Supply Chains: A Manager's Guide

Chapter 15. Maximizing Performance

Chapter 14 described how the strategic tradeoff between efficiency and flexibility is constrained by the efficient frontier, and it offered a way to identify the best operating point on this frontier given a particular supply chain strategy. But the efficient frontier is constantly being pushed forward by new techniques and technologies (Figure 15.1), so opportunities for competitive advantage are constantly increasing. This final chapter looks at four ways in which supply chain leaders are advancing the efficient frontier today: accelerating the movement of inventory across the chain, pooling risk by forming “virtual inventories” across multiple sites, designing products specifically to suit the supply chain, ...