Inbound Logistics’ Winter Reading Guide 2013

Next Level Supply Management Excellence: Your Straight to the Bottom Line Road Map

By Robert A. Rudzki and Robert J. Trent

Is there another level of supply management and procurement that’s more profitable, efficient, and functional than the status quo? Authors Rudzki and Trent believe so, and they describe how to step up your supply game using a transformation method that has been proven across numerous industries. They lay out the steps you can take to transition from a tactical perspective to a strategic one, and illustrate the key components and factors necessary to achieve a successful supply management transformation.

Key Takeaways: Business managers usually underestimate the importance of the relationship between supply management and finance. To reach a new level of supply management excellence, and increase profits, don’t just improve the top line; focus on the bottom line as well.

The Market-Driven Supply Chain: A Revolutionary Model for Sales and Operations Planning in the New On-Demand Economy

By Robert P. Burrows III

The Market-Driven Supply Chain delivers in-depth methodology, combined with detailed, firsthand case studies, to help transform traditional supply chains into advanced sales and operations planning machines. Burrows demonstrates how to analyze your supply chain from the customer end rather than the manufacturing end in order to gain a firmer grasp on consumer demand.

Key Takeaways: You can improve your organization’s performance by using customer connectivity strategies, and replacing traditional practices based on past behavior with facts and market analyses that look into the future. Burrows recommends implementing monthly planning processes to effectively manage demand, and establishing a weekly rate-based planning process at the operational level.

Logistics Clusters: Delivering Value and Driving Growth

By Yossi Sheffi

Can logistics clusters—geographically concentrated sets of logistics-related business activities—be part of the solution to today’s economic problems? Yossi Sheffi, director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, thinks they can. The author argues that developing and investing in logistics clusters can help ease an economic recession.

Key Takeaways: Sheffi’s examination of logistics hubs provides insight into new business opportunities. Companies that locate within a logistics hub can easily access any type of logistics service they need, allowing for new contacts, new business, and financial savings. Additionally, investing in logistics hubs creates jobs that can help the struggling U.S. economy.

Inventory Strategy: Maximizing Financial, Service, and Operations Performance with Inventory Strategy

By Edward H. Frazelle, Ph.D.

Frazelle explores advanced inventory strategies and the increasing maturity of inventory management. Using a mix of case studies, analytics, and illustrations, Frazelle confronts prevailing inventory ideals, and reestablishes the fundamentals of inventory. Readers will gain insight into optimizing inventory levels across financial, service, and operational perspectives.

Key Takeaways: The key to overcoming inventory performance obstacles is using fundamentals—the breakthroughs are in the basics. Inventory is not the end, but a means to an end. Once you master these inventory techniques, you can make your inventory work in harmony with all aspects of the supply chain.

Handbook for Supply Chain Risk Management: Case Studies, Effective Practices and Emerging Trends

Edited by Omera Khan, Ph.D. and George A. Zsidisin, Ph.D., C.P.M.

This book contains a comprehensive collection of diverse practices that executives and practitioners in almost any industry can adopt to manage supply chain risks and improve overall business performance. Thirty international contributing authors share their insights about risk management and cover topics including globalization, outsourcing, Lean initiatives, information security, natural disasters, political upheaval, and economic recession.

Key Takeaways: No one-size-fits-all solution exists for developing a risk management plan. There are, in fact, many potential risk-handling methods. To know which method to use, you must know the sources of supply chain risk, so you can create a more resilient firm when faced with disruptions.

Biopharmaceutical Supply Chains: Distribution, Regulatory, Systems and Structural Changes Ahead

By Robert Handfield, Ph.D.

The biopharmaceutical supply chain has undergone many changes during the past decade, and Handfield explores them all in this book, which documents the impact of these developments on key supply chain players. He also predicts future trends, and outlines the existing biopharmaceutical supply chain in a way that can drive business strategy for life sciences manufacturers and distributors.

Key Takeaways: Readers in the biopharmaceutical field will appreciate this overview of the industry’s challenges and how leading companies are addressing them. By exposing the underlying structures that support the biopharmaceutical supply chain, and the complicated set of channels that exist between various points, this book helps readers make more informed procurement decisions.

Rfid for the Supply Chain and Operations Professional

By Pamela J. Zelbst and Victor E. Sower

If you’re looking for an overview of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, examples of how RFID is being used effectively everywhere from hospitals to warehouses, and guidelines for implementing an RFID system, this is the book for you. The authors discuss the benefits of RFID compared to similar technologies, and new applications for its use in the future.

