Straight to the Bottom Line—An Executive's Roadmap to World Class Supply Management

During the past 20 years, the procurement and supply chain profession has radically evolved. Once a tactical and back-office function, it is now a strategic business opportunity that can be fundamental to the success of any organization. A few leading companies have achieved an enormous competitive advantage and outstanding bottom-line performance by incorporating a procurement and supply chain strategy into their core corporate strategy. Why haven’t more companies seized this same opportunity? The reason is very simple: a lack of understanding at the senior executive level. Virtually all books on procurement and supply chain have been written for the day-to-day practitioner. Now, there is a book to explain this opportunity to all corporate executives, and also illustrate the leadership role the senior executive needs to play. Straight to the Bottom Line will enable senior corporate executives to turn the enormous top-line and bottom-line potential of supply chain and procurement into reality.

Robert Rudzki currently serves as Executive Vice President, CFO and Treasurer for Promet Energy Partners and provides advice to companies seeking to improve their corporate performance through his consulting firm, Greybeard Advisors LLC. In 2001, Robert joined Bayer Corporation as Senior Vice President, Materials Management and Chief Procurement Officer. In this capacity, he oversaw supply chain and procurement activities in the NAFTA Region for Bayer and led a nationally-recognized transformation effort. He has been a frequent speaker at professional conferences and associations, and is a visiting lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University’s Graduate School of Business. Doug Smock was the former Editor-in-Chief of Purchasing Magazine. Under his leadership, Purchasing Magazine received five national awards for editorial excellence from the American Society of Business Press Editors. No other publication in this field has ever won even one of these awards. During his career, he also served as Chief Editor of Plastics World and Associate Publisher of Modern Mold and Tooling. He founded and produced the Urethanes Report and High-Tech Molding newsletters and has won or supervised staffs that earned three Jesse Neal awards – one of the most prized awards in the industry that recognizes editorial excellence in independent business publications. Mike Katzorke currently serves as Vice President Supply Chain Management with Smiths Aerospace. Mike is a business process improvement professional with more than 20 years of leadership experience in operations, materials, manufacturing, quality, systems, and strategic supply chain management. Prior to joining Smiths in December 2003, he was with Cessna Aircraft Company as Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Management. He has participated and led in the application of Malcolm Baldrige, Lean, and Six Sigma tools in integrated improvement processes at three Fortune 100 companies. Shelley Stewart, Jr. is Vice President of Supply Chain at Tyco, where he is responsible for $15 billion in spending and leads cross divisional sourcing teams in an effort to reduce procurement costs throughout Tyco by $1 billion by 2006. Shelley is also responsible for promoting best practices across the company’s supply chain organization. Prior to joining Tyco, Shelley was Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Management at Invensys plc, headquartered in London. He is currently a member of the Conference Board’s Supply Chain Council and sits on the visiting Board of Directors at Howard University’s School of Business.