The Profitable Supply Chain


Book Description

The Profitable Supply Chain: A Practitioner's Guide provides a first-principles approach to understanding the drivers of today’s successful supply chains, covering everything from inventory and demand management to network planning to technology-driven improvements in efficient supply chain management. Apart from introducing the latest concepts and methods, supply chain expert and consultant Ramnath Ganesan provides numerous real-world examples and cases to clarify how his process-oriented approach can be applied to specific situations, together with spreadsheet functions when appropriate. Practitioners will be especially interested, for example, in the sections on assessing external factors for demand, modifying network routings in response to rising fuel prices, designing a framework for identifying issues and tracking actions, and instituting financial measures to track performance. The book addresses situations found in such industries as consumer electronics, healthcare, telecommunications, consumer goods, industrial equipment, building materials, and many others. No matter the industry, all firms trading products face operational challenges in producing and/or moving goods in a geographically dispersed global network while fulfilling customer demand in a timely and cost-efficient manner. Such demands can only be supported by a rigorous approach that aligns supply with demand, an approach this book outlines clearly and simply. The Profitable Supply Chain will prove a valuable reference for production schedulers, plant managers, material managers, demand planners, and supply chain executives. Among other things, it covers the following topics in great depth: How to design and implement an efficient, scalable supply chain management process from the ground up—or improve the one you have. How to maintain adequate inventory levels while reducing the cost of supplying products. How to implement specific metrics that help improve supply chain performance and forecast accuracy. How to gain competitive advantages through the latest advances in IT architecture and software. This book will also be of immense value to information technology professionals. That includes enterprise application developers charged with designing and implementing a supply chain IT architecture, as well as those administering and maintaining an enterprise resource planning or advance planning system. There are few areas in business more ripe for cost reductions than in the supply chain. The Profitable Supply Chain is therefore your go-to resource for making supply chain operations leaner, more efficient, and ultimately far more profitable than they are now.




Value Nets


Book Description

"Value nets are digital powerhouses that fuel business results."-From the Foreword by Adrian Slywotzky If you have ever ordered a computer over the Internet and been amazed that a product built to your exact specifications could arrive at your door within days, or if your business's competition is suddenly gaining share by delivering custom-designed merchandise faster and more reliably than you can, you need to read Value Nets. Enlightened managers around the world are learning that the supply chain can be a bountiful source of profitable growth, increased market share, and shareholder value. Value Nets: Breaking the Supply Chain to Unlock Hidden Profits shows you how to release the value hidden in supply chain operations through new digital networked solutions. Value Nets introduces you to a new form of business design built around superb supply chain performance in the e-commerce world. This design enables any company to do far more with the supply chain than simply control costs. It provides a basis for true differentiation in the marketplace and gives you the power to deliver first-rate service and customized products to customers in ways that delight them and keep them coming back for more. Using numerous powerful case studies and examples from companies that have adopted value net design-Gateway, Cisco Systems, Cemex, Biogen, Zara, and dozens more-the authors demonstrate how value nets bridge the gap between the executive culture of strategy and business reinvention and the operational world of procurement, manufacturing, and logistics. They introduce the new concept of value nets and offer compelling evidence of their outstanding results. They also explain the five elements of value net creation, supplying specific examples from companies that have built value nets and showing how the new design helped these companies achieve superior profitability and customer satisfaction. Complete with an appendix that helps you think through the applicability of value nets to your company, Value Nets delivers everything you need to understand and implement this remarkable new business design. It captures the creativity of today's most effective business model and puts its power where it will do the most good-right in the palm of your hand. As one of the world's premier corporate strategy firms, MERCER MANAGEMENT CONSULTING helps leading enterprises achieve sustained shareholder value growth through the development and implementation of customer-focused business designs. Mercer's thought leadership on the topic of value growth is evident in four agenda-setting books published in the past four years: Profit Patterns, The Profit Zone, Value Migration, and Grow to Be Great. The firm serves clients from twenty offices in the Americas, Europe, and Asia."Value Nets exposes the supply chain for what it really is--a strategic differentiator. Reading about the success of Apple Computer, Zara, et al., will convince you that the time to take action is now!"-H. Lee Scott, President and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. "Our experience is proof that the ideas presented in Value Nets work. Agile, networked operations help us deliver superb service to our customers and drive shareholder value as well."-James Mullen, President and COO, Biogen, Inc. "Value Nets takes supply chain management to the next frontier. CEOs will find it extremely helpful in their quest to provide better service and reduce cost by meeting unique customer requirements."-William "Gus" Pagonis, Retired Lt. Gen., U.S. Army Executive Vice President of Logistics, Sears, Roebuck and Company "Value Nets brings new concepts and a road map for competitive advantage to businesses in Latin America and other global markets where traditional supply chain thinking controls business design."-Julio A. Barea, President and CEO, Sara Lee Branded Apparel, Latin America Group







