Supply Chain Metrics that Matter

Foreword

My first exposure to the discipline of supply chain management was in the fall of 1969 when, as an undergraduate business major at the University of Notre Dame, I took an elective course in Physical Distribution Management. The text of the same name was by three pioneers: Donald J. Bowersox, Edward W. Smykay, and Bernard J. LaLonde. Less than a year later I would begin a PhD program in Business Logistics at The Ohio State University with the remarkable privilege of having Dr. Bud LaLonde as my program advisor and committee chair.

During the 1960s the academic discipline and eventual career path that would come to be known as supply chain management was effectively in its infancy. Textbooks were only beginning to appear, major fields of study were offered by only a few universities (a scandalous omission that persists to the present day), and the principal international organization of professionals had only recently been founded: the National Council of Physical Distribution Management (NCPDM), later renamed the Council of Logistics Management (CLM) and its present incarnation, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). It was certainly a more innocent time for logisticians, for the management objective in those days was consistent with the course and book titles: balancing a limited set of finished goods distribution costs against selected customer service goals, and almost always for domestic firms.

It was not until 1982 that the term supply chain ...