8 ms·

Ask HN: How to self study management, especially supply chain management?

• hef19898 7y ago
  The first go-to book would be this one, if you ask me: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Managing-Supply-Chain-Student/dp/0073341525 https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Managing-Supply-Chain-Stude... Maybe you can get access to an e-book version of it. I have a more than decade old ediion at home, and while the some case studies and technologies maybe a little but dated, the overall principles haven't changed. And the book itelf is top-notch content. Older editions of eBay or Amazon should be fine, and also a ot cheaper I assume. I brought mine back from a vacation to India.
  • jbn 7y ago
    Reading Goldratt (recommended in other threads here) is a lot more fun than Simchi's book, though.
    • hef19898 7y ago
      Yeah, I wouldn't call Simchi fun to read neither. Still a good book covering the basics. I still enjoyed reading it, but I am a strange guy when it comes to SCM.
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    Hmmm a textbook more on the in-depth side, I'll try this after I read some of that more survey/overview stuff, thanks
• diffstrokes 7y ago
  MIT has a fantastic online SCM micro-masters program: https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/ https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/
  • barry-cotter 7y ago
    If you want to learn about business more generally, the kind of generalist stuff that’s in an MBA Josh Kaufman’s Personal MBA is a fantastic place to start, and has a recommended book to follow up on each topic it covers if you need more depth. https://personalmba.com/ https://personalmba.com/
    • caaaadr 7y ago
      Wow that's great, the reviews from Kevin Kelly, David Allen, and Ali Safavi really sealed the deal, I'll read this thank you!
• hutzlibu 7y ago
  Play rimworld or factoria .. Only half joking. I think the basic principles of efficient managing can be taught very good through such a game. It is really fun and challenging, to build up a beautiful flowing process. And then have it all a mess, because a accident happened and a key structure broke down and half your production ran out of storage and the other can't produce. So you adjust and assign and rebuild processes and then a key ressource runs out. So you need to find a new source of supply... So it is all about basic managing and supply chain. How to use the limit resources in the most efficient way and focus grow in a fine tuned manner. And how to keep track of all that in your head. A different thing is then of course to apply this knowledge in the real world. And this means mostly choosing, learning and understanding the right software. SAP is (sadly) used a lot. And millions of custom made software .. I actually believe there is a very big market for someone to come with a better software of managing this. All the solutions I have seen so far, I did not really like. But you have to use what is there and works now.
  • k__ 7y ago
    An online management course based on Rimworld would be awesome! :D
  • voortuckian 7y ago
    MIT's beer game is a classic one in supply chain: http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/beergame.html http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/beergame.html
    • jbn 7y ago
      Having had the beer game at MIT, I'd say it's the only action learning experience that is worth something. Fun.
• productivity900 7y ago
  Read 'The Goal' by Eli Goldratt - one of the best supply chain books ever written.
  • vasco 7y ago
    This book and "Critical Chain" by the same author are incredible. If you do or interact with any sort of release engineering it's great knowledge to have.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    Has anyone made a fan wait of The Goal is that removes all the terrible melodramatic/romantic filler? I don't need to learn how SCM affected someone's sex life.
• pgt 7y ago
  Whatever you do, Do Not start playing Factorio.
  • beckingz 7y ago
    Suggest disagreeing and committing. Though committing is not optional once you start. They call it Cracktorio for a reason.
• austincheney 7y ago
  https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN18450_ADP%204-0%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN1845... That link is the Army Sustainment doctrine. It is a high level generic description on the philosophy of logistics and support for a diversity of operating requirements across a variety of environments.
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    Wow this looks fascinating, the U.S. Army is probably one of the biggest organizations with very direct consequences for failure in these logistics aspects. Every once in a while I see HN users post these types of military publications, and a lot of them seem useful. How do you find these in the first place?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mvellandi 7y ago
  I graduated in international business and logistics 14 years ago, worked at a freight forwarder, customs broker, ocean carrier, and a manufacturer. Broadly, this topic can be broken up into 3 overlapping concerns: - Operations (product, plant, human/physical resources) - Supply Chain (production, network inflows/outflows) - Logistics (warehousing, transportation) All care about having reliable partners, quality, efficiency, and timing (procurement, production, and fulfillment). I recommend you do a combination of lightweight textbooks for a high level overview, (like Wiley "for dummies") and a few case study style books that provide history and deep context (like "The Goal" and "Lean Thinking" by James Womack). These last two books are classics dealing with physical production. However, don't overlook service operations like healthcare and military which are good examples where the end customers primary concern is strategic procurement and distribution. I don't have any recommendations for these industries but maybe someone else.
