Sourcing – OM in the News

Huy Fong’s Sriracha Shortage

In the United States, if you think of sriracha sauce, you immediately think of Huy Fong’s Sriracha Sauce with the rooster on the bottle.

Unfortunately, customers in the U.S. have seen a shortage of Huy Fong’s popular sauce for the last three years. And it may continue.

Part of the problem comes from droughts impacting the production of the red jalapeño peppers that go into the sauce. However, there is more to the story.

For over 28 years, Underwood Farms provided the peppers […]

By Ross L. Fink, Ph.D.|2023-11-08T06:09:21+00:00November 8, 2023|Tags: food supply chain, shortages, supplier relationship|

Demand for AI Chips Leads to Unbalanced Supply Chain

Demand for chips and memory for high-performance computing in AI applications has led to South Korean manufacturer SK hynix’s role as the main memory chip supplier for companies such as NVIDIA and Meta.

NVIDIA’s demand for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips and Meta’s demand for DDR5 (Double Data Rate 5) memory have caused an order backlog for SK hynix, creating an “unbalanced” supply chain.

Video Spotlight:

Nvidia, Meta talk up capital expenditures towards A.I. in earnings calls (July […]

By Anita Lee-Post, Ph.D.|2023-09-15T04:07:42+00:00September 15, 2023|Tags: artificial intelligence, automation, bottleneck, capacity planning, shortage, supply and demand, technology|

In Search of the Perfect T-Shirt Made in the U.S.A.

According to one of Buck Mason’s founders, “there is nothing more essential to the American wardrobe than a white tee.”

The company was started with the objective of making a first-class t-shirt, a well-established product already manufactured by a myriad of competitors worldwide. The majority of the t-shirts are made in the U.S.A. with fabrics also made in the U.S.A. The founders are very involved in the production process and quality control which, they believe, enables them to […]

By Corinne M. Karuppan, Ph.D.|2023-09-11T14:58:50+00:00September 13, 2023|Tags: insourcing, location, product quality, sourcing|

Pickle Wars: Grillo’s Pickles Deals with Stolen Recipe

Grillo’s Pickles traces it recipe origins back over a hundred years to Travis Grillo’s grandfather. The family recipe calls for fresh food using simple, real ingredients.

In 2008, Travis began selling pickles from the trunk of his car—a 1984 Cutlass Supreme—in and around Connecticut and Massachusetts. That same year, he moved to a hand-made cart in Boston.

In 2009, Whole Foods discovered Grillo’s Pickles and added them to a local store. Grillo’s continued to expand, and by 2019, was the number 2 […]

By Ross L. Fink, Ph.D.|2023-08-13T07:03:57+00:00August 13, 2023|Tags: intellectual property, legal issues, outsourcing, risks, sourcing, subcontracting|