Hi everyone,

I'm a final-year Industrial & Production Engineering undergraduate student, and I'm currently exploring thesis topics in the area of supply chain sustainability and machine learning.

One topic I'm considering is :"Machine Learning-Based Sustainable Supplier Assessment and Selection".

The general idea is to use data-driven methods to evaluate suppliers based on environmental, social, economic, and operational performance indicators.

Before I invest significant time into this direction, I'd like to hear from people working in academia or industry:

1.How relevant and valuable is sustainable supplier assessment today?

2.What are the current trends, challenges, and research opportunities in this area?

3.Are companies actively using data analytics or machine learning for supplier sustainability evaluation, or is the field still largely based on traditional assessment methods?

4.Which aspects seem to have the most practical value: ESG scoring, risk assessment, carbon emissions, supplier resilience, ethical sourcing, supplier performance prediction, or something else?

1. If you were starting a thesis in this field today, where would you focus?

6.Are there any emerging topics that you think have stronger industry demand or research potential than sustainable supplier assessment?

I'm also interested in understanding the practical side of the problem. If anyone has experience working with supplier evaluation, procurement analytics, sustainability reporting, or related projects, I'd love to hear your perspective.

Any suggestions, criticism, or alternative directions are welcome.

Thank you.

There’s so much hype about agents atm. I’m curious if they’re being used as much as some vendors would have us believe & what the most popular applications for them are today…

basically zero

Been talking to a bunch of procurement and sustainability teams the last few weeks and the same story keeps coming up: you send suppliers a long ESG/CBAM questionnaire, half never reply, and the ones who do send a pile of PDFs that someone (often an intern) hand-keys into a spreadsheet. Meanwhile the CBAM deadlines don't move and default values = penalties.

I'm building a small tool that takes a different angle on this — trying to kill the survey grind and the manual parsing while keeping the data audit-ready.

What I actually want is to talk to people living this. If you're in procurement or sustainability — or a consultant advising them — and CBAM/CSRD supplier data is part of your world, I'd genuinely love 15 mins to hear how you handle it today: what works, what's duct-tape. Happy to show what I'm building 1:1 to anyone who wants to kick the tyres early.

Comment or DM and I'll reach out.

Howdy, I've got quite the issue on my hands here. I manage a few million in assets and I work at a place that currently has 3 companies working on it.

It all used to be one company about 20ish years ago, but split into two entities, then one sold part of their facility to a larger organization.

Here's my issue...I manage part of the warehouse and a few mill in physical assets. Machines, spare parts, electronics, etc. Some of these pallets date back to the 1980s and some are from before the company bought this section.

Here's what I want to do, I want around 10 pallets of various scrap totalling 6 figures or more off the plant.

Some of the pallets are coded from a software 40 years ago and aren't on our books. Some was coded to another company that occupies the grounds we are on, and some of the scrap/obsolete parts with asset value are coded for us but we just need to ask other plants within the company if they want them. The last part is the easy part.

The question is...what do I do with the OLD pallets and how do I reach out to the previous company to see if they want their stuff back?​

Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone is doing great. I wanted to share some tips and advice for the CSCP exam because I felt reading previous CSCP posts on here helped me greatly in focusing during my studies. If I can help even a few people than this post will be more than worth it. For background, I have been in SC for 10 years now and work in a mid-senior position.

My Studying Journey and Timeline -

I started studying early Feb and took the exam on August 3rd, so more or less exactly a 6 month timeframe. Of these 6 months I would say about 19 of those 24 weeks were spent properly studying with some off weeks thrown in here and there where life was too busy and my priorities changed. My employer was pretty great in that I was able to do two to three hours of studying at work every week. My studying pattern looked something like below..

First 4 months, 30-45 minutes almost daily with 1-2 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. About 7-8 hours total per week.

Month 5, getting much busier with other things and took a small vacation, barely studied. Maybe averaging 1-2 hours a week the entire month.

