Professor Tom Speh had a surprise at a recent logistics conference when a uniformed U.S. Marine Corps officer came striding through the crowd toward him. "I've used something you've taught me every day in my work," the Marine told Speh before turning smartly on his heel and walking off.

The delivery of the message may have been surprising, but its content was not. Speh, who has been teaching at Ohio's Miami University since the late 1970s, regularly hears from former students in a range of industries telling him how he has shaped their careers in logistics or supply chain management.

Speh's knowledge and enthusiasm have led hundreds of former students into careers in logistics and supply chain management, many of whom are now in leadership positions themselves. Mark Richards, current president of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and an executive at Associated Warehouses Inc., is a graduate of Speh's classes. Others are found at top levels of such organizations as Procter & Gamble and Exel. "His former students idolize him, that I can tell you," says Ken Ackerman, president of supply chain management advisory service K.B. Ackerman Company.

That diaspora of dedicated professionals is only part of Speh's legacy to date. The James Evans Rees Distinguished Professor of Distribution at Miami's Richard T. Farmer School of Business has played vital roles in the development of the supply chain profession. "Tom is equally respected in the academic world and the business world," observes Patricia Daugherty, a professor of marketing and supply chain management at the University of Oklahoma. "It's unusual to find someone who so successfully bridges the two areas."

Tom Speh is widely respected for the scope and depth of his industry involvement. His analytical and costing expertise has been sought out by companies as diverse as Sara Lee, Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railroad, and Federated Department Stores. He was president of the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) from 1985 to 1986 and the 2002–2003 president of the CSCMP (then the Council of Logistics Management). Today, he chairs CSCMP's transition implementation group, tasked with broadening the group's horizon from chiefly the logistics community to the supply chain profession as a whole.

The challenges facing professional associations like CSCMP are all too clear to Speh. With fewer and fewer companies freeing up funds for professional development and fewer managers free to travel to conferences, the real challenge is to be relevant, he says. His response has always been pragmatic—to present supply chain concepts in ways that make them very relevant to managers. A good case in point: The publishing programs he drove as director of the Warehousing Research Center at Miami University from 1987 to 1999. Seeing that supply chain professionals had few best-practice references for warehousing operations, Speh led a long-term initiative to publish practical manuals on topics ranging from safety procedures to bar coding systems to warehouse costing models. "His focus is on producing documents that people take the time to read. Tom is focused on the practitioner—very few academics are," says Richard Murphy Jr., a CSCMP board member and president of Murphy Warehouse Co. in Minneapolis.

Speh proudly recalls seeing dog-eared copies of those manuals during visits with warehouse managers—a clear sign of the day-to-day value of these publications. He has placed special emphasis on warehouse costing, having spearheaded a WERC program to develop a cost analysis methodology and make it available on diskette. In all, more than 13,000 copies were distributed. In the same vein, Speh is now pushing CSCMP to produce research reports that are timely and readable—and no more than 30 pages long.

Well-known for speaking out on contentious supply chain issues, Speh blames the growing emphasis on short-term profits for blinding senior managers to the long-term importance of understanding and investing in the supply chain. The key, he believes, is to "make things really concrete"—that is, to demonstrate to key influencers the value of effective supply chain collaboration as well as the long-term consequences of not focusing on supply chain fundamentals. "We talk a good game, but I'm not sure we're doing it very well," he says.

By "influencers" Speh means the professionals who control the levers of finance—the CFOs and their lieutenants as well as those Wall Street analysts, fund managers, and other institutional investors whose opinions hold such sway with CEOs of public companies. He cites work at Georgia Tech on how the stock markets react when there are significant supply chain glitches. And he references new research that shows positive reactions when companies announce new supply chain relationships. "We have to develop more numbers, more data so that people understand," says Speh.

Currently, Speh is working on a balanced scorecard metric for use within warehouses. A prolific author, he is also developing new journal articles in collaboration with professionals from accounting. "I'm focused on more interfunctional research," he explains. It's a model he believes has merit for organizations such as CSCMP. "We need to reach out to other organizations that represent [elements of the supply chain], and collaborate with them just like we preach in supply chain," he says. Marketing and sales functions are near the top of his list.

With his deep industry involvement, Speh is well-placed to push for such outreach. He is justifiably proud that he helped to build a methodology for exposing students to logistics principles. In 1997, when he was named chair of CSCMP's education strategies committee, he was tasked with "introducing the body of logistics knowledge to all students enrolled in a business school," according to Kathleen Hedland, the group's director of education and roundtable services.

Under Speh's guidance, the committee shifted quickly from trying to have logistics as a required course in all accredited business schools to developing a teaching package that could be delivered by any instructor, regardless of their logistics knowledge level. The resulting "toolbox" features all the documents necessary to teach class in logistics up to 90-minutes long. It includes easy-to-follow tutorials, case studies, and vignettes using common delivery mechanisms such as PowerPoint slides and DVDs. Launched in January 2004, the teaching packages have been widely distributed, targeting marketing professors in particular.

Speh wins plenty of points for being an effective team leader. In the words of University of Oklahoma's Daugherty, a member of CSCMP's education strategies committee: "Tom brought out the best in everyone. He encouraged all of us to actively participate and established a fun atmosphere. He brought together a diverse group of academics and practitioners, kept us focused, and created an environment that encouraged productivity."

On his home turf at Miami University, Speh keeps advancing the supply chain agenda. Undergraduates have been able to major in supply chain management since 2003. In addition, Speh helped design a new MBA program that features small classes focused tightly on business and supply chain processes and the integration of those processes. The program, which can be completed in 14 months, includes an innovative summer boot camp segment that emphasizes key business principles along with team building, negotiation, creativity, and conflict management. Speh also helped develop a two-semester internship program and has encouraged General Electric's aircraft engine division to sign up.

So does Speh expect supply chain issues to be high on the executive agenda any time soon? He isn't holding his breath, but he's optimistic. One promising tell-tale sign comes in a recent letter from a former student who works on Wall Street. The letter notes that the financial firm's last ten hires came from supply chain programs and that the firm's clients are attuned to today's most important supply chain issues. It's a fair bet that their awareness can be traced to the dedication and initiative of Professor Tom Speh.