Distribution: Planning and Control

This book is the first single-source volume to provide all types of enterprises, including manufacturers, wholesalers, and retail distributors with clear guidance for implementing formal distributio, planning, and control systems. It integrates the various components of enterprise activities, from top management planning to warehousing and shipping to introduce a unquie methodology that focuses on continuous improvements in both customer service and productivity. This work provides the reader with an essential understanding of the subject through practical, up-to-date discussions on modern logistics, distribution channel management, and information technologies. It breaks away from traditional organizational concepts by emphasizing an integrative team-based management style, clearly illustrated through a special paradigm termed Enterprise Integrative Management. It offers a compelling exploration of the day-to-day applications of current information technology tools for the distributor and devotes an entire chapter to international logistics and distribution. Distribution: Planning and Control offer undergraduate and graduate students in courses on distribution, logistics operations management, manufacturing, and marketing an invaluable single-source text. Containing timely and accessible information, it also serves as an indispensable resource for consultants in a seminar setting and for practitioners in related disciplines.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century it has become increasingly clear, that to remain competitive in today's emerging global markets, companies can no longer depend on their own core strengths to drive marketplace leadership, but must look to their supply chains for new avenues of cost reduction and innovation. Success in managing these chains of channel trading partners requires a new view of distribution and logistics management. The objective of Distribution: Planning and Control, Second Edition is not only to discover the roots and detail the techniques of channel management, but also to explore the impact of the merger of the concept of Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Internet technologies on all aspects of internal business and supply channel management.

Following a traditional planning and control methodology, the text seeks to detail for the student of distribution and logistics how SCM and twenty-first century technologies are applied to managing top management strategic planning, operations planning, and operations execution. The book contains chapters on business planning, forecasting, demand, operations and channel planning (DO&CP), inventory management, statistical and Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) inventory control, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), warehousing and transportation. In addition full chapters are allocated to international distribution and today's information technology concepts and application architectures.

Distribution: Planning and Control, Second Edition provides academic, practitioner, and consulting audiences with a comprehensive text on the critical issues confronting logistics and SCM today. Containing timely information and targeted examples of real-world business applications, Distribution illustrates how manufacturers, wholesale, and retail distributors are leveraging SCM and Internet technologies to attain new unbeatable avenues of customer value through the creation of highly integrated, agile supply chain partnerships.