Supply Chain Management For Dummies


Book Description

Everyone can impact the supply chain Supply Chain Management For Dummies helps you connect the dots between things like purchasing, logistics, and operations to see how the big picture is affected by seemingly isolated inefficiencies. Your business is a system, made of many moving parts that must synchronize to most efficiently meet the needs of your customers—and your shareholders. Interruptions in one area ripple throughout the entire operation, disrupting the careful coordination that makes businesses successful; that's where supply chain management (SCM) comes in. SCM means different things to different people, and many different models exist to meet the needs of different industries. This book focuses on the broadly-applicable Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) Model: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, Return, and Enable, to describe the basic techniques and key concepts that keep businesses running smoothly. Whether you're in sales, HR, or product development, the decisions you make every day can impact the supply chain. This book shows you how to factor broader impact into your decision making process based on your place in the system. Improve processes by determining your metrics Choose the right software and implement appropriate automation Evaluate and mitigate risks at all steps in the supply chain Help your business function as a system to more effectively meet customer needs We tend to think of the supply chain as suppliers, logistics, and warehousing—but it's so much more than that. Every single person in your organization, from the mailroom to the C-suite, can work to enhance or hinder the flow. Supply Chain Management For Dummies shows you what you need to know to make sure your impact leads to positive outcomes.







The Profitable Supply Chain


Book Description

The Profitable Supply Chain provides a first-principles approach to understanding the drivers of today's supply chains. Targeted at practitioners and students, the book describes concepts, methods, metrics, and process steps for improving performance. Practitioners will be specially interested in the discussions on the impact of external factors on demand, modifying routings and the network in response to rising fuel prices, and the use of metric information charts for tracking performance and actions. Where applicable, spreadsheet functions for performing calculations have been described.Ramnath Ganesan received his Ph.D. from Penn State. Since then, he has worked at and consulted with several companies in the Electronics, Consumer Goods, Telecommunications, Construction, and Software industries. The concepts and methods presented in this book have been used by the author to initiate change, operate, and improve performance at these companies.




Profit from the Source


Book Description

Procurement can be your company's secret weapon for winning in turbulent times. In most companies, procurement is an unglamorous, unloved part of the business. A job in the procurement office? A fast track to nowhere. Sourcing and supplier management is strictly about costs, the thinking goes, and all that matters is playing hardball to get these as low as possible. No connection to innovation or strategy or creating positive value. Not so fast. As Boston Consulting Group thought leaders Christian Schuh, Wolfgang Schnellbächer, Alenka Triplat, and Daniel Weise explain in Profit from the Source, procurement should be regarded in a new light, because it has the potential to be a CEO's secret weapon in these fast-moving, disruptive times. The authors offer a wake-up call and a new strategic blueprint for leaders everywhere. With vivid stories and in-depth case studies, they illustrate that no other business function offers the same holistic view of a company—from suppliers who provide the organization with raw materials and components to consumers who buy the finished product. While it's true that a core task of any procurement function is to keep costs from spiraling out of control, the authors show how procurement can help businesses generate phenomenal value from five other sources of competitive advantage critical to success—innovation, quality, sustainability, speed, and risk reduction. Drawing on BCG research and the authors' firsthand experience working with some of the world's leading companies—in high tech, automotive, consumer goods, and many other industries—Profit from the Source provides proven strategies to drive new bottom-line, as well as top-line, growth for your company.




Supply Chain Optimization


Book Description

Supply Chain Optimization captures the latest results in a segment of current research activity in supply chain management. This research area focuses on applying optimization techniques to supply chain management problems. The research papers that make up the volume provide a snapshot of state-of-the-art optimization methods within the field. This book presents rigorous modelling approaches for supply chain operations problems with a goal of improving supply chain performance (or the performance of some segment thereof). It contains high-quality works from leading researchers in the field whose expertise fits within this scope. The book provides a diverse blend of research topics and novel modelling and solution approaches for difficult classes of supply chain operations, planning, and design problems.




Supply Chain Saves the World


Book Description




Design and Analysis of Closed-Loop Supply Chain Networks


Book Description

This book provides insights for designing supply chain networks by understanding and incorporating key return parameters into the network design, which will affect profitability.