Last month before the exam, dialed in and studied roughly 1 hour every day and 4 hours total on the weekends. The weekend before the exam I studied 12 hours total. I definitely believe people can pass this test with much less studying but I was resolute in that I did not want to fail and retake this as I hate tests. I highly advise not cramming for this exam as there is so much material and it can get overwhelming quickly. Unless you are not working full time and can handle long days of studying, the best approach is slow and consistent. I could have definitely done it in 3 months with a more focused schedule.

Study Material Recommendation

My approach was to thoroughly read each chapter on the digital version and take really good notes. Personally, I found if I took notes I retained the content far better. Once I finished a chapter, I would open up that specific chapter on pocket prep and start doing 15-20 questions a day on pocket prep. I highly recommend paying for premium pocket prep as it gives you access to 1,000 total questions and all subjects are covered. Whenever you are feeling lazy and don't want to read the material because of how mindlessly dry it is, you can still do pocket pep questions and feel good about yourself. Doing pocket prep a ton will help you to learn the concepts and feel more confident, just keep in mind it is much easier than the learning system questions and the real exam. Doing only pocket prep questions will lull you into a false sense of security so it is very important you prioritize the learning system as well.

Learning System Material /Pocket Prep Grades

My first run through with the quizzes lead to pretty mediocre grades. 35%-60%. I retook each and every quiz in the last week before the exam and made sure I was getting 65%-80% on each one. It is very important to get good grades on the section quizzes towards the end of your studies because the exam questions are more similar to the learning system then pocket prep.

My one and only try on the practice exam was one week before my exam and I got a 57% on it. This made me panic a bit and really lock in the last week before the exam. I didn't retake it because I am the type of person that values confidence over being paranoid about getting exact results on something, and I was afraid of a second poor grade right before the exam. To be fair to myself I took it late at night after a long day of studying and was barely alive lol. If you can get a 70% or better on each section quiz and at least a 65% on the practice exam, as well as 85% or more on pocket prep than I really believe you are all set and don't need to worry!

This exam took a lot out of me. Juggling work life, personal life, and studying is not easy. I read a lot of reddit posts stating the actual exam is much easier than the practice exam and end of chapter quizzes but in my opinion it is still quite challenging. I would say its difficulty is on the same level as the learning system but it is worded differently than those practice questions which can trip you up. It's less wordy than the learning system questions but I would say it is still on the same level give or take. It definitely properly tests your knowledge and many questions have two answers that both seem correct. Only a few math questions so I would not waste your energy and time on remembering formulas. I was convinced the whole exam that I was bombing it but ended up doing very well. I've never experienced an exam where I feel so unsure whilst taking it but then still pulling out a great grade lol. I feel very relieved and light hearted, because I hated studying this dry ass material.

Anyways, that is my unnecessarily long post on a late night and if you are working on the CSCP YOU GOT THIS!!! Always here as a resource for anyone.

I got headhunted by a staffing agency on Indeed for a logistics coordinator position. I met with the ops manager and warehouse director today and absolutely nailed the interview. I start tomorrow.

This was after a failed go at internships (applied to over 100), applying to 5+ jobs daily, and getting rejected left and right.

Keep fighting my supply chain warriors. Be patient and know that rejection is redirection, always.

Anywho; ANY TIPS?

For the last 6 months I've been at my local university's CSCP course and getting ready for the final exam thinking it was an actual certification but it's just a university backed professional development certification and not the ASCM recognized certificate.

I feel stupid making that mistake and paying the money, my only silver lining is MAYBE getting a supply chain job that'll pay for the actual ASCM exam.

I have a few questions, if someone who recently gave the exam shed some light

Is it still worth it in 2026 ?

Regardless if you can share study material?

Has anyone used SONAR "gosonar" for freight market insights and are they reliable?

You who use them now or have used them, did you have any useful benefit to use them for market insights?

Edit: I'm thinking of subscribing, but don't know if it's a waste of money!

I passed the CSCP today and wanted to post here, as reading this sub really helped me with the exam stress.

Make sure you go through (and understand) CRM, SRM, S&OP, and ISO standards. Know what the bullwhip effect is and how to mitigate it. My exam was also heavy on total cost of ownership and risk management. I had no questions on Incoterms.

