Patrick Tschauder has spent nearly two decades in international procurement — and his perspective cuts through the noise. This conversation with Jens Ehne reveals why transparency, not technology, is the defining challenge of modern supply chains.
Key Takeaways
A Conversation That Went Somewhere Unexpected
There are conversations where you realize within just a few minutes that they are heading in a different direction than expected. That was exactly the case with Patrick Tschauder.
The plan was to talk about procurement. About suppliers. Maybe digitalization. Instead, the conversation ran for almost an hour about something else entirely — about responsibility, product data, transparency, and why the role of procurement has fundamentally changed in recent years.
"The real product today is transparency."
Procurement Today Means Far More Than Sourcing
Patrick has been working in international procurement for almost twenty years. Today he is responsible for procurement, quality, and sustainability at Remember. His work does not begin when a product is ordered — it begins much earlier, during the development of new products and the question of how ideas can be translated into a functioning supply chain at all.
It quickly became clear: procurement is no longer solely responsible for finding the right supplier at the best price. Today it connects design, product development, quality, sustainability, production, and logistics. This role is often underestimated.
"Design Is Our Top Priority"
Patrick describes his company's process vividly. "We have our own in-house designers and our own product development. Design is naturally the top priority."
Only once a product idea has emerged does the real work begin for procurement: finding suppliers, evaluating materials, calculating prices, ensuring quality, meeting sustainability requirements — and ultimately making sure that an idea actually becomes a market-ready product.
Product Compliance Is Transforming Procurement
One topic ran like a common thread throughout the conversation: product compliance. New regulatory requirements are currently changing procurement massively.
It is no longer enough to know which supplier produces. Companies need to understand more precisely which materials are being used, where they come from, which components are installed, and whether all regulatory requirements are being met.
"The classic bill of materials has become a strategic document — not just for developers, but for procurement, quality, and compliance."
The Data Is There. It Just Doesn't Talk to Each Other.
One observation from Patrick stayed with Jens long after the conversation ended. "These inspection reports are sometimes up to 120 pages long. The challenge is making this data usable at all outside of these PDFs."
This describes one of the biggest problems of modern supply chains. The lack of data is not the issue. The issue is fragmentation. Information is stored in PDFs, Excel files, SharePoint folders, emails, and ERP systems. Each system serves its purpose — but hardly any of them connects information in a way that enables real decisions to be made.
Reactive or Proactive?
The conversation eventually arrived at a point that has occupied the supply chain world for years. Operations often work reactively. A supplier is delayed. A production run is pushed back. A document is missing. A ship is fully booked. Then hectic communication begins.
Patrick nodded in agreement as they discussed how much time companies spend reacting to problems instead of recognizing them early.
"The real opportunity is not more information — it is better prioritization, better transparency, and systems that help people recognize what should be worked on first."
Technology Is Not the Solution. It Is a Tool.
What stood out about Patrick was what he didn't talk about. Barely a word about artificial intelligence. Barely anything about digitalization. Instead, he talked about processes, collaboration, and data quality — the actual prerequisites for any new technology to have real impact.
Because poor processes do not automatically improve with modern software. They simply become visible more quickly.
What Stays After the Conversation
Three thoughts remained after the conversation ended.
- Procurement is becoming more strategic. It is no longer just about prices, but about transparency, compliance, and responsibility across the entire supply chain.
- The data is available. The real challenge is connecting it and deriving decisions from it.
- The future belongs to proactive operations. When companies recognize where problems are arising earlier, they spend less time on crisis management — and more time actively shaping their supply chains.
Patrick Tschauder did not come across as someone chasing the next technology trend. He came across as someone who understands that the hardest work in supply chains is not technical — it is organizational. Getting the right information to the right people, at the right time, in a form they can actually use. That is still the unsolved problem. And it is the most important one.