Supply Chain Optimization: Building the Strongest Total Business Network - Hardcover

Poirier, Charles C.; Reiter, Stephen E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1881052931 ISBN 13: 9781881052937

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1996

Synopsis

Supply Chain Optimization illustrates how companies that create, distribute, and sell products or services can join forces to establish a supply network with an unbeatable competitive advantage. Poirier and Reiter explain how companies can successfully employ partnering, rather than working on improvements in isolation, to identify high opportunity initiatives across a total supply network. By applying key resources on focused opportunities and sharing the resulting savings, members of the network get larger results, faster, as well as funding for future efforts.

At the heart of Poirier's and Reiter's plan is a four-step model to mobilize joint effort and focus resources from suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers on initiatives that have a high pay-back potential. The authors have studied the successes of such influential retailers as Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, and Sears, all of which are laying the groundwork for how to use point-of-sale data to create quick-response alliances with selected suppliers who will take responsibility for replenishing stock to predetermined levels. Supply Chain Optimization explains how to develop such effective partnering techniques and demystifies the electronic data linkages that are necessary to make them work.

Supply Chain Optimization offers survival tools for companies of all sizes. The authors describe consortiums, or "share groups," of smaller companies that can compete with the volume leverage of large corporations, superstores, and warehouse stores. By analyzing their shared supply chain and pooling their available resources, these consortiums can find hidden savings to protect their profit margins and remain competitive in today's marketplace.

The book includes case studies that show what a wide range of companies are actually doing to achieve supply chain optimization. Companies profiled include: Financing Division of General Electric, Dial Corporation, Proctor & Gamble, Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Navistar/Goodyear, Packaging Corporation of America, Dominick's, Hart Mountain Corporation, and General Motors--Saturn.

Partnering requires more than technological expertise. Successful partnerships display high levels of cooperation expressed by the sharing of resources, time, energy, and the benefits achieved. Poirier and Reiter describe the many pitfalls that must be avoided, and create a vision of how firms can build on their existing supply initiatives to gain a greater competitive advantage in today's business world.

About this title

About the Author

Charles C. Poirier is a partner in the CSC National Supply Chain Practice, one of the world's largest information technology and management consulting firms. An industry veteran with over forty years of experience, he has held a variety of management positions, including senior vice president of manufacturing and marketing at a Fortune 100 company. He is also an adjunct professor at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and the author of Business Partnering for Continuous Improvement, Avoiding the Pitfalls of Total Quality, and Supply Chain Optimization.

Stephen E. Reiter is a Principal with A.T. Kearney Management Consulting Services in Chicago. In this capacity, he has assisted many worldwide corporations in achieving performance gains through the application of Total Quality Management, Process Reengineering, and Information Technology. He has twenty-three years of experience in Information Technology leadership, serving the market in such positions as VP and CIO for Tenneco's Packaging Corporation of America and Hillenbrand Industries, managing Systems Development, Communications, R&D, TQM, Purchasing, and Customer Service. His innovative use of IT in support of manufacturing gained him selection by CIO magazine as a Key Member of the Innovative 100. He is coauthor of Supply Chain Optimization.

From the Back Cover

As the myriad of companies that have recently downsized are coming to realize, it's difficult to pursue increased profits with reduced resources. Supply Chain Optimization outlines a strategy for overcoming this problem by breaking down the boundaries that have traditionally segregated supply chain participants from one another - fractionalizing their earning power. By analyzing the entire process, from initial supply to ultimate consumption, the authors help readers to identify the goals, avoid the pitfalls, and implement this new method of doing business. At the heart of the authors' plan is a four-step model to mobilize joint effort and focus resources from suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers on initiatives that have a high pay-back potential. The book includes case studies that show what a wide range of companies are actually doing to achieve supply chain optimization. Companies profiled include: Proctor & Gamble, Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Packaging Corporation of America, and Dominick's. Supply Chain Optimization offers survival tools for companies of all sizes. The authors describe consortiums, or "share groups," of smaller companies that can compete with the volume leverage of large corporations, superstores, and warehouse stores. By analyzing their shared supply chain and pooling their available resources, these consortiums can find hidden savings to protect their profit margins and remain competitive in today's marketplace.

Reviews

"A great contribution showing us where the business world is going. A must-read for anyone under margin pressure who wants to know a powerful methodology for relieving some of the pain."

"Supply Chain Optimization represents one of the most comprehensive efforts at connecting the critical essentials of '90s-era competitveness with the strategic application of technology that I have come across. The strong components of case references and pragmatic decision models are of real value for practitioners as well as students. This is a hard-hitting piece of quality work which I will consider for use with some corporate clients as a reference and as a text in our graduate program. No '90s competitor will be entirely safe without at least a quick read of this book."

The authors, principals of A.T. Kearney Management Consultants, have helped many businesses achieve performance gains. Drawing on their experience, Poirier and Reiter explain how companies should eliminate every inefficiency existing within their delivery systems and redefine and reengineer supply chains to establish an error-free, mutually beneficial network extending from original supply to final consumption. Unless such supply chains are formed, they argue, corporations may find themselves out of business in today's competitive environment. The authors present a complex and innovative proposition in an insightful, straightforward way, carefully defining specialized terms and illustrating their theses with actual case studies. They stress that firms should focus on what consumers consider valuable, with customer satisfaction the key measure rather than benefit to manufacturer or retailer. Information technology capable of providing accurate, up-to-the-minute data plays a critical role in developing a successful inter-enterprise supply chain partnership. Human frailties?a win-lose attitude, reluctance to share and lack of trust?are what will most likely cause a partnership to fail. This work warrants scrutiny by manufacturing and retail executives. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Poirier and Reiter show how companies that form a supply chain that creates, distributes, and sells products or services can and should work together to establish a supply network with an unbeatable competitive advantage. They explore various approaches to cost savings, business partnering, reengineering the supply chain, and utilizing the field of logistics, which has matured into an important business practice. Using their own research and case studies, the authors point out that the only way to bring the supply chain network to optimization is to share savings across the group of supply-chain participants and to seek investment opportunities to benefit all participants in the future. Obstacles to achieving these goals include reserving benefits only for upstream constituents, lack of trust between partners, and protection of turf. The optimum strategy is to manage the group within the supply-chain system as if it were one organization, not independent entities with separate agendas. The authors cite Jack Welch, chairman of General Electric, as a CEO who actively seeks to incorporate this attitude into the culture of his company. Mary Whaley

Edition details

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1881052931
• ISBN 13: 9781881052937
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312