What a thankless job this one!!

When I joined procurement 9 years ago in a manufacturing plant in India, I often thought to myself, "What a thankless job this is!!".

I was handling procurement of plant equipment spares, services and contract manufacturing. There was always an initiative running, a new market change driving volume and one or the other emergency to walk into every morning. Every day was new, every day was exciting. However, I soon realized that no one ever thanked me for accelerating a delivery under record lead time, finding an alternate supplier or material when we got stuck, for managing contract labor shortages in the middle of the night. They would only notice the absence of these 'miracles' as I liked to call them.

One thing that my 9 years in procurement has taught me is that, a procurement role is one of the most gratifying experiences one could have. These thoughts came rushing in today after receiving a text message from a supplier I used to work with 6 years back. It was a thank you note from the owner for helping him start contract manufacturing operations 6 years ago. He had achieved record production this year with zero quality and safety incidents. His business was growing well and he remembered to drop me a message. We had worked on starting up a new contract manufacturing facility together, on a new cost model linked to productivity, we even moved a 100 people across the state for 1 month to work with another supplier during a labor shortage owing to festival period. We had a great time working together like partners with one business goal in mind and this attitude has taken him far in his business today.

Many instances when suppliers have messaged me after many years and we discussed projects we did together and some of them told me that they had a great time working together; the one time we had to shut a supplier down and the owner came back at the end of it and said, it would have been even more difficult for him if we had not worked hand in hand to ensure this was done with mutual respect and sensitivity, every time when some of them makes time to meet up and have a chat about the 'good old times" - are all reminders of how gratifying a job procurement can be. There are few other jobs that offers you the opportunity to make lasting and productive relationships with so many people from many different organizations.

Thank you for your note today. It truly made my day and made me realize how naive I was to think "What a thankless job this is!!"