The Supply Chain Revolution: Innovative Sourcing and Logistics for a Fiercely Competitive World

by Suman Sarkar

The secret to succeeding in a disruptive world. When CEOs think about the supply chain, it's usually to cut costs. But the smartest leaders see supply chain and sourcing for what they can hidden tools for outperforming the competition. Steve Jobs, upon returning to Apple in 1997, focused on transforming the supply chain. He hired Tim Cook-and the company sped up the development of new products, getting them into consumers' hands faster. The rest is history. Across a range of industries, once-leading companies are in Walmart, IBM, Pfizer, HP, and The Gap to name a few. But others thrive. While competitors were shutting stores, Zara's highly responsive supply chain made it the most valued company in the retail space and its founder, the richest man in Europe. The success of TJX, Amazon, Starbucks, and Airbus, is fueled by supply chain and sourcing. Showcasing real solutions, The Supply Chain Revolution Improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue * Make alliances more successful * Simplify and debottleneck the supply chain * Boost retail success by managing store investment * Drive excellence Technology is disrupting business models. Strategies must change. The Supply Chain Revolution flips conventional thinking and offers a powerful way for companies to compete in challenging times.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Economics, Management

230 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 23, 2017

Reviews

[Carl Thoemmes · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book but it drove me nuts with its constant surface scratching and speaking in generalities. According to google books, the words “most companies” appear 43 times and “many companies” another 39 times. I do not understand how you write a book about "The Supply Chain Revolution" in 2017 and ignore Amazon almost entirely. The book does reference Amazon customer service - a point that is not new or interesting to any of the 300+ million active Amazon customers in the world. Amazon has one of the most cutting edge and compelling supply chains in the world, employing artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, the exploration of autonomous delivery…. And they get mentioned in this book a whopping 4 times with zero mention of the actually revolutionary techniques they are employing. Instead we get 12 pages of generalities on Airbus v Boeing… with the 10-year old example of the 787 supply chain disaster, which is not new, innovative, or compelling. Page 37 had this gem “Several studies showed that the advantage of Airbus stemmed from its superior supply chain”. That’s great! Where are these studies? What specifically did they find? How does this apply to what you are teaching us? Nope…. 12 pages of discussion on Boeing v Airbus and not one of those studies, or the details are ever referenced again. I learned more about the real “Supply Chain Revolution” in The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. For a book published this year, I would have loved to have seen some more relevant and recent case studies and examples combined with a deeper dive into functional details and results.

[Ivaylo Nenkov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly fluff, where’s the meat??

I’m really disappointed with this purchase. The book offers zero practical ideas, after reading it I don’t have even one tip I’ll implement in my business.

[Ryan Kapsar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be particularly refreshing. I am an Industrial Engineer by training and profession and currently work with many companies that are suppliers of larger organizations. So, I have a keen interested in understanding both, how to be a better service providers to those companies, but also how to ensure those companies know how to perform at their best to meet their customer’s needs. This book provided a great primer for setting the stage for why and how to make some of those changes organizationally. The author did provide this book to me, and it’s obvious that this book is an introduction to his consultancy firm. This book points out many flaws with current business practices, including missing the importance of your supply chain in meeting customer’s needs. In a lot of ways this seems like an obvious problem, however a lot of companies are myopic when dealing with their supply chain and make assumptions about how the supply chain should work. I believe that other books expand on these concepts, such as Lean Product Development, but this book introduces many ideas at a high level where other books dig into the details.
Furthermore, this book routinely highlights the importance of data analysis when making decisions, discussing with multiple stakeholders, and being more inclusive within your organization when making decisions. The author stands by his Supply Chain Revolution with a strong desire to bring the Sourcing team into every aspect of business. In some cases, it seemed like it was a hard sell, but he was successful in arguing, at least to me, that Sourcing could really benefit Marketing as much as other parts of the organization.
Overall, the book was well written. It was a very fast read, I read this book in about 4 hours. The case studies aren’t overly complex and leave out a good amount of details. There are cases where the book could have used some editing, as entire paragraphs were repeated within a few pages of each other.
I’d recommend this book to Sourcing, Procurement, and Supply Chain leaders. This is a great book to build a case for a larger discussion with a company’s leadership. Just don’t expect all the answers or the key to how to perform the required analysis, simply that there are tools out there that you can use.

[Matjaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it too vague as it merely scratched different aspects of the topic. Case studies presented are interesting but that's about it. It offers some food for thought but I did not find it very practical.

Light 3/5

[Antonio · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of the book is more revolutionary than it is justifiable by content. It covers some of the rare topics in supply chain such as sourcing of the marketing services and retail real estate construction and maintainance. The author also mentioned the importance of alliances and relationships in supply chain. I especially recommend chapter about debottlenecking the supply chain with Apple example.

So this is my assessment of the book The Supply Chain Revolution by Suman Sarkar according to my 8 criteria:
1. Related to practice - 3 stars
2. It prevails important - 3 stars
3. I agree with the read - 4 stars
4. not difficult to read (as for non English native) - 4 stars
5. Too long (more than 500 pages) - short and concise (150-200 pages) - 4 stars
6. Boring - every sentence is interesting - 3 stars
7. Learning opportunity - 3 stars
8. Dry and uninspired style of writing - Smooth style with humouristic and fun parts - 3 stars

Total 3.375 stars

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▪ DRIVE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION—THROUGH EXCELLENT SERVICE

◆ Amazon’s Customer Service Advantage

▪ t comes from Bezos’s personal commitment. A few quotes from him will help you understand his philosophy:2
“We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs, and we work backwards.”
“Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.” Bezos famously brings an empty chair to meetings to represent the most important person in the room—“the customer.”
“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000.”

◆ Tailoring Service Level by Customer Segment

▪ I have developed a three-step approach to separate customers by segment, define a menu of service levels, and match service levels with segments. It is a good way to think about service levels that can be offered to customers.

▪ FIRST STEP—CLASSIFY CUSTOMERS BY SEGMENT

▪ Segmentation based on business metrics such as volume, profitability, or the strategic nature of an account has shown to be more useful.

▪ The retailer had 85 stores, and all of them received the same level of service. We considered two important variables when determining the store segment. The first variable was store profitability and volume; the second variable was brand criticality (the degree to which the retailer wants to showcase certain stores). For brand criticality, think, for example, of the way Apple showcases its Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan. The segmentation showed that out of 85 stores only 5 stores needed a high level of service, 24 stores needed a medium level of service, and the rest could get by with a minimum threshold of service. High service levels typically involve delivery first thing in the morning and multiple deliveries in a week. Medium level of service may mean morning delivery and one to two deliveries in a week. A basic level of service may include delivery during the day and one delivery each week

▪ SECOND STEP—DEVELOP A MENU OF SERVICE LEVELS

▪ THIRD STEP—IDENTIFY SERVICE LEVELS APPROPRIATE FOR DIFFERENT SEGMENTS

▪ The third step is to identify service levels appropriate for different segments, which involves working with a target group of customers to identify the right service level for various segments. In some cases, it may require a simple discussion, and for others, it could include a focus group. In the case of the multi-brand retailer, we used a computer model to simulate the impact of different services on store performance. Our simulation effort showed that the current SLA was appropriate for high SLA stores, aspirational for medium SLA stores, and low for basic SLA stores. For basic SLA stores, the impact of the reduction of service was minimal on holding stock at stores or disruption to store operations


▪ BOOST REVENUE WITH SUPPLY CHAIN

◆ Making Customization a Reality

▪ The larger the number of parts to be produced or purchased from suppliers, the more complex the supply chain

▪ Does customization help increase sales? The answer is yes. The days of the Model T Ford, when they made one product for everyone, are long gone. Do many product variations help? There is always a debate about the right number of product variations. However, one thing is certain: Without offering sufficient customization, companies will find it difficult to compete in today’s marketplace

▪ How can a supply chain help? The supply chain can improve a company’s ability to customize by doing two things: influencing upstream R&D process and segmenting supply chain by demand pattern.

