Flow: How the Best Supply Chains Thrive

Review\n"Rob Handfield and Tom Linton shed a bright light on the most overlooked reality in the supply chain world: movement is money. This supply chain duo makes a compelling case that we will face big challenges in our increasingly VUCA world, where the physical realities – and physics – of supply chains will be pushed to the limit. A big takeaway is clear: the stakes are high, but the rewards will be great for those who can build and maintain resilient supply chains." -- Jason Schenker, Author of Futureproof Supply Chain and Chairman of The Futurist Institute\n"This is a great read for operations strategists and practitioners alike, who are looking to understand how to think through and navigate complexities of supply chain design. Leaning on creative parallels to fundamental laws that govern science, the book provides great insights into how one should think of optimization and evolution of supply chains in today’s world." -- Joydeep Ganguly, Chief Operating Officer, Gilead Science\n"The use of flows to explain and structure supply chain strategies and operations offers a powerful lens to integrate theories originated from physical laws with the evolving realities of supply chains. It provides the reader with insights and perspectives on how to innovate in this dynamic world." -- Hau Lee, Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology, Stanford Graduate School of Business\n"Linton and Handfield provide another, and timely, insightful look into the roots of supply chain performance. In a post-global world the ‘laws’ they reveal are essential reading to those wanting to understand or practice supply chain management." -- Yossi Sheffi, Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of A Shot in the Arm\n"By recognizing our supply chain’s composition, learning its behaviors and optimizing it responsibly, we can be more resilient to unforeseen challenges and get ahead of discoverable, predictable changes." -- Bob Murphy, VP Supply Chain & Chief Procurement Officer, IBM\n"Linton and Handfield continue to challenge conventional supply chain heuristics. Even this deep into the twenty-first　century, supply chains are too frequently understood – and managed – as a sequence of transactions. And they are too frequently managed retroactively, in response to events, rather than proactively, anticipating events. Applying principles from the physics of flow systems, the authors argue that our supply networks cannot remain rigid and static, but must evolve over time. This new conceptual approach importantly includes not just anticipating supply disruptions (i.e., supply risk) but also understanding changing demand signals, an often overlooked element of managing supply networks. Finally, this new way of thinking shifts attention from last century’s static financial metric – i.e., cost. In this new way of understanding supply systems, the authors focus on free cash flow. An emphasis on cost ignores the many other ways in which companies inadvertently destroyed value, by increasing inventories, or ignoring obsolescence, or failing to understand how freight delays extended the cash conversion cycle. In contrast, free cash flow incorporates all these elements of working capital, allowing companies to understand better how their supply ecosystems create value holistically." -- Tom Derry, Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Supply Management\n"Once again, Linton and Handfield provide great insight for today’s C-suite, enabling them to build out actionable pathways for improved supply chain decision making. The authors’ expertise and wisdom is shared throughout the book and is powerful for accelerating the flow and optimizing financial results." -- Chris Collier, retired Chief Financial Officer, Flex\n"Supply chains are the most complex system of transactions in our human civilization. Market principles of supply and demand bring them to life, but the physics of flow and friction ex