In a fiercely aggressive global market, companies are competing to provide their customers with leading-edge technology, superior quality, and outstanding service more quickly and more cheaply than ever. More than mere cost-cutting, genuine cost management is the key to a more profitable and more efficient company, and it is the single element that has made the most successful companies stronger and more competitive than ever. Whether you are a mid-level or senior manager, you have probably been asked at some point to take your own company's costs down by 5 percent, 10 percent, or even 50 percent. With the tremendous pressure that comes with cost management, you need to find an effective, proven way to find savings. Supply Chain Cost Management will give you the tools you need to take the exorbitant costs from your supply chain, while improving your customer relationships and sharpening your competitive edge.

Supply chain expert Jimmy Anklesaria has spent years helping top companies like IBM, Nokia, Kodak, American Airlines, and Motorola save hundreds of millions of dollars in costs. Now he shows you how you can do the same with his proven, trademarked AIM & DRIVE® process. Filled with examples of companies that have made this process work, this book outlines some of the problems with cost management today and lays out a checklist for successfully implementing the process. With a straight-forward, easy-to-understand approach, Anklesaria walks you through the eight-step AIM & DRIVE® process, and shows you how to select the right team to develop strategies and set goals, identify critical costs, and develop and define a comprehensive list of cost-drivers. Following the concepts of cost management, he shows how any company can gain the kind of efficiency and cost-advantage that Toyota, Honda, and John Deere have enjoyed for years. Managers will learn how to:

• Identify ways to improve efficiency and productivity by pinpointing critical costs in the supply chain
• Measure secondary and tertiary costs
• Reduce, eliminate, or change activities that elevate costs
• Create clear and detailed action plans
• Monitor performance and document results
• Improve and leverage the cost management process

Complete with checklists, sample exercises, and enlightening case studies, this unique plan gives managers a clear roadmap for sustaining profitability for years to come. The only book of its kind, Supply Chain Cost Management will enable companies to streamline their processes without alienating their customers or compromising their quality.

Jimmy Anklesaria is an international authority on supply chain cost management. He conducts seminars and workshops for Fortune 500 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, Nokia, Chevron, BP, T-Mobile, Texas Instruments, Philips, Ango-American, and many more. He lives in Del Mar, California.