Logistics and Supply Chain Management, 4th Edition

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Throughout this book the emphasis has been upon the achievement of competi-

tive advantage through excellence in logistics and supply chain management.

An increasing number of organisations can be identified in which logistics and

supply chain management are quite clearly recognised as major strategic varia-

bles. Companies like Xerox, Dell, Nokia, Zara and 3M have invested significantly in

developing responsive logistics capability. Whilst their success in the marketplace

is due to many things there can be no doubting the role that logistics and supply

chain management have played in achieving that success.

Each year AMR Research – a company specialising in supply chain manage-

ment analysis and research – has conducted a study of leading supply chains and

has sought to understand what constitutes the key drivers of supply chain excel-

lence. Using hard quantitative data and qualitative assessment from a panel of

experts, AMR produces an annual ranking of the ‘top 25 supply chains’.

1

Based on

an analysis of the leading companies in the survey the have identified six consist-

ent characteristics exhibited by those companies:



Outside-in focus

Leading supply chains are designed from the customer backwards and are

demand-driven.

The era of network

competition

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

The new organisational paradigm



Collaboration in the supply chain



Managing the supply chain as a network



Seven major business transformations



The implications for tomorrow’s logistics managers



Supply chain orchestration



From 3PL to 4PL™