Mastering the Supply Chain

Book excerpt: Mastering the Supply Chain is an introduction to supply chain management. The book integrates theory with practice and aims to create a cross-functional mindset in students and practitioners. It provides a wide overview of relevant supply chain concepts and sets out the challenges that need to be overcome in order to find practical ways of implementing these in a real company situation. Readers are continuously asked to actively reflect on the choices they make, thus experiencing first-hand the many challenges that good and effective supply chain management presents. Mastering the Supply Chain presents a different way of learning that puts the reader at the heart of a life-like situation, so that they experience the impact of every decision they make, not just in their own 'silo' but across the business. In this way, they will learn that many supply chain concepts are relatively simple to understand, but not so easy to apply in reality. Chapter 6 helps students to pull everything they've learned together and see how the concepts play out in the real world by guiding them through an interactive demonstration of the online business simulation game The Fresh Connection (free access is included with the book). This is a key text for students on supply chain management BScs and MScs as well as background reading for students playing the full version of The Fresh Connection Business Simulation game.