Buyers Meeting Point Review of Dr. Tom DePaoli's Book

Book Review: Common Sense Supply Management

Link to my book Common Sense Supply Management http://amzn.to/RCvfPF

3inShar

Two years ago, we posted our review of ‘Common Sense Purchasing’ by Dr. Tom DePaoli. In September 2012 he published a new book that reflects a broader perspective on his experience and our profession. By taking a step up – or back – however you chose to see the difference between purchasing and supply management, Dr. Tom takes a new look at the challenges and opportunities in supply management and presents them by sharing many of his own experiences as an independent management consultant in 'Common Sense Supply Management'.
We’ll be delving further into Dr. Tom’s perspective in an interview with him in February. His short segment writing format allows the reader to get through a number of mini-cases quickly in the first section of the book titled ‘Tales from the Supply Management Trenches’. Dr. Tom then spends the remaining chapters of the book taking on one subject at a time in greater depth. There is something for everyone, including Six Sigma, negotiation, governance, bureaucracy, and strategy. Supply management professionals will also appreciate his checklists and glossary of terms.
Looking back on Dr. Tom’s time spent ‘in the trenches’, I particularly appreciated his desire to meet a goal and then go one step further for the sake of achieving optimal performance. In one of his engagements, he was working with an integrated paper company to transform their purchasing group into a supply management operation. Using Six-sigma methodologies, they reduced workload and errors before completing a successful supplier rationalization effort. Rather than considering the transformation complete just because expectations had been met, he and his team took the additional step of putting a p-card program in place for their ‘superusers’, eliminating nearly all paperwork.
Other themes of note include the need to have empathy for suppliers in order to establish collaborative relationships and balancing the importance of social media with the effectiveness of face-to-face communication. Technology has its place somewhere behind enabled people and process. As Dr Tom puts it, “The procurement must come before the e”.
Dr. Tom’s deep experience and long career in the supply management space make this a book best related to by practitioners with some experience in the field rather than a primer for those new to the game. As to which trenches you currently find yourself in: supply chain, procurement, and purchasing professionals in any industry will benefit from Dr. Tom’s experiences and honest retelling of both successes and lessons learned.
Click here to purchase 'Common Sense Supply Management' from Amazon.

Kelly Barner

Kelly has a unique perspective on procurement from her experience on both sides of the negotiation desk. She has led projects involving members of procurement, supplier and purchasing teams. She has practical skills in strategic sourcing program design and management, opportunity assessment, knowledge management, and custom taxonomy design and implementation. She also has direct sourcing experience in a number of product and service categories including: inventory fuel, location-based services, corrugated, and corporate purchasing cards. Kelly has her MBA as well as an MS in Library and Information Science.

My Purchasing Center Review of Common Sense Supply Management by Dr. Tom DePaoli

From My Purchasing Center

New Book Offers Common Sense Supply Management

Link to my book Common Sense Supply Management http://amzn.to/RCvfPF

By Susan Avery

February 11, 2013 at 1:10 PM

In his new book, Common Sense Supply Management--Tales from the Supply Chain Trenches, Dr. Tom DePaoli shares experiences from his career as a procurement professional and offers how-to-advice for transforming a sourcing operation.
The tales consist of easy-to-read short stories on such topics as negotiations, building relationships, benchmarking, supplier relationship management, and e-procurement.
In one, DePaoli relates why beating suppliers constantly doesn’t work. In another, he explains how managers can earn trust of their employees. A third looks at why women excel at managing relationships with suppliers.
“Here’s what I’ve done that works,” DePaoli tells My Purchasing Center of the collection that he describes as enjoyable to read. “I tell the story. But I don’t give a lesson. Readers can figure it out on their own.”
DePaoli has spent more than 30 years with the Navy Reserve, and was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and Lean Six Sigma deployments. Now, he is the Management Program Director at Marian University in Fond du Lac, Wis. and Principal of Apollo Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in HR, supply chain and Lean Six Sigma. He is also the author of the book Common Sense Procurement.
As DePaoli sees it, procurement professionals should be leading change within their organizations--because of all the relationships they manage. “They drive money to the bottom line,” he says.
The 195-page Common Sense Supply Management also provides all readers need to know to transform a sourcing operation including information on Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma; Kaizen and performance metrics. It has chapters on global sourcing, e-procurement and p-cards, and a glossary of Lean Six Sigma and supply management terms.
The book is geared toward procurement professionals at every stage in their career. DePaoli also recommends it to his college students. It’s available for $29.95 from Amazon.

Susan Avery

Susan Avery is Chief Editor at My Purchasing Center. She writes articles, blogs and white papers and manages and creates other content for the online procurement and supply management publication. She produces and moderates webcasts. Susan has more than 25 years experience covering procurement and supply management for Purchasing magazine and Purchasing.com.

Coming Soon!

 

Coming Soon! Common Sense Supply Management

Coming soon!  Common Sense Supply Management - Tales From the Supply Chain Trenches

In his new guide to supply management, author Dr. Tom DePaoli offers no-nonsense strategies learned from his diverse career in many organizations. Told in part via a story format, Common Sense Supply Management - Tales From the Supply Chain Trenches uses real life examples to discuss what goes right, and often wrong, in the supply chain management trenches.  The stories are told factually without any embellishing notes to distract the reader. By carefully following this book’s accounts, supply management professionals can learn a career’s worth of what to do and what not to do. DePaoli provides practical lessons launched from real-life cases and tested in the unforgiving supply chain management reality.   

Like many good business leaders, the author places business relationships first and foremost in his guide. “Supply management covers more breadth and depth than any other discipline in an organization,” says DePaoli. “It is the art of building multiple relationships.”

His book advances to tackle best practices, Lean Six Sigma, and information-based negotiations. He includes an extensive chapter on planning and strategy that prepares the reader for his multi-dimensional approach to suppliers, offers proven tactics for testing and sourcing suppliers, and is candid about the possible pitfalls of using international sourcing. A stickler for robust, data-driven decisions, he shows the sorts of metrics supply managers should be tracking. He discusses a range of computer-based tools that allow professionals to conduct their business.  He warns managers about adopting slick-looking technologies that remain incompatible with an organization’s culture.

He remains convinced that his story-telling strategy will allow readers to learn more than what any textbook offers. “Some of the stories are good management lessons,” says DePaoli. “Others are the result of having great people work for me and teamwork, while some are the result of just hard work and massive amounts of tough homework.” Supply chain management continues to form the backbone of most companies.  Knowing how to orchestrate its complexity can give an organization a strong competitive edge. The supply managers who are willing to take the journey and possess the indomitable spirit necessary to succeed will greatly benefit from this unorthodox but powerful guide.