2015 Inbound Logistics Winter Reading Guide

2015 <em>Inbound Logistics</em> Winter Reading Guide

Inclement weather and capacity problems giving your supply chain the winter woes? Chill out! Here are some good reads to keep you up to date on supply chain, logistics, and transportation best practices.

Warehouse Management: A Complete Guide to Improving Efficiency and Minimizing Costs In the Modern Warehouse, 2nd Edition

By Gwynne Richards

Warehouse managers are under enormous pressure to reduce order lead times, increase productivity, cut costs, and improve customer service—all while ensuring the health and safety of warehouse employees, and protecting the environment. To help warehouse managers confront these issues head-on, Richards provides a comprehensive guide to implementing best practices in their facilities.

Key Takeaways: Warehouses are no longer just places to store goods. They act as fulfillment centers, sortation and consolidation points, crossdocks, and transshipment sites. This book will help warehouse managers gain a full understanding of these different uses, and the technology necessary to maintain operational efficiency in order to succeed.


The Supply Chain Management Casebook: Comprehensive Coverage and Best Practices in SCM

By Chuck Munson

This collection of 30 focused case studies addresses virtually every aspect of supply chain management—from procurement to warehousing, strategy to risk management, and technology to supplier selection and ethics. A global team of contributors presents key challenges in the pharmaceutical and fashion industries, and previews issues such as the limits of Lean logistics and the potential of 3-D printing.

Key Takeaways: A true business logistics professional should know how to address a problem before it arises. This book outlines a multitude of supply chain challenges faced by companies of varying sizes and operations, and arms logistics and supply chain managers with the tools they need to preemptively prevent supply chain disruption.

Urban Transportation and Logistics: Health, Safety, and Security Concerns

Edited by Eiichi Taniguchi, et al

Managing transportation and logistics systems in urban areas requires looking at those systems from the viewpoint of safety and security considerations for human life. This book considers urban supply chains, road safety in hazardous material transport, and logistics and transport design in mixed-traffic areas. The need for improved planning relative to human usage, freight transportation, and city logistics planning is also covered. Numerous examples and global case studies provide real-world insight for practitioners and researchers.

Key Takeaways: Much of what we do every day depends in some way on the design of our logistics systems—even more so in metropolitan areas. Hazardous materials need to be picked up, and need to get delivered, so they must move among the population. Considering population safety as a factor when developing logistics networks and transportation systems is key.

Global Logistics: New Directions In Supply Chain Management, 7th Edition

By Donald Waters and Stephen Rinsler

As companies focus on increased competition, new opportunities presented by technology, and concern for the environment, the strategic role of the supply chain lies at the heart of many long-term plans. Waters and Rinsler provide ideas, best practices, and suggestions on how to handle current and future trends in logistics and supply chain management. Their guidance covers topics such as agile supply chains, logistics IT, sustainability, and performance management.

Key Takeaways: Logistics processes are the glue that effectively holds a company’s operations together. Maintaining competitive speed to market and high levels of customer service—at a reasonable cost—are necessary for an organization’s survival.

Agribusiness Supply Chain Management

By N. Chandrasekaran and G. Raghuram

The agribusiness supply chain includes a number of processes such as supply management, production management, and demand management. Managers of these functions can be plagued by issues such as production and demand diversity, bulkiness of produce, perishability, and seasonality. This book highlights the complexity and importance of supply chain management for businesses that deal in agricultural products, and helps readers in the agribusiness sector systematically approach decision-making.

Key Takeaways: This book emphasizes the importance of maintaining a supply chain with well-designed infrastructure, technology, and financial resources. Multiple stakeholders in the agricultural supply chain—government, farmers, distributors—provide their perspectives, leaving readers with a well-rounded understanding of how all functions operate, and how they are interrelated.

Logistics and Supply Chains in Emerging Markets

By John Manners-Bell et al

Companies with global operations need to know how to make the most of opportunities arising in newly industrialized markets. This book explores the challenges of investing and operating in widely dispersed—and sometimes unstable—emerging markets. Sections on the BRIC countries, Asia, Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East guide readers through key political, social, and economic considerations.

Key Takeaways: Some emerging markets are unstable due to fragile political or security situations, poor infrastructure, or troubled economies. Others are ready to explode with opportunity at any moment. Companies looking to develop opportunities and relationships with these markets must be able to discern which areas will provide more reward than risk.

Supplier Relationship Management: Unlocking The Hidden Value in Your Supply Base

By Jonathan O’Brien

As businesses grow, it can sometimes be hard to differentiate between key strategic partners and lower-tier suppliers, and to maximize the value of each relationship. This guide helps readers build a supplier management strategy that helps drive improvements and reduce risks. It also delves into the potential of supplier networks to foster innovation, process improvement, and growth.

Key Takeaways: Supplier relationship management runs like an orchestra. Each section of the orchestra needs a conductor so they know when to play, how loud to play, and what to play. A company’s suppliers and partners need good governance to maintain focus and direction, and ensure that they are playing their parts at the right time.

The Definitive Guide to Integrated Supply Chain Management: Optimize the Interaction Between Supply Chain Processes, Tools, and Technologies

By Brian J. Gibson, et al

Supply chain management plays a huge role in boosting customer service, reducing costs, and improving financial performance. This book provides the knowledge readers need to start designing, implementing, and managing an effective supply chain. The authors feature supply chain management best practices that have been proven to work in organizations of many sizes, types, and industries.