  • heymijo 7y ago
    > (like "The Goal"...These last two books are classics dealing with physical production. The Phoenix Project is a 2013 IT/DevOps version of The Goal [0]. It's an easy read that would be a complementary follow up to The Goal. It would help in understanding principles from The Goal outside of physical production. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-project https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-pro...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • mikorym 7y ago
    So, to put your summary in a diagram: p_1 p_2 o_1 -----> o_2 -----> o_3 v_1 v_2 p: the product v: the vessel o: the state, usually implies a location Operations is largely o, Supply chain is largely the facilitation of p, Logistics is largely the facilitation of v.
  • emptysands 7y ago
    I use four areas. BUY, MOVE, STORE and SUPPORT. The first three relate to your areas - procurement, logistics, operations. The last is things like quality control and Master data.
• BOOSTERHIDROGEN 7y ago
  same here, trying to understand stockpile management for coal
• zebrafish 7y ago
  You could go look up the syllabus for several top programs. Tennessee and Penn State come to mind. Get comfortable with big enterprise software like SAP or Oracle or at the very least NetSuite. You’ll need to understand some finance alongside operational jargon so things like microeconomics would be valuable (Kahn academy has a class). Some topics that you could google just off the top of my head would be sourcing, transportation, manufacturing, inventory management, distribution, sales.... actually maybe you could find some self directed six sigma courses? edit: here's a coursera course that looks like it covers all the basics: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/supply-chain-management https://www.coursera.org/specializations/supply-chain-manage...
  • suls 7y ago
    Came here to mention the same coursera course. It’s a good start.
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    Thanks for that Rutgers SCM MOOC, I'll try it out along with the MITx one. I'll also look up the syllabi for those programs, good idea.
• kesor 7y ago
  Start by reading this https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035GTHKA https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035GTHKA
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    Please don't hide stuff behind links. It's the spinoff to The Goal: Eliyahu M. Goldratt and 2 more Isn’t It Obvious?: A Business Novel on Retailing Using the Theory of Constraints
• chadmeister 7y ago
  Look up some Harvard Business Review Case Studies [1] to get some real world examples. Studying high level thoery out of books is pretty worthless IMO. Industries are very specialized and specific. This is really a field that is very difficult to learn without real world experience in it. 1. https://store.hbr.org/case-studies/ https://store.hbr.org/case-studies/
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    Wow there are lot of these, I wonder how to sift between all of them. This one [1] looks interesting just as a story [1] = https://store.hbr.org/product/do-you-really-think-we-are-so-stupid-a-letter-to-the-ceo-of-deutsche-telekom-a/ES1001 https://store.hbr.org/product/do-you-really-think-we-are-so-...
• darksaints 7y ago
  My background is SCM. Still passionate about it although I've shifted tangentially over time. If you just want an overview of the topic, I'd recommend these two books: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Materials-Management-Steve-Chapman/dp/0134156323 https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Materials-Management-Ste... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1260084841/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1260084841/ref=dp_ob_neva_mob... If you're highly technical and would like to learn how to abstract and solve some of the hardest problems in supply chain management, I would actually look into the field of Operations Research. It is basically mathematical modeling and optimization of real world operational and logistics problems. It's so mathematically oriented that it typically is in the mathematics or science departments in universities, as opposed to management. But it is very much an applied specialization of math, directly applicable to supply chain management and other business/logistics areas. Interestingly, the bullwhip effect is extremely similar to another problem that a lot of people here have a casual interest in: the traveling wave phenomenon of traffic. The requisite similarities are the same. In order for the pattern to appear, there have to be independent actors with cascading delays in the aquisition of information about the future, and a mismatch in the ability to stop production (decelerate) and start production (accelerate). The severity of those traveling waves may change with changes in the severity of the required conditions, but as long as those conditions exist, the traveling waves will always occur. Interesting consequences also apply. It is mathematically provable that autonomously controlled vehicles cannot get rid of traveling traffic waves. There will always be a delay in information about what lies ahead, whether it is via the limitations of line of sight, or the latency of radio-based communication. And production cars will always stop faster than they accelerate, because stopping has a safety necessity that doesn't exist for acceleration. Autonomous cars may have faster reaction times than humans, but at highway speeds reaction times are typically 20% or less of stopping times. Therefore they can slightly mitigate the problem. However, notice how everybody talks about how autonomous cars can travel closer together. What this effectively means is that cars can travel closer to the extent that their reaction times are better. This improves unperterbed throughput slightly, but it would actually make the shock-induced traveling waves worse. All it takes is for a stray plastic bag to wander into the roadway and a car to think it's a dog and brake for it. The cars closest to it stop extremely fast but then accelerate slower than they decelerated. Cascading information delays ensure that the wave continues to travel and increases in severity until it reaches some location where buffer spaces are large enough to absorb the wave (due to lower traffic density). The supply chain parallel problem emphasizes the importance of inventory. Running super lean on inventory can mean lower costs and higher throughput, but it exacerbates the bullwhip effect substantially.
