Why do bad vendors and disputes still eat my whole week?

You can run the willing vendors with your eyes closed by now. It's the resistant ones — the underperformers, the ones in dispute — that still land on your desk every week. That's not because you lack a system. It's because you haven't yet made the decision those cases require. A dispute that drags on for months isn't a hard problem. It's an easy problem you and your team keep avoiding, hoping the vendor changes on their own. They won't. Someone has to name the deadline and hold it. Do this with your team, not alone. Agree together on what "underperforming" means, who decides when to cut a vendor, and how long a dispute is allowed to live. Once that's shared, the next dispute stops being a debate and becomes a checklist.