For the most part, public-sector procurement departments have a good handle on creating long-term contracts to support ongoing purchase transactions for materials and supplies. The problem in recent years has been finding vendors that are willing to commit to contracts of any length of time if the products that they manufacture are made from raw materials that experience volatile pricing in the marketplace.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the current market environment, almost every kind of raw material is volatile. From a manufacturer's perspective, "volatile price in the market" means that prices for raw materials--for one reason or another--are trending upward, sometimes ...