Living Supply Chains: How to Mobilize the Enterprise Around Delivering What Your Customers Want

Chapter 3. Implementing a multiple supply chain alignment strategy: Working with people to deliver the required responsiveness

‘Who needs competitors when we have colleagues like this to work with?’ I will always remember this telling observation in 1972 by my boss at the time, Don Johnson, a Vice-President in FMC Corporation’s Petroleum Equipment Group, who was setting up divisional operations in Australia, based in Melbourne. The parent company, FMC Corp., was and still is a major United States based conglomerate, with interests in many industries, from food machinery to defence. We had just come out of another interminable meeting, where very little had been achieved if you take out the politiking. Years later I came to understand what he meant, ...