◆ Influence Upstream R&D Process

▪ To avoid the downtime for retooling, aircraft companies try to hold inventory across the supply chain. This in turn impacts supply chain responsiveness to market demand when demand is lower than capacity. In high-demand years, a huge backlog can develop and the time required for adding capacity can be great due to the specialized nature of the equipment.

▪ To avoid this problem, Airbus introduced a subassembly concept that allowed suppliers to reduce overhead costs by better managing the design. This concept could run into problems if suppliers failed to coordinate their design choices with each other.

◆ Segment Supply Chain by Demand Pattern

▪ Most companies have single do-it-all supply chains, which, like most do-it-all concepts, do not do anything very well and can get bogged down. Now imagine supply chains that cater to disparate demand patterns differently. This means having separate supply chains based on fast-moving, slow-moving, and customized products. It is about breaking the supply chain in multiple parallel flows so that each flow can be optimized for the type of demand.

▪ The decision on where to separate the supply chain depends on where customization is happening in the supply chain. For most high-tech companies, it probably makes sense to have a supply chain separate from manufacturing sites because components that go into making computers are similar. On the other hand, aircraft manufacturers and defense contractors probably need to think about separating their supply chain at their supplier or supplier’s supplier, depending on where the customization is happening.

◆ Enabling Global Sourcing

▪ The longer the supply chain, the more problems promotion strategies create for factories and suppliers

▪ Is longer cycle time necessarily bad for business? Not really, but the supply chain should be able to manage the longer cycle effectively. Otherwise, the extra time can create severe problems. A shorter cycle time, of course, helps the supply chain to respond to market changes better.

▪ How can a company reduce cycle time? It is prudent to review the supply chain network periodically. Over time, the flow of goods becomes more complicated as companies add new products, warehouses, and third-party suppliers. Reviewing the network ensures it is optimized for the current situation. Sometimes it is better to keep a few months of inventory of long lead time items, to protect against any supply problems.

▪ Building a computer model of the supply chain has shown to be the best way to respond to demand changes.

◆ Moving to Demand-Driven Planning

▪ Demand-driven planning refers to the short-term process for replenishment of goods, and not medium- or long-term planning for capacity.

▪ Forecasting based on historical data is like driving your car while looking in the rearview mirror. As with driving a car, it is better to look at the road ahead to plan for shipments. Real-time demand information provides better insight into customer demand and can be used for shipment planning. This is true when customer demand data is readily available. Companies can ask their customers to provide future demand/orders. If that is not possible, then firms can estimate the demand based on a customer’s production plans and inventory levels.

▪ The motto should be “Don’t produce if the product is not selling.” Otherwise, the product will occupy warehouse space, and then be either written off or sold at a discount, diluting the brand value

▪ How does this process work? Think about a series of bins. When someone picks an item from the first bin, then the bin behind sends an item to replenish the first bin. This process cascades through the whole series of bins.

▪ Many people confuse pull-based planning with a “zero inventory” process. They become concerned about not having enough stock if something goes wrong with their supply chain. The objective of pull-based planning is to provide excellent customer service while reducing inventory (not having zero inventory). The role of the supply chain is to provide a balance between competing objectives

▪ With advances in information technology, making the pull system work is easy. Using actual customer orders or demand to pull products from factories and suppliers has shown to improve responsiveness significantly.

◆ Boosting Revenue with Supply Chain

▪ A supply chain tailored to a company’s business model can make innovation successful and provide an enduring competitive edge.
The supply chain can boost revenue by enabling customization or personalization, sourcing from global suppliers, and responsiveness to market demand.
Customization increases revenue, but it also increases complexity and cost. Separating supply chain by demand pattern can help companies manage increasing complexity and cost.
Globalization allowed businesses to benefit from supplier innovation and lower cost, but it increased lead time and logistical challenges. Supply chain can make global sourcing work by simplifying network, storing inventory strategically, and having flexible terms with suppliers.
Supply chain can improve responsiveness to customer demand by replenishing based on customer demand and reducing reliance on the forecast. This can be achieved by pulling products from factories and suppliers based on demand, and also by shortening lead time.
To boost revenue, the supply chain organization will have to step up its game. It is important to understand that the implementation process can take years. Clearly, there needs to be a mandate from both corporate and supply chain leadership. It can be difficult to get buy-in to fix things that are not manifestly broken. Leadership commitment and tenacity are keys to moving the supply chain to a better state. The message needs to emphasize that the changes are not merely a Band-Aid and, like any permanent fix, they will deliver results for years to come.