Key Takeaways: RFID technology can help improve efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness throughout delivery and service processes. RFID is not, however, a magic bullet that will fix every company’s problems. Businesses must be prepared to adapt their processes to RFID technology before expecting any operational improvement.

Sustainable Reverse Logistics Network: Engineering and Management

By Daoud Aït-Kadi, Marc Chouinard, Suzanne Marcotte, and Diane Riopel

Reverse logistics targets returns, rejects, and by-products, and focuses on turning losses into profits on items that have previously been eliminated or ignored. This book provides an educational tool for engineering schools—as well as a management tool for businesses—for implementing a reverse logistics process. The authors propose generic concepts and strategies that can be adopted by any company that produces goods and services.

Key Takeaways: Readers will learn how to implement a reverse logistics model in their company, and see how it can be profitable. On a broader scale, the book illustrates how a sustainable logistics network can benefit any company.

Sustainability Delivered: Designing Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains

By Madeleine Pullman and Margaret Sauter

Social and environmental responsibility can be integrated into supply chain management, according to authors Pullman and Sauter. From sustainable product and process design, to programs and techniques that support product end-of-life management, this book teaches procurement officers and executives how to go green. Through case examples, workshops, and step-by-step instructions on how to create a sustainable supply chain, business leaders will learn to pursue and deliver on sustainability ideals.

Key Takeaways: Readers will develop skills to support sustainable supply chain management, while gaining a deeper understanding of the concept of sustainability and its applications in the business world.

Managing Supply Chains on the Silk Road: Strategy, Performance, and Risk

By Çagri Haksöz, Sridhar Seshadri, and Ananth V. Iyer

The supply chain concept and its related practices are not new to the modern age, but have been practiced for centuries along the Silk Road—the trading route of ancient Chinese civilization. They are also the foundation for today’s global supply chains, according to Haksöz, Seshadri, and Iyer. Against this backdrop, the authors explore the differences and similarities in the supply chain management process along the Silk Road, and what you can learn from them. The book also provides new examples from different countries the Silk Road passed through, from China to Europe.

Key Takeaways: Readers will learn a comparative approach to supply chain management, covering structural, strategic, and operational topics while exploring a detailed history of the Silk Road and how it evolved into today’s supply chains.

Supply Chain Innovation for Competing in Highly Dynamic Markets: Challenges and Solutions

By Pietro Evangelista, Alan McKinnon, Edward Sweeney, and Emilio Esposito

Rapid changes in technological development are forcing businesses to continuously innovate to improve competitiveness, and these innovations are particularly evident in logistics and supply chain management. This book focuses on supply chain integration from both strategic and operational perspectives, and the impact of information technology-related innovation in the supply chain and logistics service sectors.

Key Takeaways: Understanding the ever-changing customer-supplier relationship is key to success. The authors also demonstrate how risk management can be used as an innovative tool in managing supply chain relationships due to its positive impact on various determinants of outsourcing success.

Global Supply Chain Security

By James R. Giermanski

Giermanski describes the advent and subsequent development of security operations in the global supply chain, and outlines the contributions of governmental and non-governmental stakeholders to this worldwide concern. Global Supply Chain Security explores the potential impact of port-related catastrophic events in the United States and their effects worldwide, and details the country’s contribution to global container security.

Key Takeaways: Giermanski’s insights into U.S. policy deficiencies regarding supply chain security are eye-opening. He also delves into the roles the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector play in regards to the global supply chain security threat, laying bare the surprising vulnerabilities of both, as well as suggested methods for plugging the holes.

Fundamentals of Supply Chain Theory

By Lawrence V. Snyder and Zuo-Jun Max Shen

Here’s a book that bridges the gap between real-world supply chain practice and classroom supply chain theory. Authors Snyder and Shen present the foundations of supply chain theory, and demonstrate how recent developments build upon classic theoretical models. Workbook-style problems at the end of each chapter challenge readers to understand, interpret, and extend the models and algorithms discussed. While geared toward students of supply-chain management at the graduate level, this book is also an authoritative reference for academics and pracitioners working in the areas of operations research, business, management science, and industrial engineering.

Key Takeaways: Readers will gain a thorough understanding of centralized and decentralized mathematical supply chain models and boost their knowledge of supply chain theories.