[.ca] The Purchasing Machine: How the Top Ten Companies Use ... (ISBN 0684857766)

From Amazon.co.uk:
The Purchasing Machine, by supply management professionals Dave Nelson, Patricia E Moody and Jonathan Stegner, presents a strong argument for the growing importance of this highly specialised facet of the manufacturing process--incorporating "purchasing, money and material flows, ownership of acquisition and sourcing strategies, and even intellectual property movement and control"--along with a series of related measures that could carry companies to the top in years ahead. It also focuses on the leadership skills necessary to make them a reality. The authors admit that their "best practice companies" (American Express, Flextronics, Whirlpool, Harley-Davidson, IBM, John Deere, Honda of America, Sun Microsystems, SmithKline Beecham, and Daimler/Chrysler) aren't perfect in all areas, as evidenced by the recent tribulations of the latter automaker. But each has learned to do a particular thing, such as customer relations or systems innovations, particularly well, and the authors describe them and ways they might help others cut costs and turn resultant savings into "lower consumer prices, exciting products or fatter shareholder returns." Nelson, Moody and Stegner identify 20 of these best practices (such as Training, Supplier Information Sharing, and Loaned Executives), and show how "the discipline of acquiring and moving material" can be turned to strategic advantage. --Howard Rothman

Very Average:
As a purchasing professional, I turned to this book to gain insight to new or advanced purchasing practices that might help me in my work and I was very enthusiastic about the book when I began reading it. Instead of new knowledge, I found repetitive stories about the mass production environments in the automotive and related industries. Although some new thoughts or ideas were presented, I did not feel as if this book taught me anything novel or cutting edge. It is simply a repeat of purchasing concepts that can be found in many other operations or supply chain books flavored with managerial buzz words and the self-glorifying personal success stories of the authors and the companies they work for. If you work in a job shop environment or for a small to medium size business, this book is virtually useless. If you are in a huge mass production environment with a large budget, it might be of some value, but my guess is that you would already be familiar with the concepts presented.

Purchasing Machine : How the Top 10 Companies Use Best Pract:
I am fortunate in that I received a copy of this book for review prior to the publication and can only suggest that if you read a few business books this year read this one. You will not only be able to relate to several of the best practices but you will be able to apply one or more of them in your organization and make a positive bottom line impact.

Packed With Knowledge!:
One of this book's mantras is that purchasing is a lot more important these days than in decades past. The authors, Dave Nelson, Patricia Moody and Jonathon Stegner, have spent decades in the field of purchasing. Their principal argument is that now that most companies outsource their equipment and even their parts (for example, very few Dell parts are made in-house), purchasing has become not only more important, but a potential source of incredible savings. The dozen companies profiled in this book - which is meant to detail the best practices in purchasing worldwide - have realized millions of dollars in savings simply by optimizing supply-chain management. The authors emphasize that this isn't an individual task. Change in purchasing management requires an internal team and management support. We \o...\c recommend this book not only to purchasing managers, but to all corporate executives, any of whom will glean some invaluable pointers about how to save money in day-to-day operations.

Lots of words, little content:
Ifyou are looking for a "how to" book, look somewhere else. This book appears to have only general rules of the thumbs , wrapped in lots of manager lingo (people resource allocation, globalization, etc.) Overal very disapointing. The only positive side are the occasional industry examples, but there are not enough of them to make this book a good buy.

And where is the beef?:
Based on an extensive research project this book promises a lot but delivers nothing. The first thing that you have to recognize is that there is hardly any structure at all. Repitions abound without adding any value. The style of writing is close to unbearable - they could have put the contents into a fourth of the pages. The cases are sketchy at best; they claim to offer best practices but are nothing new. The book tries to look into the future and puts forward a wildly speculative view of what the authors think lies ahead; again they do not offer a vision but describe the status quo in future tense. For people who like real satire I recommend Moody's Harley Davidson poem! Summary: Only recommended for those who need to own every book on the subject...