▪ AMPLIFY ALLIANCE PERFORMANCE WITH SOURCING

◆ Sourcing’s Involvement in Alliances

▪ Ongoing Relationship Management

▪ STEP 1—CLEARLY DEFINE BUSINESS GOALS

▪ For example, many contracts for outsourced janitorial services focus on the frequency of cleaning, rather than on customer satisfaction with cleanliness. If a janitorial firm cleaned at the frequency agreed to in the contract but did not achieve customer satisfaction with cleanliness, then the SLAs were not tying back to the right goal

▪ STEP 2—TIE METRICS TO BUSINESS GOALS

▪ SLAs are a simple way of defining your needs, and KPIs are the metrics that help you measure how well your needs are being met.

▪ For example: In order to provide great transportation service to the financial services client, an SLA for the transportation provider would ask for drivers who excelled at customer service in addition to safe driving. To measure how well the transportation provider was doing in this respect, KPIs would include employee feedback on driver conduct, how well drivers kept employees informed during the trip, and the drivers’ helpfulness and friendliness.

▪ STEP 3—THINK BUSINESS OUTCOME BEFORE COST

▪ In companies where alliance management programs had been implemented, we found the overwhelming focus was on cost, not on business outcomes. Depending on the alliance’s goals, the business outcome could be revenue growth, market penetration, or something else

▪ STEP 4—PROVIDE BOTH INCENTIVES AND PENALTIES

▪ why do most contracts contain penalties for nonperformance but few to no incentives for performing above and beyond expectations? The view of contract teams seems to be that partners are incentivized enough when a company provides them with additional business. That may be true. However, behavioral scientists will tell you that direct incentives work better than indirect ones. Further, incentives and penalties do not have to be material. Even a small financial reward like 1% to 2% of total contract value may be enough to incentivize partners to contribute their best effort

▪ it is critical that these incentives and penalties are not big, as there is a risk of taking partner focus away from the work at hand. Also, I like to provide incentives for a softer measure, such as customer service feedback, and penalties for such harder measures as timeliness, quality, and delivery, which are more under the partner’s control.

▪ STEP 5—USE FACT/DATA-BASED PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT INSTEAD OF PERCEPTION

▪ Opinions are easy to get; facts and data less so. Engagement works better if it is based on facts and data, not swayed by subjective perceptions. Facts and data allow partners to focus on tasks and have productive discussions without arousing emotions

▪ It helps to be transparent with partners on when and how data will be captured, so there is no question about how their performance will be measured.

▪ STEP 6—ENCOURAGE TWO-WAY FEEDBACK

▪ Typically, most discussions with partners focus on providing them with feedback about their performance and the areas in which they could improve.

▪ I have received excellent ideas from partners about possible improvements. Partners are closer to the work. Missing out on the opportunity to get partner feedback is just plain unwise

▪ STEP 7—ESTABLISH A REGULAR CADENCE FOR PERFORMANCE REVIEW

▪ Setting up a regular schedule to measure and communicate partner performance is always a good idea

▪ The biggest benefit is that partners understand that someone is reviewing their performance and transmitting it to their stakeholders.

◆ Making Alliances Successful with Sourcing

▪ The sourcing organization should be asked to contribute directly to business strategy, moving from being a cost center to becoming an integral part of the business similar to the marketing or R&D departments

▪ Working with strategic partners requires two key skill sets: a collaborative mindset and an analytics-based approach. This is a different approach from the method currently used for category management, where the market or competitive forces drive efficiency. Persuasion and influencing skills can be more important than ability to negotiate pricing or contracts with suppliers.


