The Purchasing Machine: How the Top Ten Companies Use Best Practices to Ma

By Dave Nelson, Patricia E. Moody, Jonathan R. Stegner

Book Overview

Every day companies leave billions of dollars in invisible, unrealized savings on the table because of poor supply chain management practices. Now supply management experts Dave Nelson, Patricia E. Moody, and Jonathan Stegner show not only how leading companies recoup these savings through their mastery of target costing, value engineering, and supplier development, but how supply chain management -- the discipline of acquiring and moving material -- has become a manufacturing company's hottest competitive weapon.
Based on a survey of 247 purchasing managers and more than 1,000 hours of interviews and on-site visits, the authors have selected ten top firms whose supply management pioneers excel at twenty "best practices." With cases and stories, Nelson, Moody, and Stegner show how these leading-edge purchasing departments at American Express, SmithKline Beecham, DaimlerChrysler, Harley-Davidson, Honda of America, IBM, John Deere, Whirlpool, Flextronics, and Sun Microsystems have put into place pathbreaking processes and procedures. Here, for example, described in step-by-step detail, are Chrysler's SCORE program and Honda's strategic sourcing strategy that saved the companies billions. The book also includes a crucial section on the next stage of supplier development that will involve the sourcing and allocation of ideas as well as materials.
The authors provide concrete, practical steps to improvement that any supply chain manager can take to successfully implement these best practices. The Purchasing Machine will be required reading for logistics, purchasing, and procurement managers in hundreds of thousands of companies. The authoritative nature of the authors' source material is certain to make this the single most important and practical reference on best purchasing practices for years to come.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 147674100X
• ISBN13: 9781476741000
• Release Date: April 2013
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Packed With Knowledge!

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.

Purchasing Machine : How the Top 10 Companies Use Best Pract

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.