Lesson #4 – Project Participants Must Understand Improvement Objectives and How to Handle Trade-offs
所以我们假设你已经抓住了一个奖,和体育r the WSJ article, let’s say the prize for P&G is $2B in cash. The prize could be taken as freed cash (or to a supplier, an increase in cash held captive!) But it could also be taken as a cost reduction in the form of an early discount. So, we have the classic cash vs. cost trade-off (we’ll ignore the service aspect of on-time payments that AP is measured on). So, which is more important? In this case, it’s cash. As Rick says in信（致供应商）：
“We are investing in a new program to help us win by creating new tools and capabilities that reduce transaction intensity and improve working capital and cash flow. The working capital program will focus on moving to longer payables with our external business partners. We completed months of external benchmarking in 2012, and realized that we were out of line compared to our competitive peer companies on payables. Our objective is to address this in a phased approach.”
所以，底线是：宝洁在最高级别的目标是按照“基准”延长DPO但也有一个目标，不仅是扩大供应商的DSO，损害他们的利益。问题是如何协调这些相互排斥的目标。
As you might have guessed, it’s using a supply chain finance program to have banks buy the suppliers’ receivables from P&G at a very low discount rate securitized by P&G’s solid credit score and low cost-of-capital. P&G is offering to lower the cost of the financing to suppliers (especially smaller ones), and then it will likely divvy up the cost-of-capital arbitrage with the bank. This is no different than a “buy sell” program (e.g., often used in high-tech), but it’s not lowering the cost of components. It’s lowering the cost of money.
这篇文章基于以下论文中包含的内容：宝洁：供应管理的“非看不见的手”案例研究。该论文可在支出问题研究图书馆免费下载。万博体育下载app
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