Books: Updated Guide for Implementing Supply Chain Improvements

(CRC Press: New York) -- Improving supply chain efficiency, especially in today’s unsettled business climate, requires that managers go beyond doing business as usual. They must apply inspiration and perspiration in a structured, collaborative, and measurable approach that blends project management with supply chain management (SCM) knowledge and practice.

Supply Chain Project Management, Second Edition: A Structured Collaborative and Measurable Approach (CRC Press, 2009) offers the supply chain practitioners and project managers of today a fully updated guide for implementing strategic supply chain improvements. It covers how to implement project management best practices in ways that will encourage continual improvement of the supply chain.

Focusing on improving competitiveness, the book describes the benefit of applying proven project management skills to improve collaboration and communication among one’s own company and its suppliers and customers. It explains how to achieve companywide agreement for developing and directing strategies that will lower risk in undertaking difficult supply chain change.

Organized to provide quick reference, as well as in-depth background where needed, this comprehensive work:

• Covers SCM execution and the foundation concepts relevant to the current international business climate, describing the challenges managers face and the skills needed to deal with ongoing change
• Explores the ways supply chain and SCM might be defined, offering multiple viewpoints and definitions from supply chain and project management perspectives
• Details effective SCM project processes, offering the tools and project templates needed to implement change

A highly respected authority on supply chain implementation and management, James Ayers is a member of the Project Management Institute and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. Offering a unique perspective, augmented by anecdotes garnered from his years of experience, this book goes beyond conventional tools and methods to help managers tap the creative inspiration needed to distinguish their organization in these highly fluid and competitive times.

James B. Ayers is a principal with CGR Management Consultants. He consults in strategy and operations improvement with clients of all sizes across many manufacturing, distribution, and service industries in the United States and abroad. He has authored or edited books and numerous articles on supply chain management. His books include Making Supply Chain Management Work: Design, Implementation, Partnerships, Technology and Profits (Auerbach, 2001); Retail Supply Chain Management,  co-authored with Mary Ann Odegaard (Auerbach, 2007); and two editions of The Handbook of Supply Chain Management (Auerbach, 2006). He holds a bachelor’s degree with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy and master’s degrees in business administration and industrial engineering from Stanford University. As a naval officer, he served on submarines.

About The Author

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