David Juran

Lessons in supply chain assessment and improvement

Coauthor(s): Harvey Dershin.

Abstract:
Supply chain management is the most recently proposed set of tools to replace the total quality paradigm, which itself replaced innumerable previous sets of principles and managerial tools. The fundamentals are unchanged; the principles of managing for quality are quite robust and are easily adaptable to the task of supply chain management. The most obvious element that is new about supply chain management is the unprecedented sophistication of its information technology. A recent consulting project in a major organization illustrates a practical approach to implementing supply chain management including metrics for performance evaluation. As an organization attains some degree of maturity in supply chain management cross-cutting issues emerge. They appear later in the supply chain improvement process because they involve higher-order interactions across organizational units and departments. An organizational structure for addressing and resolving these issues typically needs to be created.

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