Supply Chain Studs

They come in bunches – or LTL as logistics folks call less than a full truck load. This morning I had breakfast with Chris Jones, EVP of Marketing and Services at Descartes and he regaled me with tales of supply chain excellence at his customers. Yesterday, my friend Tom Ryan wrote a guest column about how warehouse management systems are evolving.

Last week at Stanford I got to spend some time with Fedex executives and banter about the UPS case study in my book. I later got to sit down for a coffee with Tony Prophet, who runs global supply chain operations for HP’s massive PSG division. Fascinating to hear his world view of global manufacturing and logistics.

I passed along to Tony I was impressed how many supply chain/operational execs like him, and Tim Cook (now CEO) at Apple and Jim Miller at Google and countless others at Amazon and Facebook were prominent in my book.

In our industry we tend to mostly recognize product and marketing folks. A week of listening to tales of supply chain acrobatics, and I am convinced the unheralded heroes are the operational guys.