Strategic Supply Chain Management - Supply Chain Online

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Ever since its founding in 1976, PRTM has shone the spotlight on operations—the
component of the business world that often goes unheralded.
But as one of the executives interviewed for the General Motors profile in
these pages notes, it’s the operations staff that are the “oaks” of any organization—providing
the solid support for manufacturing and supply chain
management that makes for progress in the gross national product of every
country worldwide.
We hope we’ve captured some of the esprit de corps of supply chain
management in these pages, especially in the seven organizations that
agreed to be profiled for this book: Eli Lilly, Autoliv, Avon, Owens
Corning, the U.S. Department of Defense (the largest supply chain in the
world), General Motors, and Seagate Technology. We’d like to thank all
the executives we interviewed at these organizations for their candor, their
passion for their work, and their desire to share the state of their art with
others. These companies were chosen by us because they understand the
strategic role the supply chain plays in their businesses and are engaged
today in large-scale transformative initiatives to wring more value from
supply-chain investments, create better return on investment from process
and technology improvements, and establish an end-to-end supply chain
at their enterprises.
These interviews were made all the more lively by the facilitation
and expertise of our stellar internal marketing communications staff at
PRTM. Victoria Cooper, our director of corporate communications, led
this book project from start to finish, establishing an early vision for its
structure and content, managing all aspects of the project, and integrating
all the strands of the book. She also conducted many of the interviews for
the profiles. We also are indebted to Martha Craumer, our Atlantic Region
editor, who shared the development role on the book, also leading several
interviews, but most important, continually driving us to clarify our thinking.
Martha made the book much more readable through her editing and
rewriting skills.
We’d like to thank Sherrie Good, our Pacific Region editor, who
endured the lengthy process of fact-checking the statements pertaining
to client and other company examples in the text with good grace. We also
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