If procurement’s health is best demonstrated by the proliferation of CPO’s graduating to the top job then recent events suggest that things have never been so rosy.

Over on his Spendmatters blog, Jason Busch uses the example of Jose Mejia, former CPO at Lucent, who has just been appointed president and CEO of Medis Technology.

Busch also points to former GlaxoSmithKline procurement head Willie Deese and H.Scott Lee, possibly the most powerful man in the retail world with Wal-Mart, who began his career working in the company’s supply chain and logistics operation, as others who have used their grounding in procurement to move onwards and upwards.

At present, Mejia graduation appears to represent a continuation of the trickle of procurement talent permeating through to the upper echelons of the business world.

However, with procurement assuming a far more prominent position in many companies – something that is unlikely to change due to the increased focus on costs in the light of global economic crisis – this trickle could conceivably become a flood in the not too distant future.