The Supply Chain Differentiation Guide: A Roadmap to Operational Excellence

The importance of supply chain management has increased over the last few decades. Today, entire supply chains are competing with each other instead of individual companies. As such, supply chain management has become a way for companies to set themselves apart from competing companies and their supply chains. Interestingly, supply chain management mainly focuses on efficiency-oriented topics rather than effectiveness-driven issues, in particular the design of supply chains from manufacturing sites downstream, instead of upstream from the customer.

The Supply Chain Differentiation Guide offers a modern approach to supply chain management. While for many years “one-size-fits-all” approaches to supply chain management were very common, the current efforts of managers and academics alike focus on the simultaneous management of multiple supply chains. Despite the interest of the business sector in the management of multiple supply chains, academia has largely neglected this topicto date. The Supply Chain Differentiation Guide addresses this shortcoming, introducing both established and cutting-edge management methods to the context of supply chain differentiation and providing inspirations for how to improve corporate operations.

Erik Hofmann (Dr. rer. pol., Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany) is Vice President of the Chair of Logistics Management (Director: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Stölzle) as well as an Assistant Professor at the University of St. Gallen. His primary research focuses on the intersections of logistics and supply chain management on the one hand, and on finance, performance and strategy issues in supply chain management on the other.

Patrick Beck is a Research Associate at the Chair of Logistics Management (Director: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Stölzle) at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He studied at the University of Mannheim, Germany, as well as at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, and holds a Master of Science in Business Administration. His research focuses on supply chain strategy and supply chain differentiation.

Erik Füger is a Managing Partner at Inova Management, a Zurich-based business consultancy with a focus on supply chain management. Before his consulting engagement, he was a member of the executive board of a leading ancillary construction company and gained experience in different functions, e.g. manufacturing, engineering and logistics, as well as finance and accounting.