When I wrote the first edition of this book, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were still fresh in people's minds and the world was still grappling with new security procedures that changed travel, security, and global supply chains in ways that nobody could have imagined pre-9/11. The US Department of Homeland Security was as frequently mentioned in supply chain circles as the IRS is mentioned at accounting firms. It was pretty much accepted as gospel that the world as we knew it had been changed forever. Welcome, the saying went, to the New Normal, characterized by stringent security measures that would slow global trade to a near halt as cargo and passengers alike would need to be thoroughly screened at every land, sea, and airport.

I wrote the second edition a few years later when the United States, and pretty much the rest of the world, was plunged in what came to be known as the Great Recession. The housing market had tanked, the stock market had crashed, unemployment had spiked, and the new “New Normal,” we were told, would be an economy of very modest growth. Supply chain professionals were being advised to go lean—not just following the principles of continuous improvement, but preparing for an economy that might never fully bounce back.

That brings us to this third edition, which was written while the entire world was grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. At this writing, while we seem to have gotten past the worst of the virus, and while the rapid development and distribution of vaccines are bolstering hopes that the pandemic could soon be downgraded to just a really bad health situation, it’s unclear as to exactly when, or if, we’ll see what the Next Normal looks like. It's safe to say that even after the impact of COVID-19 has faded somewhat into memory, there will always be another crisis or another “we've never seen anything like this before” moment on the global supply chain stage.

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When you give a book a title like Supply Chain Management Best Practices, there's not much mystery in what it's going to be about. Throughout its 16 chapters, this book will identify some of the best supply chains in the world, describe in detail what it means to have a “best-in-class” supply chain, and offer suggestions—in the form of best practices—on how to build a world-class supply chain.

This book is largely told through the experiences of supply chain practitioners and experts. The companies and the people referred to in this book are real, as are their accomplishments (and, in some cases, their failures). What sets this book apart from other supply chain books is that I have taken a journalist's approach to the subject rather than an academic's or a consultant's. As the editorial director of a diverse group of trade publications, I've had access to supply chain professionals at companies of all sizes, in dozens of different industries. So in writing this book throughout its three editions, I have set out to tell the story of supply chain management through the eyes of the people who know it best.

In the United States alone, companies spend more than $1 trillion every year on transportation, warehousing, distribution, and associated inventory management. The responsibility for managing that spending falls squarely on the shoulders of supply chain professionals. Their roles may differ from company to company, but their goals are generally the same: develop and position their companies' supply chains so that they can compete and win in today's global marketplace. Many of these professionals work for companies that consider supply chain management and its many subdivisions (e.g., planning, purchasing, transportation, warehousing) largely as cost centers or as the group to blame when deliveries are late or shelves are empty. Yet it's an inescapable fact that many of the biggest and best-run companies got to their positions of dominance thanks to their adoption of best practices to manage their world-class supply chains.

This book, then, is designed to help you figure out how you can get your own company on the “best practices” track. It will explain why there is so much interest in supply chain management today by offering numerous examples of companies that have found success by focusing on specific processes within their supply chains. Through anecdotes, interviews, case studies, research, and analysis, the book will explore the development of supply chain management by looking at some of the people and the businesses largely responsible for its momentum.

Since the late 1990s, thanks to the industry consolidation in my own chosen field (media and publishing), I've worked for three different companies (Penton, Informa, and Endeavor) but the same group of publications. While I've covered such industry sectors as safety, corporate finance, and manufacturing, I've consistently maintained a supply chain beat for well over 20 years. In the course of writing the three editions of this book, I've had the opportunity to visit manufacturing plants, distribution centers, major ports, third-party logistics operations, and various government offices throughout North America and Latin America, Europe, and Asia. In preparing this third edition, I have added a significant amount of new material and additional best practices to each chapter, with the goal of producing as timely and relevant a book as possible.

The second edition was in print for over 10 years, so for this third edition I have updated the material wherever necessary, particularly in areas where the companies mentioned in previous editions have substantially changed their business model, have been acquired or otherwise no longer exist in their previous incarnation, or in some cases, when more recent examples made my points better. Best practices are not etched in stone, and what worked in 2007 or 2010 may have been improved upon, so I've replaced some case studies with more current examples. However, based on the feedback I received from course instructors who have used this book as a textbook and plan to do so in the future, I have kept the same basic structure to the book, and if the best practices mentioned in previous editions are still widely accepted and in use today, I have left those sections intact. And sometimes good stories are still good stories, even a decade later.

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The book is organized into three parts. Part 1 opens with a brief introduction to supply chain management (Chapter 1), looks at examples of some best-in-class supply chains in a number of different industries (Chapter 2), and discusses ways to measure the performance of a supply chain (Chapter 3).

Part 2 presents the traditional core processes of supply chain management. Chapters 4 through 10 follow the progression of plan, source, make, deliver, return, and enable, and related points in between, and discuss in detail the best practices being followed by specific trendsetting companies.

Part 3 looks at best practices in strategic areas that have become increasingly important to supply chain management as we settle into the third decade of this century: third-party logistics (Chapter 11); risk management and business continuity, including a look at how supply chains reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic (Chapter 12); supply chain technology (Chapter 13); sustainability and corporate social responsibility (Chapter 14); and an all-new chapter on supply chain finance (Chapter 15). Finally, Chapter 16 focuses on the ultimate best practice: hiring and developing best-in-class supply chain personnel.