▪ DEBOTTLENECK THE SUPPLY CHAIN AND REDUCE RISK

◆ Business Risks from Supply Chain

▪ Jobs removed inventory from the pipeline. In his mind, this would allow customers to tell Apple what they wanted, and Apple could then respond to their needs extremely quickly.

▪ To push supply chain innovation, Jobs hired Tim Cook from Compaq in 1998 as head of Apple’s worldwide operations. Cook was quoted as saying: “You want to manage it like you’re in the dairy business. If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem.”

▪ Cook also made strategic long-term investments in key components such as flash memory, guaranteeing a stable supply of what would become an essential component for the iPod nano, and later the iPhone and the iPad.

◆ Benefits of Debottlenecking Supply Chain

▪ The lead time to launch a new product in India was several months to a year. The average inventory was 120 days old, with significant nonmoving inventory clogging the system. Despite having so much inventory, in many places the company was running out of stock because a large percentage of the firm’s products were at the wrong locations

▪ the sales tactic known as “stuffing the channel”—an artificial way of making financial numbers look good without anything ever having been sold. The company’s sales team, to meet its targets, was forcing products that hadn’t been ordered onto distributors who, in turn, were forcing them onto retailers.

▪ The practice clogged the company’s distribution system. Both distributors and retailers became upset with the company’s practices and started refusing to accept any new products. It took several months for the inventory to be sold, and some products languished in the firm’s warehouses because there was no demand for them.

▪ the drug company took several steps to do what I call “debottlenecking” its supply chain.

▪ The first step was to survey the network being used to get goods and materials from suppliers to manufacturing plants, then finished goods to consumers. There were 24 plants, 30 warehouses, and 2,400 depots spread across the country.

▪ Many depot locations were found to be redundant.

▪ Once the survey was complete, the company began improving its warehouse and transit procedures to get a proper understanding of the size and location of its inventory.
A strict system of accounting was implemented in each warehouse and depot, which increased inventory accuracy from 75% to 99% (meaning that 99% of the time the inventory in the warehouse matched what was on the books).

▪ The third step was to reduce inventory and get rid of nonmoving goods. The company scrapped most of the nonmoving inventory. This took courage from the CEO because it involved taking a significant financial hit. As inventory was reduced, several deficiencies in the supply chain became evident, such as the long lead time required to deliver to some depots.

▪ The average time inventory spent in warehouses was reduced from 115 days to 75 days. The team realized that the inventory levels were also dependent on the fluctuation of supply and demand. The main culprit was the sales promotions run by the company to push the stock to distributors and retailers at the month’s end. Sales promotions were part of the former channel-stuffing program and had little or no impact on actual sales to consumers. It was difficult to predict how much inventory would be required to meet the end-of-month push.

[Denise Meridith · Rating 5 out of 5]

New Book on Supply Chain Management Can Increase Your Bottom Line
By Denise Meridith*

Who would have thought stories about supply chains could be suspenseful or exciting? I have taught numerous courses about supply chain threats and opportunities, strategic positioning, tactical pricing, channel management, and vertical integration to executives, who probably took them because they were mandatory, not because they were interested. But now, Suman Sarkar has written a new book—The Supply Chain Revolution: Innovative Sourcing and Logistics for a Fiercely Competitive World—which, not only demystifies the supply chain quagmire, but makes the art of managing them interesting.

Like a mystery novel, each chapter is structured like a cliff-hanger. The reader cannot wait to turn the next page. All baby boomers remember the Nokia ringtone. Whatever happened to Nokia? Macy’s is closing stores throughout the US. Will its new off-price Backstage store be the needed lifeline for Macy’s? How did Dell wind up outperforming former giant HP? Then why did both Dell and HP fall?

Throughout the book, Sarkar pays attention to detail, without losing the reader’s attention. He raises, then answers a lot of what I call “how come” questions. How come the Gap uses different flooring than J. Crew? Or how come it is more efficient for Nike to outsource construction, while Tiffany should keep it in-house?

