Supply Chain View

UPDATE 20/03/08: Since I wrote this post, Hopp has published a print version of the book with McGraw-Hill and moved from Northwestern to the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. As a result, the download that was available free from the Northwestern website is no longer available. Apologies to anyone who has gone on a wild goose chase.

—-

I’m a real enthusiast for Wallace Hopp and Mark Spearman’s book Factory Physics. The authors have a refreshing approach to their subject: they explain why certain approaches work and others don’t, and they explain why problems occur. This does lead to a long and in places difficult book. But that is the price you pay for going further than the simplified prescriptions for success that fill too many business books.

So here is some excellent news: Professor Hopp’s book Supply Chain Science is available as a free download on Northwestern’s website. This volume – weighing in at a modest 157 pages – was written in 2003 and covers some of the same ground as Factory Physics but with a focus on the broader supply chain. I suspect this is a course text and that Prof. Hopp’s students are well aware of its existence on the web, but I have not seen it publicised elsewhere.

A peak inside

I have only had time to skim the book, but a couple of positive points stand out. The first is that the theory is punctuated with real case studies, which helps ground the discussion in reality. Factory Physics has a lot of examples, but they are mostly of the simplified variety, designed as learning tools to develop insight rather than describing approaches in practice.

The second point is that Hopp has refined his explanation of Pull. Previously he has suggested that one of the attributes of Pull is that it is a make-to-stock system. I know from lengthy discussions with my colleagues that this idea is a very hard sell. Hopp retreats from this now on the grounds that Pull processes often exist without finished goods stocks, but gives a clear explanation of why classic MRP a make-to-order system. (Hopp points out that it is common in practitioner literature to equate – erroneously – Pull with make-to-order.)

I notice too that a 3rd edition of Factory Physics is now out in hardback – I expect some of these revisions to have filtered into that book too. However, if you don’t want to spend in excess of £100 on that, you could do much worse than download the pdf of Supply Chain Science without paying a penny. Who says nothing of value comes for free?

Links

http://www.bus.umich.edu/FacultyBios/FacultyBio.asp?id=000863428 – Wallace Hopp
http://www.bus.umich.edu/ – Ross School at Michigan University