Customer Reviews

The Purchasing Machine: How the Top Ten Companies Use Best Practices to Manage Their Supply Chains

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As a purchasing professional, I turned to this book to gain insight to new or advanced purchasing practices that might help me in my work and I was very enthusiastic about the book when I began reading it. Instead of new knowledge, I found repetitive stories about the mass production environments in the automotive and related industries. Although some new thoughts or ideas were presented, I did not feel as if this book taught me anything novel or cutting edge. It is simply a repeat of purchasing concepts that can be found in many other operations or supply chain books flavored with managerial buzz words and the self-glorifying personal success stories of the authors and the companies they work for. If you work in a job shop environment or for a small to medium size business, this book is virtually useless. If you are in a huge mass production environment with a large budget, it might be of some value, but my guess is that you would already be familiar with the concepts presented.

Based on an extensive research project this book promises a lot but delivers nothing. The first thing that you have to recognize is that there is hardly any structure at all. Repitions abound without adding any value. The style of writing is close to unbearable - they could have put the contents into a fourth of the pages. The cases are sketchy at best; they claim to offer best practices but are nothing new. The book tries to look into the future and puts forward a wildly speculative view of what the authors think lies ahead; again they do not offer a vision but describe the status quo in future tense. For people who like real satire I recommend Moody's Harley Davidson poem! Summary: Only recommended for those who need to own every book on the subject...

Ifyou are looking for a "how to" book, look somewhere else. This book appears to have only general rules of the thumbs , wrapped in lots of manager lingo (people resource allocation, globalization, etc.) Overal very disapointing. The only positive side are the occasional industry examples, but there are not enough of them to make this book a good buy.

As a senior management exec, I'd have to say that this book was of no help at all. Although it has helped the supposed top ten companies with purchasing, I have used a completely different strategy using simple purchasing techniques. I suggest you read, "Managing and Purchasing Problem Solvers" by Jonathan T. Monczka. This book is much more efficent describing management principles clearly. I do not reccomend "The Purchasing Machine" at all.

Now the companies referenced with the best purchasing practices are struggling overall. It just shows that Purchasing is just a piece of the picture and that Purchasing must continue to evolve. It is from this viewpoint where I say that this books maintains some relavance as it shows how best practices must continue to be scrutinized and change.

William Kohnen, DBA
Purchasing and Supply Chain Management
Manila, Philippines

One of this book's mantras is that purchasing is a lot more important these days than in decades past. The authors, Dave Nelson, Patricia Moody and Jonathon Stegner, have spent decades in the field of purchasing. Their principal argument is that now that most companies outsource their equipment and even their parts (for example, very few Dell parts are made in-house), purchasing has become not only more important, but a potential source of incredible savings. The dozen companies profiled in this book - which is meant to detail the best practices in purchasing worldwide - have realized millions of dollars in savings simply by optimizing supply-chain management. The authors emphasize that this isn't an individual task. Change in purchasing management requires an internal team and management support. We [...] recommend this book not only to purchasing managers, but to all corporate executives, any of whom will glean some invaluable pointers about how to save money in day-to-day operations.

There is very little to offer supply management professionals in this book. It is poorly written and the examples are of minimal value. It is clear that the authors are really only comfortable in large manufacturing environments. I am disappointed I paid good money for this book.

I am fortunate in that I received a copy of this book for review prior to the publication and can only suggest that if you read a few business books this year read this one. You will not only be able to relate to several of the best practices but you will be able to apply one or more of them in your organization and make a positive bottom line impact.