Logistics and Supply Chain Management

This book by Martin Christopher, is one of the better if not among the best books on supply chain management. Written by Professor Martin Christopher of the Cranfield School of Management, the book deals particularly with best practices in supply chain management in the current era of globalization. Responsiveness, reliability and relationships are the basis for successful logistics and supply chain management. Strategies like Just-In-Time (JIT), Lean and Agile thinking are reviewed, and last not least, there is a very solid chapter on supply chain risk, which is what interested me in particular. That chapter alone is worth buying the book.

After reading many books about logistics and supply chain issues, this third edition adds value to the field. The author confirms his visionary approach and provides new thinking on supply chain risk and resilience. Not only agility is now more elaborated and explained as an important logistics strategy together with leaness, but also, hybrid strategies are proposed and practical cases are developed. As always, the author ends with a view to the future and introduce the readers in the ever challenging thoughs of business transformations.

At first glance this is a book that is going to scare off the vast number of readers. Unless you are in this field or this is part of your daily job, why would you read this book. I submit that most managers today need to have a basic understanding of this process, which is why I read this book. Overall I came to the book with no real understanding of the topic nor had I ever read a book along these lines before. I found the book to be a nice and understandable overview of the topic. I did find it to be a bit more detailed then I was looking for, but I understand that the book was not necessarily meant for a reader such as myself. I think what interested me most was that I used to think of this topic as just a line of trucks coming into the plant so to speak. The book brings out that supply chains are really complex networks with many moving parts. Due to the increased out sourcing and off shoring, the complexity of these chains has grown. With this complexity comes even more of a need for pro-active coordination within the network. This is the reason the book and concepts are important. Overall I enjoyed the book. Sure it had more detail then I wanted, but I assume that a seasoned professional in this line of work needs that detail. I also found the book to be, at times, a bit dry, but I attribute this to my lack of real depth in the area. If you are looking for something in this subject I think this is a good starting point.

This book is an excellent overview of logistics and supply chain management. I own dozens of texts on these subjects and this is one of the best. If your looking for a college text with problems to work out; then this is not the book for you. But, if your looking for quick insight into these topics, this is an excellent choice. The book quickly teaches the reader strategy, industry trends and supplies some basic quantitative tools. The industry examples bring the topics to life. Two thumbs up from me.

This is a wonderful book and introduces the practioner to some of the frontiers of strategically driven service response logistics. In other words how to design, deploy and organize integrated SCM for corporate strategic reasons, not just for functional cost control. Probably one of three key books for understanding the frontiers and highly recommended.Key is the process, customer value and system integration perspectives threaded throughout but particularly in the last several chapters. The chaper on service response logistics is worth the price of the book.As a practioner dealing with advanced SCM I found this very worthwhile and found myself wishing I'd written it. If you are relatively new to the field you need a decent baseline grounding and Stock & Lambert's book on 'Strateigc Logistics' is a perfect complement. To move slightly higher up the food chain get the recent compilation of HBR articles called 'Managing the Value Chain'. Together the three make a perfect bookshelf set for any practioner, student or corporate executive who needs to understand what integrated logistics, SCM or the future of e-business might be doing to your career or your firm's competitive prospects !