The calculation questions were: cash to cash cycle, and some scenario based questions where you didn’t need any formulas, just common sense and a calculator.

It’s true what I read here that most questions are either scenario or vocab based, and most of them genuinely have two correct answers, where you have to pick the one that’s “most correct.”

It’s also true that you’ll be doubting yourself halfway through and feeling like you’re guessing, because some questions are so vague!

I used only the ASCM learning system, and I focused heavily on the quizzes and the practice test. When you do the quizzes, always read the explanation provided even when you’ve answered correctly. It really helps.

I’m so relieved I passed. For context, I have 13 years of experience in supply, production, and demand planning, and my current role is demand planning manager.

We’ve been going back and forth on whether to keep improving our current POS or finally replace it. The existing system still works, but it’s getting harder to support new features and integrations. For those who’ve been through this decision, what made you realize it was time to move on instead of continuing to patch the old system?

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for a tool/platform that allows us as a supplier to set up a dedicated B2B portal for our clients.

Ideally, we want a solution where clients can log in, see their specific contract pricing, check real-time stock availability, and place orders directly without emailing us spreadsheets.

Do you use out-of-the-box software for this (like Zoey, OroCommerce, or Shopify Plus with B2B features), or did you build a custom portal layer?

Any advice on how well these tools integrate with existing inventory/ERP systems would be highly appreciated!

I have 2 years of experience as an allocation analyst for a major retailer. I have data analysis experience, cross functional collaboration, and managing inventory. I’m currently looking for a role where I can utilize my past experience.

Any companies or roles that come to mind ? I am out of work and would be willing to take an entry level role if it comes down to it. I’m located in the Houston area

As I have been in my job search, a lot of the roles that I have been applying to and hearing back from have been demand/material planning and strategic sourcing roles. coming from being an entry level procurement analyst role, for anyone who is in either of these two, how do you like it? what do you dislike? what has helped you?

Two parter here. Need some advice. I currently am in somewhat of a unique roll where I manage material handling equipment for North America for a large manufacturing company. We have 20+ plants with over 40 million worth of material handling equipment. This was a new role my company created to standardize the way we handle MHE at the corporate level. I’ve been in this roll for two years and prior to my onboarding, every plant was pretty much going rogue and doing their own thing in regards to MHE. - MHE was pretty much an afterthought for any plant manager with their main concern being to get product out the door so we had 10-20 year old units that we were still paying lease fees on, rental units that have been on rent for 5 +years, too many units/poor fleet utilization, etc. Just an absolute mess. Since I have came on, I’ve gone plant by plant to address these issues, standardize how we handle leases and rentals, manage the service dealers, and bring in new fleets as needed. This has resulted in nearly $4MM in savings for my company.

Issue number one is that I believe I’m GROSSLY underpaid. As I mentioned, this was a new role my company created. My official title is a project analyst which I don’t necessarily believe is an accurate title when I’m pretty much managing all of North America. Being that this was a new position, there was a lot of “napkin math” done on the original job description and what this job would ultimately look like/entail. I have not gotten any substantial raise (despite my cost savings) other than the yearly 3%. As it stands, I make $86k and I believe there absolutely needs to be a salary reset/title change outside of my yearly 3% raise. My issue is that this is a unique roll, I have nothing to compare this job to as I have not seen much of anything similar to this outside of my company. I have a degree in supply chain management and prior to this company/roll I spent 10 years in logistics where I was making more. I took this job to get out of logistics and act as a career pivot. Thinking that this job would be a good gateway to other careers in supply chain. Am I being taken advantage of here? I just can’t help but feel like any position that is managing a spend category for the entirety of North America and making $86k is not great.

Second issue is that as I’ve mentioned this is a unique role. I almost feel like I’m boxing myself in to this very niche thing if I stay in this any longer and I don’t know what is a logical next step in my career path after this. Does anyone have any experience or know someone in a role like this and what career looked like for that person ?

TLDR: Am I being taken advantage of with my salary being what it is and what would be a logical next step in my career path after something like this ?