Sarkar’s insights and recommendations are backed up with real-life examples, statistics and credible research. He names names from Steve Jobs to Airbnb to Coca-Cola to Howard Schultz. Illustrations are plentiful and clarifying, making it easy to follow complex concepts from network simplification to comparing current and future outsourced environments. The glossary is thorough and topical.

The Supply Chain Revolution is not just a good text book for MBA students or a feel-good tome for underappreciated supply chain employees. It should be a must-read for every CEO, no matter the industry.

The balance of power is changing. The Mad Men in the marketing department can no longer make unilateral decisions effectively. Social media are making marketing and advertising firms less needed. The sourcing staff, which has historically been held in low regard by those in the board room, may now hold the key to improving the ROI. People in sourcing organizations are now becoming experts in customer analytics, supply management, alternative ways of achieving goals, and cost reduction. With some training and new tools, they can become the corporate strategists, who can help define should-cost models and what the company needs to do to be excellent, not now, but 3-5 years from now.

Sarkar’s book should have been on every CFO’s summer reading list and his mantra “change is sustainable” should be adopted by every CEO.

*Denise Meridith is CEO of Denise Meridith Consultants Inc., a public and community relations firm; she teaches executive business leadership courses for eCornell and sports marketing courses for undergraduates at Arizona State University; www.denisemeridithconsultants.com

[David McClendon, Sr · Rating 5 out of 5]

We received a pre-launch review copy of The Supply Chain Revolution: Innovative Sourcing and Logistics for a Fiercely Competitive World written by Suman Sarkar for the purpose of writing this review.

Walmart allegedly has the most sophisticated logistics system in the world, bar none. It has been studied by the U. S. military and other organizations because it is so sophisticated. And yet, they still can’t keep Lorna Doone or their own brand of water in stock consistently. Why is that?

Once you read The Supply Chain Revolution, you will have the answer.

Suman Sarkar has been in the field of fixing the supply chain and sourcing for many years. In The Supply Chain Revolution, he shares with his readers very interesting stories of how different companies approached fixing their supply chain and/or related sourcing and what worked and what did not.

Suman Sarkar has an interesting writing style that makes the reader yearn to learn more.

The Supply Chain Revolution is geared towards those in the C-suite, but can be a useful tool for anyone in management or leadership.

Even a mom and pop business could benefit from reading The Supply Chain Revolution.

We give it all five stars and make it a suggested reading for our Redneck MBA course. We think any business leader will do well by reading it and discussing it with others inside his organization.

[Anoop Dixith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because Supply Chain apps are what take a lot of my professional time nowadays, and I wanted to get a general idea of the Supply Chain in the wild, as well as read about some interesting things on the same topic. I must say the book didn’t disappoint. The book is filled with real world stories of Supply Chain make and break.

The author Suman Sarkar is a Management Consultant (and founder of two firms) in the Supply Chain domain with over 25 years of experience, and that has given him a lot of opportunities to deal with enterprise level Supply Chain solutions.

It begins with highlighting how the simplest product could have an extremely complex Supply Chain by explaining how Vicks VapoRub is made. Vicks VapoRub—a simple over-the-counter pharmaceutical product manufactured by Procter & Gamble—requires peppermint oil extracted from menthol plants grown in India. The oil gets combined at a factory in India with petroleum jelly made in Japan. It then travels through the supply chain across continents to reach consumers in the United States and Europe, where it can be found in any pharmacy. The idea of this and other stories mentioned in the book is to highlight the fact that CEOs of companies can no longer look Supply Chain as a non-core entity of their company, irrespective of what domain they are in.

And then it goes on to explain various aspects of Supply Chain in a structured way – boosting revenue with supply chain, amplify alliance performance with sourcing, de-bottleneck the supply chain to reduce risk, and sourcing excellence.

