Calvary University
Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
|
Calvary University
Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences |
|
Supply Chains:
Edition 5
PrefaceIn May 2001, Nike announced that it had lost sales in the preceding quarter because of problems in its supply chain. The amount of income lost was impressive: a cool $100 million. Three months later, Cisco Systems announced that it was writing down unusable inventory due to some confusion in its supply chain. The amount of its write-down was even more impressive: $2.2 billion. Isolated incidents? Only in terms of magnitude--supply chain failures are becoming increasingly common, and they are costing companies dearly. In addition to their impact on profits, problems in the supply chain have a devastating effect on stock prices, causing an average loss of $350 million in shareholder value with each reported incident. That's a steep price to pay for a single mistake. The flip side of this coin is that, as Dell and Wal-Mart demonstrate every day, getting the supply chain right can yield a tremendous competitive advantage, allowing new players to overthrow entrenched industry leaders. Why is the supply chain so important to success? Because it's the new frontier of business. Modern manufacturing has driven most of the excess time and cost out of the production process, so there is little advantage to be gained on the shop floor. But supply chains are still notoriously wasteful and error-prone, and they offer huge opportunities for gaining competitive advantage. The result is a fundamental shift in the nature of competition. The fight for market dominance is no longer a battle between rival companies. The new competition is supply chain vs. supply chain. What makes this new competition so challenging is the level of cooperation it requires. To forge winning teams, companies have to tear down the barriers between the functional silos within their organizations, and they have to replace adversarial supplier relationships with a win-win collaboration across the chain. Bringing about this level of cooperation isn't easy, but the best companies are already doing it, and they're starting to distance themselves from the rest of the pack. As a by-product of this new competition, supply chain management has escalated from a support function to a core competence that cuts across the entire company. Managing the chain can no longer be left to specialists; in the new competition, the supply chain is every manager's business. If your company touches a physical product as it moves toward the market, it's part of a supply chain, and it will succeed in the new competition only if you and your fellow managers understand how to make the chain as efficient and effective as it can be. This understanding can be hard to come by because supply chain management is a deep and technical subject. Most books on supply chains offer either simplistic formulas for success, in which a single solution fits every problem, or the kind of detailed analysis that only a practitioner could love. This book is my attempt to provide the balanced overview you need, giving you enough information to make intelligent decisions without dragging you into a morass of detail. Think of it as your playbook for the new competition. The book is organized into five parts of three chapters each, as shown in Figure I. Part I lays out the business challenge, Part II describes the tools you need to meet this challenge, and the remaining parts explain supply chain management at three levels: operations, planning, and design. These last three parts all have the same structure, with one chapter each on demand, supply, and performance. This common structure provides a unique nine-chapter matrix for understanding and solving supply chain problems. At the back of the book, you'll find sources for the facts cited in the text, some suggested readings, and a glossary of common terms. I assume you're busy and don't have a lot of time for reading, so I use something I call the fast track to help you absorb the material quickly. As you can see from this page, the fast track summarizes the key point of every paragraph. This is the fifth book I've written using this technique since I developed it 15 years ago, and I continue to use it because loyal readers all over the world have threatened to shoot me if I don't. In fact, many managers have told me that the best thing about my books is they don't actually have to read them--they get everything they need by skimming the fast track and looking at the drawings. I'm never sure whether to be flattered or offended by this observation, but there it is. Feel free to jump around in the book. Part I is an executive briefing on chain-based competition; if all you need is the big picture, here it is. Part II is an introduction to supply chain tools; depending on your needs, you can study it, skim it, or skip it. The matrix organization of the remaining parts allows you to tackle the material in slices, reading Part IV to learn about planning, say, or Chapters 7, 10, and 13 for a tour of demand management. Like all technical disciplines, supply chain management has developed jargon to help practitioners communicate with each other and keep outsiders at bay. To ease your way into the subject, I use specialized terms only as necessary and keep abbreviations to a minimum. But I also want to give you a working vocabulary in the subject, so I do introduce the appropriate terms as they come up, setting them in bold type and defining them in the glossary. An excellent way to further your understanding of supply chains is to experience them directly using simulation models of the sort described in this book. If you'd like to see supply chains in action, direct your browser to www.supplychainguide.com. The site also offers in-depth discussions of advanced topics, reviews of books about supply chains, and links to software vendors, service providers, and other online resources. You can also find my current e-mail address there if you would like to drop me a note about the book or ask me a question about supply chains.
David A. Taylor, Ph.D. About the Author(s)An internationally recognized authority on object technology, Dr. David A. Taylor has written numerous articles on business and technology, given keynote speeches at conferences, and served as the voice of authority for some of the world?s leading companies. He is the author four books and coauthor of two others, including the acclaimed Object Technology, Second Edition: A Manager's Guide, (Addison-Wesley, 1998). Before founding Enterprise Engines, Inc., a company that develops supply-chain software, Dr. Taylor worked as a consultant helping Fortune 500 companies adopt object technology. Contents
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