Purchasing Competency & Procurement Innovation at Molson Coors

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the January-February 2015 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

January-February 2015

As long as there have been boats and beasts of burden, intrepid business professionals, governments, and marauders have sought fame, fortune, wealth, and value by going global. Think the Phoenicians, Marco Polo, and the Vikings in days of old. Or in contemporary times, think of China, BRIC, EMEA, and other emerging markets. One could argue that outsourcing to China a few decades ago gave birth to supply chain management as we think of it today. This month we’re including an online bonus column from APQC. While this issue focuses on global management, we didn’t want to miss out on the column.

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Innovate, innovate, innovate. That could be the mantra for business today, as the battle to be first to market with a new product intensifies. Regardless of the industry, companies are launching new products and extensions of existing products at a dizzying pace. Every facet of the organization is under pressure to come up with new ideas.

In many businesses, product innovation is driven through the marketing and engineering departments. However, several progressive organizations are now driving innovation through their procurement groups. Top management is tasking these purchasing organizations to tap into the expertise of their supply base to collaborate on the development of new product opportunities. This is a different way of thinking about procurement that requires new processes and a structure to support innovation. Can all companies move down this innovation path? And if so, what processes should be employed to help purchasing professionals drive innovation from their supply base?
Those are questions asked—and answered—every day in the procurement organization at Molson Coors Brewing Company. This is the story of how we implemented a five-step process to drive procurement innovation.

Building on a History of Product Innovation
Product innovation is as central to Molson Coors’ culture as the Rocky Mountains. In 1959, Bill Coors and his team developed the first recyclable aluminum beer can. This innovation reduced packaging waste and also allowed beer cans to be recycled. Coors also made this innovation available to the rest of the beverage world. Today, Molson Coors continues that tradition of innovation through its cold activated bottle and cans, vented can ends and other aluminum packaging innovations, as well as multiple new flavors and styles of beer.

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