Recognition for groundbreaking work from the peers in our industry, namely from the Supply Chain Council this week, is both a wonderful honor and also great challenge.

SCC announced the winners of the 2011 North American Supply Chain Excellence Awards at the annual Supply Chain World conference in Baltimore. There are three award categories, operational excellence, technology advancement and academic advancement.

The University of Tennessee Center for Executive Education won the Academic Advancement Award, which recognizes an organization that contributes applied research that advances the supply chain management body of knowledge.

Funded by the U.S. Air Force, The University of Tennessee Center for Executive Education worked with the Air Force and the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) to study companies using performance-based procurement practices. The team developed a framework  and  “just in time” workshops that DAU and the AF now use to train sourcing teams how to buy services in a much better way. The research and fieldwork also led directly to the Vested Outsourcing business model and the University of Tennessee’s three-day Vested Outsourcing course.

Helping real organizations like the Air Force and the dozens of other companies that have turned to the foundations of our research to improve how they buy services is why winning the Supply Chain Council award  is such a great honor for the people in the trenches making the Vested concept happen every day.

I mentioned above that it’s a great challenge. Winning an award of this stature does not mean that it’s time to rest on past accomplishments and the dozens of endorsements from companies, organizations and service providers we’ve received.

It’s nice to gain that wide and increasing recognition, but it only challenges us to strive harder to continue to do the basic research, to continue to educate and to push for a better way to outsource through collaborative frameworks that achieve the win-win.