Guide to Supply Chain Management: How Getting It Right Boosts Corporate Performance (The Economist)

Globalization, technology and an increasingly competitive business environment have encouraged huge changes in what is known as supply chain management, the art of sourcing components and delivering finished goods to the customer as cost effectively and efficiently as possible.  

Dell transformed the way people bought and were able to customize computers. Wal-Mart and Tesco have used their huge buying power and logistical skills to ensure the supply and stock management of their stores is finely honed. Manufacturers now make sure that components are where they are needed on the production line just in time for when they are needed and no longer.  

Such finessing of the way the supply chain works boosts the corporate bottom line and can make the difference between being a market leader or an "also ran." This guide explores all the different aspects of supply chain management and gives hundreds of real-life examples of what firms have achieved in the field.  

Guide to Supply Chain Management:

• Defines a framework for formulating a supply chain strategy—it ensures focused supply chain efforts that contribute significantly to the corporate strategy and goals, rather than what can end up being a multitude of diffuse operational initiatives.
• Provides reference tables of performance metrics that support each strategy—focuses efforts on key metrics that help achieve strategic goals rather than relying on a plethora of lower-level metrics that are often used but rarely affect the company's competitive positioning.
• Provides industry-specific performance targets for each strategy—allows practitioners to gauge whether their company's supply chain is actively improving corporate competitive advantage.

This guide distills the essential supply chain concepts into a convenient reference that helps executives achieve rapid results.  It seeks to clarify the myriad ambiguities and inconsistencies surrounding the concept of supply chain management (SCM) and its relationship to the functions from which it stems. It is designed to avoid bias towards the viewpoint of logistics, manufacturing or any other related function, to highlight the most important concepts that are essential to getting shareholder value from SCM, and to focus on the most effective methods for achieving significant financial results.

David Jacoby has been consulting to global multinational companies on supply chain strategy and performance improvement for over twenty years. He is the President of Boston Strategies International, a firm that provides global strategy consulting, cost and price intelligence, and market data. He is a frequent speaker on global trade and supply chain economics at conferences worldwide and contributes to journals such as Supply Chain Management Review and Supply Chain Quarterly. In the course of his career, he has served as a lecturer at Boston University and a contributing editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He holds or has recently held board positions and other leadership roles at APICS (the Association for Operations Managment), the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, the Institute for Supply Chain Management, and ISCEA (the International Supply Chain Education Alliance). He holds an MBA from the Wharton School, a Masters in International Business from the Lauder Institute, and a BS in Finance and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.