Procurement Professional is the official publication of CIPS Australasia

#122 - A new name for supply chains?

09 Mar 2010

Professor Martin Christopher explains that the term ‘supply chain’ was first coined in 1969 by a pair of busy consultants at Booz Allen Hamilton. Their term soon eclipsed the existing tardy label in use at the time – PDM: Physical Distribution management. Good job too.

But now, in 2010, the issue has resurfaced. Now supply chain management SCM is considered old hat, demeaning to a budding profession and insufficiently descriptive to the great value being added. In the past Martin has offered ‘demand chain management’ as a better descriptor. Certainly that is consistent with Dr John Gattorna’s work in “Living Supply Chains” where he suggests aligning the corporate organisation structure to segmented customer behaviour – as customer demand is driven by their particular needs and peculiar behaviours that differ by motivation and, therefore, need fulfilling differently based upon different purchase decision criteria

After two days of debate at the recent ‘Supply Chain Business Summit’ led by John Gattorna himself at MGSM in Macquarie University, the group of senior supply chain professionals has finally decided to risk being jargon-builders and have agreed on a new name for “supply chain management” – VALUE NETWORKS.

You heard it here first .... though the editor of magazine ‘Supply Chain Asia’ was present and will be claiming the scoop. John even promised to title his next book ‘value network management’    http://www.johngattorna.com  CIPSA members get a discount on his books too – go to  www.gowerpublishing.com/johngattorna and quote discount code G9AXZ35 apparently.  Martin Christopher’s latest book is actually called, “Logistics & SCM: Creating Value-Adding Networks”.

But then, Australia as a service based economy is more orientated to service chains. And ‘Service Networks’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Value networks it is then.

The Buyer – posted 9th March 2010  

The views of THE BUYER are personal and are not necessarily those of Procurement Professional magazine, BTTB Marketing nor CIPS.