Introduction to Supply Chain Management. This item is unavailable.Introduction to Supply Chain Management

• This is a core textbook for courses in Supply Chain Management, or a supplementary text for courses in Purchasing, Materials Management, and Logistics- all in the college of business.
• Supply Chain Management is the culmination of discussions with procurement, logistics, and operations managers in a number of different industries. This text provides an introduction to the core tasks and challenges required to effectively manage a supply chain. This book is intended to provide students and managers with a topical discussion of what supply chains are, why they are important, and the types of challenges implicit in managing supply chains.

Key insights from leading-edge organizations
The integration of organizations within a single supply chain is becoming recognized as a core competitive strategy that will distinguish the winners from the losers beyond the year 2000. As organizations seek to continuously service customers faster, cheaper, and better, managers have come to realize that they cannot do it alone, but that they must align themselves with the best organizations upstream and downstream in order to jointly reap the rewards. The authors of this book share unique insights gained from discussions with engineers, purchasing managers, operations managers, logistics managers, and sales personnel in several different industries. These experiences have been synthesized to create a managerial perspective of the core tasks and challenges required to effectively develop supply chains in the future. This text is unique, in that it describes a strategy that is evolving as we speak. While prior books have dealt with the individual processes associated with developing new products, buying materials, transforming them, and shipping them to customers, none have dealt with the integration of information and material flows across multiple organizations. Because supply chains involve members from every single function within organizations, the book has been written for a general audience, and is intended to provide insights into what a supply chain is, why it is becoming important, and the future challenges that lie ahead for managers.