What does the glass panel business looks like in Asia? What are critical components going for at the moment? The ability to meet the finished product needs of a domestic business at a good cost and get it into the country on time is a topic likely to get the attention of everyone in the room at CES’ Consumer Electronics Supply Chain Academy (CESCA) on January 9 in Las Vegas.

Addressing these issues will be Ron Cuthbertson, president of InterTAN Canada, Circuit City’s Canadian business unit that goes under the brand The Source by Circuit City, as well as chief executive officer of Circuit City Global Sourcing. The latter position entails managing sourcing offices in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China and providing the sourcing services from off-shore for both InterTAN in Canada and Circuit City in the U.S.

In presenting “Global Sourcing for Quality Assurance, Just In Time Service and Competitive Cost,” Cuthbertson will be covering how to leverage cost negotiating in relation to quality assurance, just in time, and competitive pricing.

“You want to make sure you’re not negotiating for an A and getting a B,” he said. “That’s often more challenging than it appears.” Cuthbertson will speak from experience regarding how to avoid getting caught in this situation. “People will get a sample shipped to them and say, ‘This is great! Send me 10,000!’ And what they get may be made to a different spec than the sample,” he said.

Being able to pull these various pieces together means understanding that the elements are part of an interdependent ecosystem. “It would be nice to think that they operate independently of each other but they don’t,” he said. “Your cost is a byproduct of the quality and availability of what you’re buying plus what it costs to get it to you.”

Cuthbertson finds a similar situation occurring in consumer electronics across flat panel TVs, MP3 players, and GPS systems. The demand for new technology gets so high so fast that the items are in limited supply and not produced quickly enough for demand unless there is a sourcing relationship in place ahead of time. This locks in quantities and guarantees delivery. He cites the iPod as an example of a product that has effectively managed this critical supply chain relationship, which has allowed for constant updates and new version launches.

Cuthbertson also cites the importance of a process of checks and balances along the supply chain during the manufacturing and distribution process. He has done direct sourcing for about 25 years with multiple companies, and set up sourcing operations in Asia. “It can be very difficult the way independent operations work in those countries to get a guarantee of total quality before it leaves Asia,” he said. “You have to do that along the way. When you’re dealing with tertiary manufacturers and assemblers in countries that have Tier 3 and 4 level sub-manufacturing it gets very difficult to be able to assure total quality of the fully assembled finished product.”

As a dual citizen of both the U.S. and Canada, Cuthbertson has worked and done sourcing for retailers in both countries. His background consists of more than 25 years in multi-national corporations in consumer electronics doing global sourcing. Cuthbertson is able to use his personal experience to gauge his sources having done sourcing for Sears, Best Buy, Circuit City, and other companies over the years.