The LIVING Supply Chain

What the Experts are Saying About This Book

Handfield and Linton reveal the "secret ingredient" to leveraging the power of a well managed supply chain. The emphasis on visibility is key to turning companies that simply react to their environments into proactive champions for their customers. This book is a "How To" guide to leveraging the untapped power of a well managed supply chain. It will teach you how to turn from a reactive "firefighter" into a proactive champion for the customer. The book will revolutionize the way companies approach supply chain management. It turns conventional wisdom on its ear, and is timely and relevant to tomorrow's business environment.

-Frank Crespo, Vice President, Global Supply Network Division (CPO/Logistics/IoT Analytics), Caterpillar Inc.

The LIVING supply chain is a wake up call to any enterprise that depends on suppliers and contractors. Be fast, be nimble and make supply chain transparency the nucleus of your operations or become endangered.

-Paul Massih, Vice President, BP PSCM

Tom Linton and Robert Handfield's book is a fascinating journey through the future of supply chain management - the LIVING supply chain. Such future involves speedy supply chain networks leading to high customer satisfaction, high asset velocity and high profits. Such future is based on real time information and connected systems between trusted partners. Rather than a theoretical manuscript, the book is based on the experience and work of Linton, who is Chief Procurement and Supply Chain Officer at Flex. He is actually building and evolving such a supply chain and thus the book is a must read for every supply chain professional.

-Yossi Sheffi, Professor, MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics

The book on The Living Supply Chain is itself a great "living" reading on how to bring supply chain to a powerful living state. The idea of Live-Interactive-Velocity-Intelligent-Networked-Good is the foundation of how supply chains can be agile, adaptive and aligned. The book brings the AAA supply chain concepts to life. I congratulate the authors for producing this book that would be of value to every supply chain executive and practitioner.

-Hau Lee, Professor, Stanford University

The concept of the supply chain had a short but useful life. Much value has been unlocked in the last 30 or more years in the recognition that functions once thought of as discrete - procurement, logistics, materials management, etc. - were not only linked but also had mutual dependencies. However, as a practical matter, we have reached the limit of new insights from this one-dimensional model. Handfield and Linton's book explores a multi-dimensional model based on the biological concept of an ecosystem. This new way of thinking promises to yield vast amounts of additional insights that will enable the next wave of innovation in supply management.

-Tom Derry, President, Institute of Supply Management

Supply chains are the nervous system of the material world, a living universe of flows that propels the world economy forward. As this lucid book reveals, Flex is the supply chain's brain, evolving the global production system through technologies that promote transparency and trust. No matter what political obstacles emerge in the years ahead, supply chains will flourish and optimize the world economy for everyone's benefit.

-Parag Khanna, Author of "Connectography"

In an age when most organizations and functions are focused on the transition from human labor to AI and smart machines, Handfield and Linton looked at the modern supply chain and realized that it has come alive! Their global ecosystem view of the "living" supply chain emphasizes the need for speed, transparency, and alignment - particularly when there is a high level of dependency on suppliers for the creation of customer value.

-Kelly Barner, Owner & Editor, Buyers Meeting Point, LLC

Successful businesses are those that support the success of their customers. This book captures the essence of our volatile, uncertain world and the opportunities that exist for the commercially astute, organizationally integrated business. More important, it offers insight to the recipe for 21st century operations and the management of complex supply ecosystems.

-Tim Cummins, CEO, International Association of Commercial and Contract Management

A LIVING supply chain requires a living company. The authors make a great case for how Flex is creating a living company to thrive in the living supply chain.

-Tom Choi, Harold E. Fearon Eminent Scholar Chair of Purchasing Management, Arizona State University
Executive Director, CAPS Research

As it becomes more important to move faster and respond effectively to change, this book starts to explore some of the principles organizations can adopt to succeed in our "real time" world .

The world we're living in means it's more important than ever for companies to build hyper reactive supply chains. This book plots the path to success in our "real time" world .

-Alex Martinez, CEO, Procurement Leaders

Linton and Handfield chart the future of supply management from the perspective of an exemplar best practice in a winning firm that links a myriad of stakeholders in real time. Winners must move beyond restrictive chains to enlightened networks that understand and implement supply network speed, transparency and trust. The authors show you the why and what of such interdependent ecosystems. Simply put, supply networks resemble nature since success results from mutually beneficial, fast, autonomous, balanced and fair interactions. The future is here, but as William Gibson observed, it's not evenly distributed. A must read with a caution: This book is not for the faint of heart - you'll be exposed to radically new ways of thinking that, once accepted, can never be turned back.

-Joe Sandor, Hoagland-Metzler Professor of Purchasing and Supply Management, The Eli Broad School of Business, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University

A great book to understand the impact of today's digital transformation on global supply chains. Data is the new natural resource that is changing how Enterprises operate. When you consider that data is not only growing at incredible rates, but almost 80% of data is unstructured (think text, pictures and sensor data), getting your arms around all this data can be daunting. However, what is so exciting is that we now we have systems that can understand unstructured data and draw insights from all these vast data sources. This is where we are focused within IBM's Watson Supply Chain business. Leveraging cognitive systems to provide insights, intelligence and improved visibility.

-Jeanette Medlin Barlow, Vice President of Watson Supply Chain, IBM

This is one of the most inspiring and conceptually innovative books that I've read about supply chain management in a long time. It fuses the experience and ideas of a top supply chain executive with those of an academic guru on the subject to create a vision of the real-time, intelligent, collaborative and hyper-responsive supply chain. The term "living" nicely encapsulates the very essence of this supply chain about which the authors write with great erudition, eloquence and enthusiasm.

-Alan C. McKinnon, Professor of Logistics, Kühne Logistics University

Over my career in multiple large corporations I have often heard the term "End State Design" used in the context of Supply Chain design and technology enablement. The reality is that there is no "End State". To survive we need to have an adaptive supply chain and capability to both optimize and adapt simultaneously. Today the rate of change is just too fast, and those that master the ability to adapt their supply chains in response to the rapidly changing environment will be the winners. We need to embrace the rapid change in business models, embrace the fact that innovation by companies such as Uber & Airbnb can shift an entire industry on its back with minimal startup capital. This book begins to describe the ability to shift from functional silos to E2E Frictionless flow with the maturity to make E2E tradeoff decisions as a key enabler for success. Striking this balance whilst still keeping the technical depth and expertise in functional teams is a critical success factor and will only enabled through a transparent supply chain.

-Wayne Rothman, Vice President, Enterprise Supply Chain Planning, Johnson & Johnson

This book combines supply chain theory and practice research from Professor Handfield, one of the leading Supply Chain professors, with the real world experience of Tom Linton, leader of Flextronics supply chain a business that had to be agile to survive in a fast changing industry. This book blends insight with practical case study that will benefit supply chain professionals in their journey to excellence.

-Phil Priest, SVP GBS, Smith & Nephew

A fantastic read and excellent stories from Dr. Handfield and Tom. Years ago IBM embarked on a journey to develop our Transparent Supply Chain solution, to provide visibility,...