Before founding the Global Procurement Group in January of 1993, Dick Locke spent fifteen years in Hewlett-Packard Procurement. During that period, he developed and led several important changes in Hewlett-Packard's purchasing practices.

He managed HP's corporate semiconductor procurement engineering section and lead HP's first aggressive approach to improving purchased semiconductor quality. Defective semiconductor purchases dropped by approximately a factor of 10 during this two-year period.

He then managed HP's first multi-discipline corporate procurement team for semiconductors. This combined traditional contract administrators with quality engineers and had overall responsibility for managing company-wide suppliers. Among the important innovations developed were:

• First successful maintenance of an adequate supply base and fixed lead-times during a seller's market. This was attained by a combination of share of business contracts, forecast sharing, and relationship building during a buyer's market.
• First company-wide strategy team, bringing together a worldwide, multifunctional team of users of semiconductor products, to set and refine company-wide purchasing strategies.
• Upgrading the traditional contract administrator's role to become an active manager of business issues.
• Continued quality improvements by a factor of five.

The last eight years were in management positions in the International Procurement group. He devised and developed HP's International Procurement Operations. While living in Tokyo, he founded and managed HP's International Procurement Operations in four Asian countries: Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Later, he managed HP's procurement offices in Mexico, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, and Canada.

Before joining HP, he held various engineering and management positions with Applied Materials, Inc. of Santa Clara, California.

Since leaving HP in January 1993, he has presented seminars on International Procurement across the globe to employees of more than 100 companies. He is a member of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) and has written for their publications. His book, Global Supply Management -- A Guide to International Procurement, was published in April 1996 by Irwin Professional Publications, and was sponsored by ISM. He is the author of two of Next Level Purchasing's on-line seminars.

His education includes a BSEE with a concentration in computer science from Stanford University and an MBA with a concentration in International Business from Santa Clara University. He holds a Certified Purchasing Manager credential from ISM.