Supply Chain Architecture: A Blueprint for Networking the Flow of Material, Information and Cash

Citation

Graham, G. (2005), "Supply Chain Architecture: A Blueprint for Networking the Flow of Material, Information and Cash", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 25 No. 11, pp. 1156-1156. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443570510626934

Supply chain architecture by William Walker is a very practitioner, oriented work, which has been developed for purchasing managers in supply chain management and related activities. Walker draws on his experience and solid industrial background to offer the academic reader plenty of practical illustrations, mini‐cases and scenarios for teaching purposes. He also presents three storylines, a sort of “soaped” version of Goldratt's “The Goal” and “The Race”, but these sit rather uncomfortably with the more technical material.

Walker's position is that you can draw much from common sense solutions to problems, from a proven industrial application, and from the real‐life experiences of practitioners. This raises the question of the need for him to continually present largely academic and theoretical blueprints to supply chain managers, in their quest for the “holy grail” (the linking of integration to competitiveness in network design). He, perhaps optimistically, claims that five key principles (velocity, variability, vocalise, visualise and value) are a remedy to existing supply chain network design problems. Though it seems these problems are largely hypothetical, stories even, because the evidence from real‐life examples is not presented and the mechanics of the remedy are rather unclear. The major failing of Walker's book is that it contains two quite distinct works that continually slice‐up any concerted development of the content.

Walkers theoretical position on networks is primarily procedural, technical and very US based – highlighting competitive advantage and value. He does not consider many of the innovative and creative developments grounded in sociology, anthropology and psychology – from writers such as Gadde and Hakannson of the European school. In academic circles this significantly inhibits the usefulness of his work to researchers and academics at the cutting edge of the networking field. Perhaps ironically, it is this literature that provides a better fit to the plots of the three storylines.