Key Takeaways: To improve performance, and prevent disruption in their operations, supply chain practitioners need to thoroughly understand the various facets of supply chain management, and become familiar with all the technology options available to them. This book is an excellent starting point.

Strategic Procurement: Organizing Suppliers and Supply Chains for Competitive Advantage, 2nd Edition

By Caroline Booth

Successful corporate executives recognize the opportunities presented by strategic procurement. This book shows readers how to cut costs while improving business processes, and focuses on the importance of supplier relationships. Topics covered include optimizing supply chains, understanding the role the entire enterprise plays in good procurement, making the company important to suppliers, dealing with mergers and acquisitions, managing supplier-related risk, and managing the rewards and pitfalls of global supply.

Key Takeaways: Companies that don’t recognize the value of procurement in the boardroom are throwing away money. Company leaders need to recognize supplier relationship management as a key business lever, and learn to reshape their organizations to manage third-party spend.

Promotions Forecasting: Techniques of Forecast Adjustments in Software

By Shaun Snapp

Promotions aren’t always direct to consumer. Sometimes they are to wholesalers or distributors. When they are happening in so many areas, they become hard to track. But accurately accounting for promotions is the only way to guarantee the availability of the promoted product. In-house promotions and competitor promotions change demand. Being able to forecast the impact on demand is vital to maintaining service levels.

Key Takeaways: Managing promotions does not have to break the bank or even be exceedingly difficult. But it does require patience and a willingness to follow a disciplined process.

Guide to Food Safety and Quality During Transportation: Controls, Standards, and Practices

By Dr. John M. Ryan

This book focuses specifically on food movers normally overlooked by today’s food safety auditors, compliance schemes, government agencies, quality control personnel, and transportation executives. It outlines delivery control solutions, provides basic standards designed to protect the transportation industry, and addresses problems associated with transporting food. Dr. Ryan offers practical solutions that focus on container sanitation, traceability, and food safety and quality needs.

Key Takeaways: Under the federal Food and Drug Administration’s safety laws, shippers are now responsible for specifying temperature and sanitation procedures for hired carriers. Shippers must make sure they choose carrier partners that they can rely on to properly clean and disinfect equipment, maintain proper temperatures during transport, and avoid paperwork delays.

Humanitarian Logistics: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing for and Responding to Disasters, 2nd Edition

By Martin Christopher and Peter Tatham

Christopher and Tatham assess the principal challenges faced by humanitarian logistics practitioners, and consider how to develop a more efficient and effective response to disasters. The authors particularly focus on disaster preparation and best practices. This edition shares insights and lessons learned from practitioners during recent natural disasters.

Key Takeaways: By their very nature, commercial and humanitarian supply chains share a lot in common. Learning and applying best practices from business logistics can help to improve humanitarian operations, and save lives.

The Procurement Value Proposition: The Rise of Supply Management

By Gerard Chick and Robert Handfield

As the pressures on modern enterprise continue to increase, supply chain and procurement executives must deliver faster turnarounds, higher profits, and decreased costs, as dictated by senior management. This book helps practitioners and business leaders advance their strategic understanding of how procurement can deliver business value by covering trends including sustainability, technological advances, geopolitical and macroeconomic changes, developments in procurement strategies, and changing business platforms and cultures.

Key Takeaways: Purchasing and supply chain managers must begin to transition from the way they’ve traditionally operated. New ways of thinking about supply structures, processes, skills, and competencies are becoming necessary as we enter the next generation of procurement.

Sustainable Lean: The Story of a Cultural Transformation

By Robert B. Camp

You hired a consultant to get your company on the road to a Lean operation, but how do you sustain it over the long term? This book follows Jim, the plant manager of an electronics firm that has seen its first Lean initiative fail. A Lean consultant then teaches Jim invaluable lessons that help him establish a new and sustainable Lean program at his company.

Key Takeaways: Anybody can start a Lean transformation, but not every company or person can sustain it. More than 80 percent of Lean initiatives fail due to lack of involvement from corporate leadership. Executives must lead a new Lean program by involvement and by example. Here’s the book that shows you how.

Produce Traceability for Dummies

By Todd Baggett

With the Food Safety Modernization Act coming into effect, this book demystifies produce traceability, and helps shippers, growers, and carriers adapt to new regulations. Baggett covers everything about fresh produce traceability, from understanding the Produce Traceability Initiative and the latest government regulations, to dealing with a recall. The book also includes an overview of traceability solutions.

Key Takeaways: With new regulations in play, grower-shippers have to be able to track their commodities through the supply chain. Traceability solutions can help to keep customers satisfied and avoid legal problems.

Global Logistics Strategies: Delivering the Goods

By John Manners-Bell

If you are interested in the development of the logistics sector, how it has been influenced by economic factors and demand trends, current risks to the industry, and how it will evolve over the coming years, this is the book for you. Manners-Bell defines, explores, and describes in detail six key logistics segments: freight forwarding, contract logistics, shipping, road freight, air cargo, and express. He also explores the individual supply chain dynamics and logistics demands of major vertical sectors.

Key Takeaways: A detailed and clear description of the past three decades of logistics gives readers an understanding of how today’s logistics sector and global supply chain evolved. Manners-Bell also helps readers dig into and understand the various transportation modes and supply chain verticals.

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