years in marketing, sales, retailing and customer service roles before entering procurement. Since 1997, Lardner has been based at BOC’s world headquarters in the UK, where he is responsible for 200 staff and a £2.5 billion budget, and reports to the CEO.
