Excellence in Supply Chain Management Recent decades have witnessed an explosion in supply chain complexity. Very few firms have succeeded in building excellent supply chains and employing supply chain management (SCM) as a competitive advantage. For the ones which have developed enhanced supply chain design and process capabilities, their performance has far exceeded their competitors’. While for the vast majority of firms, SCM still remains a means of reducing costs and improving efficiency, for the excellent ones, SCM has turned into a source for value creation. What factors drive firms towards supply chain excellence? How can real differentiation be created through supply chains? Excellence in Supply Chain Management examines the characteristics and features of firms that excel in SCM. Balram Avittathur has been Professor of Operations Management at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM Calcutta) at Kolkata, India, since 1999. He holds a Fellow of Management (PhD) from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (1999). He specializes in the broad area of supply chain management. His research interests also include applications of game theory in operations management and operations management for environmental sustainability. Debabrata Ghosh is Associate Professor at the Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation (MISI). Prior to this, he was a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India. He holds a Fellow Programme in Management (PhD) from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. His research interests lie in the areas of supply chain issues in emerging economies, sustainable operations, and supply chain coordination. Routledge Focus on Management and Society Series Editor: Anindya Sen Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India The invisible hand of market has today been replaced by the visible hand of managerial capitalism. As the power and role of the managers have expanded, the world also has become more dynamic and volatile. To run their organisations more efficiently, the managers need to be aware of new developments taking place all around them. The Focus series addresses this need by presenting a number of short volumes that deal with important managerial issues in the Indian context. Volumes in the series will cover topics not only of perennial interest to managers but also emerging areas of interest like neuro marketing. Some of the well-established areas of research like bottom-of-the-pyramid marketing will be dealt with specifically in the Indian context, as well as critical developments in other fields, like Auction Theory. The series is designed to introduce management theorists and researchers (as well as the lay public) to a diverse set of topics relevant directly or peripherally to management in a concise format, without sacrificing basic rigour. Neuromarketing in India Understanding the Indian Consumer Tanusree Dutta and Manas Kumar Mandal Poor Marketing Insights from Marketing to the Poor Ramendra Singh Strategic Change and Transformation Managing Renewal in Organisations Swarup K Dutta Excellence in Supply Chain Management Balram Avittathur and Debabrata Ghosh For a full list of titles in this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Focus-on-Management-and-Society/book-series/RFMS Excellence in Supply Chain Management Balram Avittathur and Debabrata Ghosh First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Balram Avittathur and Debabrata Ghosh The right of Balram Avittathur and Debabrata Ghosh to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-08589-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02687-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC To Prof. Janat Shah, Director – Indian Institute of Management Udaipur Our doctoral advisor at IIM Bangalore Sita, Arjun, my parents and teachers – BA Floya, Arya, my parents and teachers – DG Contents List of abbreviations x Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii 1 Operations and supply chain management: the initial journey 1 Operations management defined 1 The twin pillars of operations management 2 Operations strategy: competing on operations 4 Supply chain management (SCM) 6 Strategic insights 8 2 Inventory management 9 Role of inventory 9 Inventory measurement 10 Economies in ordering 12 Service level and fill rate 13 Basic inventory policies 16 The single period inventory model 17 Strategic insights 18 3 Forecasting and demand planning 19 Types of production systems 19 Types of forecasting 21 Causal forecasting 22 Time series forecasting 23 Measuring forecast accuracy 29 viii Contents Importance of short lead times 30 Product variety and forecast accuracy 31 Reducing reliance on technique-based forecasting 32 Strategic insights 33 4 Supply chain management as a competitive advantage 35 Efficient supply chains 35 The changing supply chain landscape 36 Drawbacks of an “efficiency only” supply chain 38 Intangible losses and SCM as a competitive advantage 39 Responsive supply chains 42 Agile supply chains 42 Strategic insights 43 5 Supply chain coordination, contracts, and integration 45 The bullwhip effect and supply chain coordination 45 Drivers of the bullwhip effect 46 Centralized versus decentralized supply chains 47 Coordination through supply chain contracts 48 Supply chain integration 55 Strategic insights 58 6 Procurement and vendor management 59 Make or buy? 59 ABC analysis 61 Supply risk 62 Procurement strategies 65 Supplier development 66 Strategic supplier partnerships 67 Strategic insights 68 7 Supply chain risk management 70 Economic cost of disruptions 70 Supply chain disruptions and risk 71 Measuring supply chain risk 72 Supply chain risk management approaches 73 Building supply chain resilience 77 Strategic insights 78 Contents ix 8 Managing design for supply chain management 80 Design for short product life cycles 80 Design for transportation, warehousing, and retailing 81 Facilities, logistics, and network design for fast supply chains 82 Design for reverse logistics and sustainability 86 Distribution channels in the Internet era 87 Strategic insights 88 9 Green and sustainable supply chains 90 Factors that drive sustainability (environmental) initiatives in organizations 92 The role of regulations 94 Green supply chain management 96 The social aspect of sustainability 96 Strategic insights 97 10 Popular supply chain analytics 100 Basic statistics 100 Predicting scenarios 101 Demand analytics and the hockey stick effect 101 Inventory and lost sales analytics 102 Lead-time analytics 103 Supply chain cost-benefit analytics 105 Strategic insights 105 11 Operations and supply chain management in the digital era 107 CONTRIBUTED BY PRASAD RAMAKRISHNAN AND AXEL ZEIJEN Unconventional solutions for unprecedented challenges 107 Digital disruption in a VUCA world 108 Cognitive technologies and artificial intelligence 110 Additive manufacturing 112 Leadership amidst disruptive change 115 Brands, organizations, people, and places 119 Index 120