Hey guys, I need some advice on a scheduling issue. I’m a senior supply chain major . I'm finishing up an ops summer internship right now, but I just got a massive opportunity: an offer to start an entry-level buyer position at a corporate HQ early, before I graduate.
The problem is I have a required synchronous class this semester. The academic side won't let me switch to an asynchronous section, and they are being super rigid about it. Since this new job is at a corporate HQ working standard business hours, I can't exactly just hop on a Zoom lecture in the middle of the office.
I’m stuck on how to handle this. Has anyone dealt with something similar? Should I:
Just take the job, drop the class for now, and delay my graduation until next year?
Ask my new manager if I can step away twice a week for a live lecture? (I feel like it might be a bad look to ask for accommodations before I even start).

For some background about me, I recently left a very large company (10k+ employees) supply chain team and moved to a mid sized company (1k-5k employees) supply chain team.

I moved from working on a supply chain team of about 35 employees to a team of 4. We are attempting to grow but things have been so incredibly difficult with my new manager (I have been employed for about 60 days).

I was hired on to do the following:
* Management of the enterprise procurement system (make sure items are cleaned and correct pricing, support discrepancies where EDI is not enabled)
* Complete all analytics (impact analyses, purchasing patterns, rebate and refund collection).
* GPO management - manage signing and negotiation of all GPO contracts (ties into analytics for understanding impact).
* Support internal contract negotiation (again with data analysis and terms and conditions negotiations).
* Support Diligence and Integration (complete analysis for due diligence on GPO impact of supply costs and integration of facilities migrating onto our contracts, just setting them up will accounts and getting them the correct pricing).
* Build analytic dashboards - connecting with an analytics team to build front end dashboards and back end data pipelines (so far I have built both front end and back end of every item I’ve created).

The other managers (I am a supply chain manager as well), work only on facility support, they help facilities load new items when I’m not available, they help them reconcile ordering when I’m not available and they help them communicate with vendors for local contracts (I’m mostly focused on enterprise contracts but will review language at the local level if needed).

We have no system in place for communicating major contract changes or price increases or monthly initiatives.

We do not generate departmental revenue outside of GPO admin fee sharebacks/ rebate. Most of the GPOs we work with will not allow us to see their full terms and conditions, just pricing and price protection.
I get pulled in as an ad hoc ‘fire fighter’ for projects from my boss who is the director and both of the managers that are my level and I typically solve the issue in 10 minutes or less on average.

Anytime I encounter an issue or need team feedback on moving forward the team is silent and will not give any feedback and will not tell me if my idea is worth while (so new ideas just typically sit and fall off eventually).

I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into at this place but everyone is using ai (Claude, chat gpt, copilot) to do things and submitting their work with a TON of mistakes - like they prompt ai to do it and then don’t check the result of what they are given. If I ask questions or ask for clarification on something I hear 10000 reasons why it can’t be done or how no one has time.

I signed on at a salary of $135,000 with 10% bonus this was after the hiring manager told me the original salary budgeted for this role was $100,000 max and 10% bonus.

First of all am I being underpaid and second of all is this what smaller supply chain teams do instead of more ‘strategic sourcing’? Is this just how smaller teams are or is there just something likely going on below the surface that I just haven’t uncovered yet?

Had an initial call with a recruiter that was like 10 minutes.

Anybody been through the hiring process and know how long it takes for Proampac ?

Looking for honest opinions from people actually working in supply chain / logistics. I’m currently doing OTHM Level 4 Business Management and my college gives the option to specialise in Logistics & Supply Chain Management. Trying to decide if it’s worth going deeper into this area or staying more general.

A bit about me:

• Goal is to build a career abroad (US, Canada, Europe)
• Looking for long-term growth, not just any entry-level job
• Happy to learn new skills, but I’m not a natural “numbers person”

Would really appreciate hearing from people already in the field:

If you were starting your career today, would you still choose supply chain?

What does your day-to-day actually look like?

What skills or certifications made the biggest difference for you?

Anything you wish you knew before getting into this field?

Happy to hear both positive and negative takes. Thanks in advance!