Change is inevitable, but, poorly handled, can spell disaster. A bold new vision for imple­mentation of new strategies and processes call for an understanding of what is to be changed, based on The Diamond Principle. The Diamond Principle, briefly, is that the people who actually do the work in question need to be consulted before the work is changed, or a new pro­cess is implemented. There is a knowledge diamond in most organizations that will show you where to get the information you need for success in change management. This book will show where to look for the information, how to get it when you find it, and how to implement changes with a view toward success. Written in a conversational style that is easy to follow, examples both good and bad are analyzed to determine what did and did not work, and how implementation of the principles in this book were used to effectuate better performance (or not used, to ruin performance).

This book provides practical guidance on the knowledge and skills required for managers whose role involves the management of the relationship with and the performance of strategically important suppliers. Strategic suppliers provide critical products and services to their clients. In a production environment, if the supply chain for critical components breaks down and delivery dates are missed, the production line may stop. If an IT supplier fails to deliver key system development projects on time, the implications for the business can be catastrophic. With the growth of outsourcing, where entire business functions are delegated to a supplier, the dependency on them is further increased; with offshoring there are additional complexities. An organization’s ability to manage its strategic supplier base effectively is central to its performance, competitiveness, and future success. This book provides practical guidance on the knowledge and skills required for managers whose role involves the management of the relationship with and the performance of strategically important suppliers. Although the focus is on the management of suppliers during the live relationship, the approach is holistic as the entire supplier management process is discussed in detail using a Supplier Lifecycle model. There are five stages—identify the business requirement, research the supply market, carry out procurement and supplier selection, integrate and transition to the new supplier and their services, and manage the delivery of the products and services for the contracted period.

This book discusses an emerging field of decision science that focuses on business processes and systems used to extract knowledge from large volumes of data to provide significant insights for crucial decisions in critical situations. It presents studies employing computing techniques like machine learning, which explore decision-making for cross-platforms that contain heterogeneous data associated with complex assets, leadership, and team coordination. It also reveals the advantages of using decision sciences with management-oriented problems. The book includes a selection of the best papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Decision Science and Management (ICDSM 2019), held at Hunan International Economics University, China, on 20–21 September 2019.

Leading business schools routinely offer undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in operations and supply chain management. Yet 200,000 U.S. jobs in supply chain management go unfilled each year owing to lack of talent. The talent that U.S. companies need, and that this book provides, is understanding how to make and buy products from China. How important is China to U.S. operations? In 2018, U.S. imports from China reached $600 billion. Half of these imports were bought by U.S. manufacturers. A dependency on Chinese goods is even greater when looking at U.S. supply chains. Sixty cents of every dollar that U.S. consumers spend on goods made in China go to U.S. workers and companies. Successful operations and supply chain managers understand manufacturing in China. This book takes readers inside Chinese organizations and shows how factories are built, labor is managed, goods are sourced, quality is controlled, and logistics are handled. Through this immersion experience readers are able to see the opportunities and pitfalls manufacturing in China.

The book is based on a new quality model and explains why a positive culture is a prerequisite to sustainable quality improvement. Today, the concept of using quality as a competitive advantage has been diminished or even lost completely. It is not that there is a lack of quality improvement models, as there are many available. While each has had success, no one model that taken hold as the model. Why do improvement efforts seem to fizzle out? Why are they not sustainable? Something has been missing from the strategy, planning, and implementation of these quality efforts. That missing ingredient has been culture. This book provides the strategy, tools, and methods needed for sustainable quality. The book is based on a new quality model and explains why a positive culture is a prerequisite to sustainable quality improvement. Excellence is achieved through people, and it is this people-centric approach that should be the basis for success. By building a foundation based on inclusion, positive culture, and strong leadership, great achievements are possible. This inside-out approach creates a strong internal community which can be the catalyst for embracing change and sustainable improvement.

Through this book, practitioners will obtain valuable new insights and examples of implementable frameworks and methods for managing their supply chain functions and organizations. The critical role that supply chain planning contributes to a firm’s financial well-being has never been greater. All too often, however, considerable managerial resources are directed toward planning activities with minimal results. In this book, we present proven, practical management frameworks used by the authors to support supply chain operations management and planning in private industry. These frameworks provide methodologies for managing critical activities such as supply chain strategic planning and project selection, manufacturing and distribution planning, performance measurement, supply chain risk management, and customer logistics and inventory deployment. This book is intended for supply chain professionals, as well as for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. Practitioners will obtain valuable new insights and examples of implementable frameworks and methods for managing their supply chain functions and organizations. Students will develop an understanding of real-world approaches for supply chain planning, decision support, and many other key activities.

The Cost is for those in the cost engineering field and everyone who is in a manufacturing business: engineers, buyers, sales reps, accountants, operations folks, and business consultants. The Cost is a story of a cost engineering consultant named Doug Benson who does his best to help companies understand and improve cost. When Doug arrives at Electronica, the company is on a verge of bankruptcy and hardly even knows why. He must use all his cost engineering knowledge and leadership skills amidst some considerable corporate drama all the while fighting his own personal demons in order to give Electronica a chance. The type of situations that he finds himself in are happening all over the world every day and the results are often dramatic with people losing jobs, stakeholders losing millions of dollars, and communities losing hope. The Cost is not only for those in the cost engineering field. This book is for everyone in a manufacturing business. It is for engineers, buyers, sales reps, accountants, operations folks, and business consultants. This book is also for anyone that is leading a business and has the power to employ cost engineering to make their company successful.