Becoming a Supply Chain Leader
Mastering and Executing the Fundamentals

The book explains how to emerge and grow as a supply chain leader and details supply chain and procurement processes and operational activities in real-work scenarios across multiple supply chain verticals. The book defines what an entry-level supply chain professional must do to excel in various types of supply chain verticals such as IT, electronics manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail, and consumer goods. Apart from helping professionals understand vertical specific nuances, this book helps them to set both short-term goals for annual performance review and longer-term career planning. In addition, for a mid- or senior-level supply chain professional, the book offers ideas on ways to launch initiatives and demonstrate leadership to foster career growth. It offers ideas about unlocking new values for the organization and creating a data-driven decision support platform to gain financial efficiency for better management of CapEx and OpEx spend, thus improving the bottom line. The book includes a tool kit which includes operational data models, financial models, and presentation templates for creating and socializing proposals intended for cross-functional teams and demonstrating supply chain leadership.

The book is divided into four major parts. In Part I, the book starts with an overview of key concepts in a manufacturing supply chain and procurement organization. It describes current forms of modern global supply chain and corporate procurement organizations.

The objective of Part II is to provide a framework for a self-directed supply chain manager to understand how a large organization evaluates the contribution of supply chain managers and where it expects them to create value. To foster career growth as a supply chain professional, the book identifies six key knowledge pillars for demonstrating supply chain mastery:

• Technical and market knowledge of the end product and its constituents.
• Knowledge of internal product development and sustaining processes and supporting consumption data.
• Health and market condition of the supplier.
• Ability to create value.
• Ability to build internal and external executive relationships with key influencers.
• Ability to obtain best cost without compromising on quality and lead time.

Negotiating cost, sourcing material, and then the logistics of moving the raw material through multiple stages and finally finished materials across the globe are some of the key areas which need continuous improvement. As a sentinel of efficiency, removing any kind of wastage leads to immediate value creation and contributes to the margin by improving the bottom line.

In Part III, the book reviews twelve such verticals namely printer, medical, IT, energy, automotive, cloud, dairy, data management, avionics, biotech, apparel and start up and the supply chain nuances through the lenses of the framework created in Part II.

In Part IV, the book goes back to focus on the professional growth of an individual supply chain person in an industry agnostic way. It provides examples of financial and operational efficiencies that a supply chain professional can create.

SECTION 1: All the Links of the Chain.Chapter 1 The Original Supply Chain Leader: Marco Polo. Chapter 2 The Evolution of Modern Supply Chain. Chapter 3 The Solutions that Business Wants. Chapter 4 The Strategic Value Proponent – Six Sigma Approach. SECTION 2: The Supply Chain Leader. Chapter 5 Roles, Responsibilities, and an Industry Overview. Chapter 6 The Six Pillars of Supply Chain. Chapter 7 Making Your Mark as a Leader. SECTION 3: Twelve Supply Chain Verticals: Practices, Perspectives, and Leadership in Different Industries and Their Key Nuances. Chapter 8 Changing Landscape in The Printer Industry. Chapter 9 Saving Lives through Medical Devices. Chapter 10 Indirect Procurement in Information Technology. Chapter 11 Powering the Future of the Energy Industry. Chapter 12 Driving Automotive Long-Haul Growth. Chapter 13 Managing Hyper Growth in the Cloud. Chapter 14 The Logistics of Cooperative Supply Chain in Dairy. Chapter 15 Data Analytics in Supply Chain Management. Chapter 16 Longevity Challenges in Avionics. Chapter 17 Bridging Innovation and Governance in Biotech. Chapter 18 Global Trendsetting in Apparel. Chapter 19 Bootstrapping Supply Chain in a Startup. SECTION 4: Case Studies in Supply Chain Management. Chapter 20 Case Studies in Supply Chain Management. Chapter 21 Dabbawala: A Hundred-Year-Old Six Sigma Logistics Concept. Chapter 22 Conclusion. Commentary: A Path to Cognitive Leadership. Index.

Sourya Datta is part of Strategic Deals team at Apple where he is responsible for managing the procurement of a number of components for Apple. Prior to joining Apple, he managed the finances for eBay’s North America. This included managing P&L, budgeting, forecasting, closing the month and quarter for eBay. He was also responsible for leading the analytics for Latam and Canada for eBay. Prior to that, Sourya was the supply chain manager in the Business Operations and Strategy Group at eBay. He received his Masters in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA in Operations and his Bachelors of Engineering from Anna University, India and worked in various consulting firms before doing his MBA. Sourya was featured in Poets and Quants as one of the best MBAs in 2015 and has won a number of awards in his tenure at eBay.

Sudip Das is an established supply chain executive with 20+ years of proven experience overseeing global supply operations within engineering and technical organizations. He has successfully built supply chain organizations from the ground up. His passion is to apply manufacturing supply chain rigor and processes in an IT supply chain environment. After completing his PhD in EE, Sudip started his career in computer and network hardware design and manufacturing at Sun Microsystems and Cisco systems respectively. After doing his MBA, Sudip jumped into IT hardware manufacturing supply chain management. Now, as a leader of datacenter supply chain teams of global brand name companies like eBay, LinkedIn, Sudip gets to see the same industry through a customer’s lens. This has given him a life cycle view of the global IT hardware industry and its closed loop supply chain which spans from demand forecasting, on time manufacturing, delivery, consumption, and finally disposal.

Debasis Bagchi, PhD, MACN, CNS, MAIChE, received his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry