Customer Reviews

No Boundaries: Break Through to Supply Chain Excellence

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This is an excellent book that provides easy to understand information on how the topic of `Supply Chain Excellence'. According to the author, Supply Chain Excellence is comprised of the following six levels:

1. Business as Usual
1. Link Excellence
1. Visibility
1. Collaboration
1. Synthesis
1. Velocity

Written at a level that can be easily interpreted by most readers, this is a book that should be read by anyone interested in learning more about the importance that the supply chain has on the success or failure of a company. What makes this book unique is that the author views traditional supply chain management (SCM) as being nothing more than an approach to solve high inventory, high costs, and growing customer dissatisfaction. In the opinion of the author, SCM is an approach that is usually implemented by companies who expect immediate results but who usually fail to achieve the desired results for the simple fact that they fail to identify and eliminate the boundaries that are preventing success. Only by eliminating boundaries, building partnerships with suppliers, and uniting all partners to focus on satisfying the customer, will companies achieve supply chain excellence.

Although the author presents a very good argument for his opinions, advancing through the six levels is much more difficult in reality than the author would have you believe. The author isn't trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, Dr. Tompkins is merely a consultant who isn't about to give away the keys to the kingdom for free so there is not a lot of "in the trenches" information in this book. When consultants write books they provide just enough information to get the reader's attention as their primary goal is to secure consulting contracts. There is nothing wrong with this but I want any potential buyers to understand that there are only 221 pages in the book so they will not be experts on this subject once they have finished reading the book.

For those individuals who have an interest in supply chain or business topics, this book is well worth the money and I recommend it highly.

"No Boundaries" is both an excellent concept from which to start to understand the concept of a supply chain and a good, thoiught-provoking book. While much of the world is struggling to get their organization out of functional, vertical silos, i.e., to function horizontally from customer needs to product development to supply management then to demand management to customer satisfaction, Jim Tompkins has already gone one very big step further.

No Boundaries is an excellent conceptual framework for beginning to understand extending horizonal operations from your supplier's supplier to your customer's customer. It outlines the ideal as well as the issues which must be dealt with to get there. Six stages of supply chain evolution are defined (many firms have not yet completed step one), good both for now and the future. Highly recommended!