Some of the other fascinating stories include:
1. How Steve Jobs hired the then VP of Compaq and asked him to fix Apple’s Supply Chain issue by telling him “You want to manage the Apple Supply Chain like you’re in the dairy business. If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem”,
and he did that so well that the board voted to make him the next CEO when Steve Jobs passed away. Warren Buffet is quoted as saying “While Jobs innovated on iPhone, it’s only 50% of its success. The other 50% is how Tim Cook made iPhone’s Supply Chain a massive win”.

2. How Boeing differs from Airbus in terms of its Supply Chain Management. Boeing is all about “building in one place” (Boeing’s Everett factory is the largest indoor space in the world), while Airbus changed the Supply Chain mechanism to build sub-assemblies all over and then bring all of it to France for the final assembly. It appears that Airbus’s way has won in the long run.

3. Why most of the retail stores had to close down or reduce stores – Radio Shack, Circuit City, Macy’s etc., while Costco opened more stores. The chapter talks about Costco’s surprisingly efficient Supply Chain management, and in particular, its Supply Chain management at the individual store level.

4. How wars have been “lost” because of Supply Chain woes - Napoleon lost his war against Russia in 1812 because his armies could not be supplied with food and warm clothing in Russia’s harsh winter climate. Similarly, during World War II, Germany struggled unsuccessfully to supply its forces in Russia. In North Africa, it lost out to better-supplied Allied units, because the Allies dominated shipping in the Mediterranean.

5. The author gives the example of HP's struggle in the PC industry. In an effort to compete with its main rival, Dell, Carly Fiorina (she happens to be the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company, btw) merged HP with Compaq in 2001. She believed the acquisition would provide significant cost savings to the merged firm by removing redundant administrative functions. HP would achieve sufficient scale to compete effectively with Dell. But it was a disaster because the Supply Chain handling was a mess.

There are many more of such interesting Supply Chain use-cases mentioned in the book that bring about a great read. Although a large portion of the book is also dedicated to demonstrating how marketing and real estate management are essential for a good Supply Chain health, I skipped most of it as irrelevant to me. But despite those parts, the book was an enjoyable read.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Internet as the New Frontier is only a light exaggeration. It has made us rethink how we communicate, how we exchange information, and it has affected the economy in ways we are still discovering.

Suman Sarkar, however, has some of the insights we need. In The Supply Chain Revolution, Sarkar helps us understand that revised world of business call for revised ways of doing business. That previous statement may sound self-evident, but Sarkar takes us through the ways that the the old styles of business are becoming more and more debilitating and how the leaders of the new market have adapted to the New Frontier. Sarkar offers his insights in a straightforward fashion that exude confidence and experience. A new voice worth listening to.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone with next to no knowledge of supply chain, sourcing, marketing and its history it seems that this book served its purpose. It provided an introduction to the aforementioned areas and terms that I am still unfamiliar with. The book provides a glossary of terms. If you know most of the terms and their application this book may seem to superficial for your liking. The book does skim the service in some areas, however you can read further into these areas through other sources. I recommend this book if you are interesting in supply chain and marketing and have little knowledge in these areas.

[Kariuki Njiru · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept was great, the execution not so much.

The key message of this book is that operations matter. Every business knows that it can't afford to ignore the supply and logistics side of the business.

This book offers several examples and ideas on how a business can improve the supply and logistics of a business. However, the concepts fall short of expectations. The message could have been delivered in a more elaborate manner. The examples could have been more clear. All this could have been done without sacrificing the key message.

[Osama Alotaik · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's boring to read a book on a topic you're familiar with to the degree that the book doesn't add anything to your knowledge. I was looking for real life cases in supply chains and success (or failure) stories to learn from. I found some; but I just could not go on reading! I'm gonna skim through the rest of the book (now at page 86)

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't know anything about supply chain, so I learned something new.

[Philipp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just soso

[Alley Mcintosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid intro book but wouldn’t pick up it already in the field

[André Baudeau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read, if you're interested in sourcing and the whole Make vs. Buy discussion, this book offers a handful of appealing perspectives.

[Jay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. High level but no substance.