Supply Chain Management- Second Edition Description:

Supply Chain Management, Second Edition review:
4 stars (Price too high) - What I got was a second Indian Reprint, it costs around $4 in India, but I had to pay around $35 (shippment not inlcuded in this amount)! What an arbitrage!
5 stars (Good reference material for practitioners) - I found this book to be a great source of reference for managers. It is not really a good teaching source, as I thought it already starts with a fair amount of assumed previous knowledge and jargon. The sections that are most well developed are the ones on inventory management and transportation logistics, where I found examples that were directly applicable to situations I encountered in a retail environment. The portion on forecasting was not as useful, and the part on e-business seemed somewhat contrived. Overall, this is the best reference I have found that does not require a heavy amount of mathematical familiarity.
4 stars (Excellent book overall but...) - I refered and used this book in 2 grad level courses. The first was a business school course on SCM (with an above average quantitative focus for a B-school course) and again for a fully quatitative SC Engineering course. While I was initially very impressed with the book, using this over 2 semesters has raised a few gripes.For the qualitative issues on SCM {make no mistake, these 'fluff' aspects are very important} there is no other equal. Chopra and Meindl do an outstanding and comprehensive job. They also bring out the importance of using scientific, quantitative techniques for SCM. This however is where my gripes start.Having brought out the importance of quantitative tools for use in SCM, they do only a moderate job on explaining these tools. For example, the chapter on forecasting (only the most simple and commonly used models are explained) is unnnecessarily complex and confusing. The topics covered are adequete but need revision. Treatment of inventory management also could be more detailed and better explained.This is an excellent book but for more comprehensive learning (if you want an understanding of the quantitative aspects too), I think this book needs supplementing (say with course notes) or another book like "Modeling the Supply Chain" by Shapiro.