ISM Expands Service Offerings by Acquiring ADR North America

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has invested in the consulting firm ADR North America (ADR NA).

ADR NA will continue to operate under its own name, providing a full range of supply management consulting, including baseline assessments, transformations of supply management operations, coordination of procurement across enterprises, risk management, category strategies and other related services.

ISM and ADR NA have been partners for three years in a successful joint venture, the ISM-ADR School of Supply Management.

The announcement follows November’s news that Tempe, Arizona-based ISM would debut its Certified in Supply Management (CSM) designation.

“While this initiative was not driven by the continued lull in the economy, it may certainly help,” said ISM CEO Paul Novak, CPSM, C.P.M., A.P.P., MCIPS.

Now, with the economy seemingly picking up pace, ISM has taken a significant step to amplify its capacity for delivering customized professional development, consulting and skills assessments to the world’s leading companies and supply management organizations.

According to ISM spokesmen, this investment will provide a broad range of professional development courses delivered in a variety of formats and native languages around the world. Last year, ISM and ADR NA established a permanent training location in China.

“As ISM expands its global influence and leads corporations to supply management excellence, it was a natural progression for us to take greater advantage of ADR’s assessment tools, educational materials and instructors,” said Novak. “This acquisition is a decisive way to do that. We’ve been delivering ADR’s state-of-practice expertise through our ISM-ADR School, and now we will offer it to companies and organizations another way — as consulting from ADR North America.”

As ISM and ADR North America unite to create a new business entity, ADR North America CEO Bill Michels, CPSM, will continue in his role as president of ADR NA and president of ADR-ISM Supply Chain Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Inc., and he has also been named a senior vice president of ISM.

To execute its investment, ISM has established the for-profit company ISM Services, Inc. ADR North America will operate as a subsidiary of ISM Services, Inc., as will ADR-ISM Supply Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. ADR North America and ADR-ISM Supply Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. will continue to be licensees of ADR International, the U.K.-based global consulting firm.

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