Cliffs’ commodity and service suppliers play an integral role in helping the company deliver high-quality, cost-effective products and solutions to its customers. We choose to conduct business with innovative suppliers who focus on continuous improvement throughout the supply chain and offer high-quality, value-added, and competitively priced products and services.
As part of its commitment to continuous improvement and supply chain excellence, Cliffs created an internal shared service sourcing group to add value and efficiency to the organization. The sourcing group is responsible for managing enterprise-wide spend and coordinating global and regional sourcing agreements. Local purchases are executed at Cliffs’ individual mine site locations pursuant to sourcing group protocol.
The sourcing group takes an objective, fair, and fact-based approach to sourcing, employing a multi-step process with particular emphasis on total cost of ownership (TCO). A TCO model is used to determine and evaluate various cost components, draw insights, and determine focus areas that may not be solely price-specific. Evaluating Cliffs commodities, services, and operations both cross-functionally and on total-cost-of-ownership basis can lead to new and improved ways of doing business.
Cliffs and the sourcing group aim to work together with suppliers to address cost-reduction and efficiency improvement while operating in a dynamic global market.
