Robert Trent

Global competition and stakeholder demands are causing business leaders to seek greater value from their supply chains, and practitioners who think and act more like financial managers. Designed for self-learning, training, and course instruction, this book shows how to apply financial concepts, tools, and techniques to the primary activities of supply chain managers. Supply Chain Financial Management helps readers better understand and manage these activities from a finance perspective and shows how to present the impact of results in financial terms that corporate executives expect. It bridges the divide between supply chain management (SCM) and finance to meet the next level of demands for improved performance and competitive advantage.

Most organizations today look for quick and easy solutions when searching for cost savings and performance improvements. And efforts to improve supply chain performance through forced price reductions from suppliers or outsourcing often lead to a new set of problems. Progressive organizations have begun to recognize the need for a better and more permanent way to structure and manage supply chains. One performance initiative for manufacturers, service organizations, non-profit institutions and government can be found in implementing Lean management philosophies throughout the organization. As a philosophy, it is extremely robust meaning it can perform without failure under a wide range of conditions in any environment. Lean management is an end-to-end undertaking and the focus of this book.While there are a number of valuable resources that explain the Lean philosophy or focus solely on operations or manufacturing, none provide an integrated, holistic view and the "how to" needed to address today's relentless and severe pressure to gain or improve a competitive advantage. End-to-End Lean Management: A Guide to Complete Supply Chain Improvement fills an important void in the current literature. It shows how to apply Lean tools and techniques across the entire supply chain: from suppliers, through transportation, into operations, and through distribution to customers, with principles applicable to all types of organizations. Managers across all industries under constant pressure to find new sources of competitive advantage and to demonstrate performance improvements will find this book a timely and necessary resource.Organizations must pursue a Lean model that best fits their unique requirements and it is important to remember that Lean management is a continuous journey. Become complacent and improvements will likely begin to reverse themselves. Driven by the Lean philosophy and not exclusively to the Toyota model, this unique book provides a broad array of tools, techniques, measures and examples to support your systematic and continuous Lean journey.

The popular press is loaded with stories about supply problems affecting many industries. Extensive outsourcing of major portions of a firm's value chain, relentless pressure from customers to improve product and service functionality and to reduce costs across almost every industry, and steep global competition have combined to create a search for new sources of competitive advantage. This search has led to supply management, the management of suppliers, and improved supply base relationships to become hot topics in the boardrooms of many organizations.This book presents a roadmap and understanding of what it really means to practice strategic supply management. No longer a transactional activity, supply management is about creating and sustaining new sources of competitive advantage. Dr. Trent articulates how to create a supply management organization that you can count on to deliver reliable sources of supply and, eventually, competitive advantage. He purposely presents a holistic approach that focuses on breadth rather than depth so that readers can see how the different elements that comprise strategic supply management come together to create a hard-to-duplicate source of competitive advantage. Strategic Supply Management presents, in a concise manner, the need for supply leadership, the organizational enablers that must be in place, and the strategies and approaches that leading organizations pursue to achieve advantages in price and cost, quality, cycle time, technology, flexibility, and end customer responsiveness.This is a must read for any procurement or supply management professional; finance, operations, and engineering functional managers; executives who interact on a regular basis with supply management professionals; and academics and students.