Harvard Business Review October: Post #1

This month’s HBR issue focuses on the supply chain:

1. Don’t Tweak Your Supply Chain—Rethink it End to End (Hau Lee-Stanford, p. 62). Rather than take a piecemeal approach to change, companies like Esquel and Posco have taken a much more systematic approach and made a real difference.

2. The Sustainable Supply Chain (an interview with Peter Senge, p. 70). You’ll likely remember Senge—the MIT professor who wrote the bestseller The Fifth Discipline. A great quote from him on sustainability: “They might not say this, but most companies act as if sustainability is being less bad.” Indeed, the lack of trust between retailers and suppliers causes a lot of waste and more transaction than transformation.

3. The Transparent Supply Chain (Steve New, Hertford College at Oxford, p. 77). In an increasingly consumer social awareness—where a product comes from (ethically as well as geographically) make a big difference. Walmart, Tesco, and Kroger are using new technologies to authenticate their products for their customers.