A Practical Introduction to Supply Chain

In many businesses, supply chain people are trapped in reactive roles where they source, contract, purchase, receive, warehouse, and ship as a service. However, in some businesses suppliers contribute to improvement programs, technology, funding, marketing, logistics, and engineering expertise. Breaking into a proactive supply chain role takes broad thinking, a talent for persuasion, and the courage to go after it. This book supplies proven methods to help you do so.

A Practical Introduction to Supply Chain describes how to run an efficient supply chain that exceeds expectations in terms of cost, quality, and supplier delivery. It explains the need to integrate systems, the flow of information, and the way in which people work together between commercial purchasing, materials management, and distribution parts of the supply chain.

Sharing powerful insights from the perspective of a supply chain manager, the book details practical techniques drawn from the author's decades of experience. It presents methods that apply directly to supply chains involving a physical product, manufactured internally or outsourced, as well as physical operations such as oilfield services.

This book demonstrates how to make a supply chain organization work in practice--contributing more to business success than traditional purchasing and logistics organizations can. In addition to writing about practical supply chain issues and approaches, the author also describes proven methods he used while working with client teams on assignments. He also details some of the ways his teams used to manage the people part of the change.

David Pheasey started his working life as a mechanical engineer and worked as a production engineer for the Lucas Group in the UK. In the 1980s, computers were becoming powerful enough to run some of the systems we now take for granted and he became involved in the management of the implementation of material requirements planning systems. He then moved into a position responsible for materials management in a small but growing microcomputer manufacturing business. He later took responsibility for the commercial aspects of the supply chain and travelled to Asia and the US, sourcing and managing suppliers.

David joined Ingersoll Engineers in the early 1990s as a consultant specializing in supply chain. At that time, Ingersoll Engineers were one of the foremost implementers of cellular technology and David project managed several transformation programs involving the integration of people from functional departments into cellular and mini business organizations. In 2004, David and a long-term colleague, Richard Wardle, set up Demand Chain International, now part of the International Consulting Network.