
A boring book with nothing new to share - This book offers nothing new in concepts nor does it necessarily make it an interesting reading. You will immediately notice that the authors have just tried to add a lot of pages to the text by stating the same things over and over and over and over. Redundancy is the mantra of this book. I would not pay more than $25 for this book as all it offers is a very simple description and overview of the Purchasing function and Supply Chain Management. There are a lot of better books out there in the market than this one. So, don t waste your money please.
Not so hot - The book seems to repeat the same things across few chapters example is role of purchasing and different pro s and con s. The recommended practices and business cases are nice to read, but many of those practices got many companies in trouble. Example: book recommends giving procurement cards to all employee and giving them approvals to buy things under $50 to minimize purchasing costs of office supplies and such. Result is that every employee has a stash of everything and huge amount of money is wasted. Additionally, what is recommended by the book is contradicted by its business cases. Example: companies should develop and work in a trusted relationship with its suppliers to achieve most benefits for both. This would include things like vendors performing statistical quality control etc. Next thing is a business case that shows how a company should quality inspect all of its purchases. This seems to be a problem.I think this book is a good intro to supply chain and has some ideas to get you started, but too much energy is wasted figuring out what the tried and recommended approaches are.
Great reference work - If you want one book explaining state-of-the-art thinking in procurement, this is the one. It has chapters on every important topic. It s not a book I would choose to read from beginning to end to learn about purchasing (unless I were a University student) but it s a good starting point for looking deeper into many topics.
Very good vision - One of the best of its type - good mix of strategic and tactical. could have been shorter