Delivering Customer Value Through Procurement and Strategic Sourcing: A Professional Guide to Creating a Sustainable Supply Network (FT Press Operations Management)

This is the complete executive's guide to driving sustainable competitive advantage and mitigating risk in today's complex supply networks. Two of the field's leading consultants show senior managers how to apply advanced strategic sourcing to significantly improve your supply chain's efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability.

Drawing on their cutting-edge research, Yusen Xia and Walter L. Wallace help you go beyond mere cost-cutting and contract management to redesign and orchestrate your entire multi-tier supply chain. Wallace and Xia present powerful case studies and lessons from UPS, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Shaw Industries, and other pioneers. You'll learn how to:

• Bring together the multiple business disciplines whose work impacts sourcing and procurement
• Use strategic sourcing techniques to create a more sustainable supply chain
• Integrate the use of emission permits into your strategic sourcing programs
• Manage procurement when the cost of raw materials fluctuates widely
• Effectively utilize financial hedging in strategic sourcing
• Deepen your understanding of contemporary buyer-supplier relationships
• Implement strategic lead-time management
• Increase visibility as a way to become more demand-driven
• Take advantage of recent advances in e-sourcing and e-procurement
• More effectively manage risk and uncertainty in your supply network
• Make better outsourcing/insourcing decisions in global supply chains

If you're a senior manager who wants to transform sourcing and procurement into a key competitive differentiator, this book will help you deliver the goods.

Walter L. Wallace is an instructor in the Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He received his MBA in Supply Chain Management from the Brock School of Business at Samford University and his undergraduate degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Mississippi State University. He has 30+ years of expertise in heavy manufacturing industry and service (fabrication and distribution) industries, with an emphasis in corporate governance, strategic operations planning, marketing, operations, logistics and transportation. He has been researching in the areas of strategic sourcing and procurement, service operations management, and supply chain management. He has published papers in journals such as International Business Research, Teaching and Practice and Operations Management Education Review. He has been awarded twice by the National Sciences Foundation (NSF) for research. He teaches Operations Management, Service Operations Management, Operations Strategy, Supply Chain Management and Logistics & Operations Planning.

Yusen Xia is an associate professor in the Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He received his PhD in Supply Chain and Operations Management from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin in 2004 and has been working at Georgia State University since then. He researches in the areas of the interfaces between operations and marketing, and managing uncertainties and risks in supply chains. He has published papers in various journals such as Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, Naval Research Logistics, IIE Transactions, Decision Analysis, Decision Sciences, etc. His research has been supported by grants from the National Sciences Foundation (NSF) and companies such as Amazon.com, Ryerson Inc. etc. He teaches Operations Management, Project Management, and Supply Chains.