My friends Joe Tillman and Kate Vitasek have written a very timely article discussing the "perfect order." What they point out is that, while service providers may have "perfect order fulfillment" as their goal, you won't get there if you don't have as your measure of perfection the same measure as your customer.

They do use a very timely approach, expressing the perfect order in terms that would satsify Ralphie, from "A Christmas Story." The article is well worth your read.

Are you a Supply Chain Professional that is on Twitter? We are developing a community of Supply Chain folks that are twitter. We are simply registering our Twitter name, and SC areas of interest, in a Google form, and then when you view the published form, you can see all those who have also "self-identified" as Supply Chain Twitterers.

I was involved in a research effort where we explored industry “best practices” in achieving “Outcome Focused Performance.” In a nutshell, we were trying to discover how the best organizations subjugate what they do to the Outcome (with a capital O) that they hoped to achieve.

DC Velocity has published a great article pointing out the way in which logistics (and by extension, supply chain management) comes through time and time again--and occasionally with a high profile effort. In this case, the author writes about the logistics efforts that were essential to the successful roll-out of the latest, and final, Harry Potter book.

Many of you have recently found this site, either through comments on Linked-In, or other sources. I wanted to take a minute to welcome you to this site, and ask that you take a minute to look around, and ask yourself: "How can I contribute, and help the Supply Chain Community?"

I have a few ideas, and I wanted to share them with you.

First, this site is provided as a free service to professionals and academics in the Supply Chain and Logistics arenas to encourage the exchange of ideas, and hopefully foster creativity, and friendships. That said, how can YOU help?

For those of you that have been wondering how we can have serious discussions on this board, without the ability to embed Math Equations (yeah, I know--the FIRST thought you had!) I have now included the latest in website goodness--the Math Equation Editor!

So if you want to display:

For more information on how to format the equations for printing, visit this site at forkosh.com What is important to remember though, is that you don't use the img tag, but rather, use the tex tag (see the specific information on the tags

I have decided to add a "new" feature to this site: Book Clubs.

I have created a forum for the discussion of "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, and this is a prelude to our discussion of ""Made to Stick" by the Heath brothers.

Visit the forums (you can click on the Forum tab above!) and join the discussion, or Start your Own thread about The Tipping Point! What did you like? What did you find revealing? What do you think just "isn't all that?"

SB