Supply Management— The Right Way
-- Supply Chain Management Review, 10/1/2005
Straight to the Bottom Line:
An Executive Roadmap to Improving Profitability Through Supply Transformation
By Robert A. Rudzki, Douglas A. Smock, Michael Katzorke, and Shelley Stewart Jr.
J. Ross Publishing, 2005
$39.95; 288 pages
ISBN: 1-932159-49-5
To order: visit www.jrosspub.com
Is your company still treating purchasing and supply management as a backwater part of the organization, relegated to beating down suppliers for a few more cents on the dollar? If so, then you’re missing out on huge savings and operational efficiencies, as the companies profiled in Straight to the Bottom Line have clearly shown. And this is an impressive list of organizations. The book profiles Procter & Gamble’s unrelenting focus on presenting “one face” to its suppliers. There’s an in-depth look at the collaborative supplier techniques put in place at Chrysler Corp. Best practices implemented in a wide range of companies like United Technologies, Deere, Harley-Davidson, Lucent Technologies, and more are detailed. Importantly, all of these best practices are presented in way that spotlights the key “lessons learned” to the supply management professional.
It’s this real-world grounding that makes the book so appealing. That perspective is not surprising given the background of the authors. Rudzki, Katzorke, and Stewart collectively have more than 60 years of procurement experience at leading companies such as Bayer Corp., Motorola, Honeywell, and Tyco. Doug Smock is the former chief editor of Purchasing magazine. In addition to the highly relevant case examples, the authors lay out a practical framework for companies to achieve what the leaders have done1i.e., transform their supply management operations from transactional cost orientation to generators of real bottom-line performance. They lay out a logical framework, presented as a series of ten questions, to help companies determine their starting points on the supply management evolution. How you answer each of the questions helps prioritize the competency areas you need to address to make the supply management transition. Straight to the Bottom Line succeeds on several important fronts. It succinctly spotlights best practices in supply management; it provides a clear roadmap for embarking on the supply management transformation; and it’s written by and for the practitioner working in the real world. In short, it’s a practical roadmap for companies really serious about elevating their purchasing and supply management operations.
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