University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Supply Chain Optimization
Book

Supply Chain Optimization

Building the Strongest Total Business Network

Stephen E. Reiter and Charles C. Poirier
Berrett-Koehler, 1996
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Authors Charles C. Poirier and Stephen E. Reiter envision a trip down your supply chain like an effortless sail on calm seas. Your organization can reach this placid efficiency, they explain, by forming partnerships with suppliers and others in your business network. But the authors don’t ask you to take their word; instead they present detailed case studies of companies that have implemented supply-chain optimization strategies and reaped prodigious benefits. The book’s only flaw is its style. It is densely written and often weighed down by prose as murky as a rural delivery system and twice as difficult to penetrate. But GetAbstract.com recommends that business owners, corporate managers, executives and logisticians of all levels take the time required to patiently excavate the practical and pragmatic information that lies within.

Summary

The Supply Chain

A supply chain is the journey your products or services take from concept and creation through delivery to your customers’ outlets and, finally, into the hands of your ultimate consumers.

Today, businesses are under extreme pressure to find new and more effective ways for their products and services to traverse the supply chain. Supply chain optimization is essential to accomplishing this goal, because it breaks down the boundaries that have traditionally separated supply chain participants from one another. That separation has fractionalized each participant’s earning power, so by breaking down those boundaries, you can increase your earnings.

When you analyze your entire supply chain process, from manufacture to consumption, you can identify your goals, avoid pitfalls and implement a focused optimizing plan. You want to mobilize a joint effort and focus the resources of your suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers on initiatives that seem to have good potential. Many companies are already using the methods suggested here to achieve supply chain optimization, including Proctor and Gamble, Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Packaging...

About the Authors

Charles C. Poirier is a partner in the National Supply Chain Practice of Computer Science Corporation. He is the author of Business Partnering for Continuous Improvement and Avoiding the Pitfalls of Total Quality Management Stephen E. Reiter is a partner in the National Consumer Goods Practice of Computer Sciences Corporation, focusing on information technology.

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