• pjot 7y ago
  I have a masters in supply chain - a large portion of that degree as well as a topic that overlaps math and computer science is operations research [0]. Google has some pretty cool open-source libraries [1] for working with OR type problems as well. Their guide explains some common problems from a high level and should give you some more keywords and topics to dive into as well. I'd also recommend MIT's SCM course [2], it has a solid curriculum [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research [1] https://developers.google.com/optimization/introduction/overview https://developers.google.com/optimization/introduction/over... [2] https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/ https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/
  • fizixer 7y ago
    I like what you said in the first line. Personally, I'm less interested in the 'management' aspect of this topic, and more interested in the "process" or the idea, so to speak. I think supply chain is a big idea and a big topic in itself, and how you manage it, when put in charge of human labor, in only one part of it. And I think there is some relation between 'supply chain' and 'concurrency' in CS.
    • hef19898 7y ago
      There is a certain tendency I see, especially in recent grads in the SCM, of learning a lot of operations research. Which totally valid, these gals and guys are running circles around me as gar as big data and data science is concerned. One should not forget so, that supply chains and logistics are still running on a huge amount of physical paper. Process is still king. The basic principles don't change simply because thing become digital. Take a classic Kanban system. That still runs on a piece of cardboard. Using fax to sent Kanban cards around is probably all the amount of digitalization that needs. And Kanbans are still one of the most robust solutions around. From what I learned about CS so far, both fields are very logical. So go ahead and learn about the idea. Interesting field, and one that can only benefit from innovative solutions!
      • MrK93 7y ago
• mathnmusic 7y ago
  You can find some curated resources on supply chain here: https://learnawesome.org/topics/e0ca877f-7dd4-467a-83b2-efa177bce1ea-supply-chain https://learnawesome.org/topics/e0ca877f-7dd4-467a-83b2-efa1...
• barryrandall 7y ago
  I'd recommend starting with the Wikipedia page on Operations Research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research It's a great summary of the major domains involved in operations research/management science/decision science. It definitely helps with the "what do I even search for" part of your question.
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    I like that the Wikipedia article has the history included before going into links to more specific topics. This'll help give me one of those broader level overviews, thanks.
• hluska 7y ago
  If you’re interested in a good entry point, undergraduate business business programs often call that first class “Production and Operations Management” or a close variant. I haven’t been a business student in a very long time, but back then ambitious students would often do a six course semester where they would do a full load at my school and grab POM via distance learning. That school and their POM class still exist. https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mgsc/mgsc368.php https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mgsc/mgsc368.php You’ll be able to get some terms to search for there, find a textbook and I’d bet anything that if you started plugging chapter titles into YouTube, you could find lectures. I was too busy starting businesses in business school to have been a very good business student so I can’t claim any expertise on subfields within POM. As far as what they teach, it depends a lot on the exact part of POM you get into. Some is pure mathematical analysis but there is a lot of overlap with cost accounting, human resources and marketing. The projection side is part math, part marketing and part guesswork. The costing side gets really deep into accounting and Human Resources. Some subfields focus heavily on union and industrial relations. You’ll find subfields that delve into OH&S for reasons you don’t want to think too deeply about.
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    > If you’re interested in a good entry point, undergraduate business business programs often call that first class “Production and Operations Management” or a close variant. I'll try that search term > You’ll be able to get some terms to search for there, find a textbook and I’d bet anything that if you started plugging chapter titles into YouTube, you could find lectures. I'll take a look at the syllabus for that Atahabascau course.
• mrkus 7y ago
  For a textbook approach, both nigel slack (Operations Management) and Jacobs/Chase (SCM) are worth a look.
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    Thanks, I'll check those out
• momentmaker 7y ago
  Check out this demo (Radish34) of a supply chain management scenario brought up by EY and other enterprises involved: https://docs.baseline-protocol.org/radish34/radish34-explained https://docs.baseline-protocol.org/radish34/radish34-explain...
• ericalexander0 7y ago
  Echoing recommendations for The Goal & The Phoenix Project. Beyond The Goal is also a great resource. More of a lecture by Goldratt that covers TOC and Critical Chain. He was a very entertaining speaker.
• SCM-Enthusiast 7y ago
  I work on the supply chain, capital expenditure team at an electric car company and I can tell you none of the books listed below will help you. Get an internship or offer to work for someone for free. Supply Chain Management is one of those things that is best learned on the job. You need to 'learn' your supply base/ vendors who do good work, you need to learn how to negotiate things like payment terms instead of just price, how to effectively track you 100+ things you need to buy that day. All the books listed below are great if you are a factory production manager, but will never help you in an entry level supply chain job.
  • caaaadr 7y ago
    I suppose whether or not these books apply depends a lot on where my life takes me. But you are right about the concrete practice, just like with learning a new programming language, the only way to internalize it is to do a project with it that preferably has a real pressure and deadline, i.e. a job. I'll have to see if I can try and apply the concepts no matter what industry I'm in.