For me, the ‘how’ we make supply chain more appealing and familiar is simply by continuing to expose more and more businesses to the value created by effective supply chain management.
It’s still an evolving ‘science’; after all ‘supply chain management did not exist as a recognised discipline until the late 1980′s/early ’90′s. And, the good news is that, compared to say 10 years ago, C level execs are far more aware of the need for an efficient supply chain. Still a long way to go though, no doubt!

Not sure if I can help you with your quest for a concise and meaningful definition of Supply Chain Management. What I can share is a beautifully written article on what a logistician is. It is clearly written in a military context and quite a few years ago. Yet, it still holds truth in todays corporate world.

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The Logistician

Logisticians are a sad and embittered race of men who are very much in demand in war, and who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace. They deal only in facts, but must work for men who merchant in theories. They emerge during war because war is very much a fact. They disappear in peace because peace is mostly theory. The people who merchant in theories, and who employ logisticians in war and ignore them in peace, are generals.
Generals are a happily blessed race who radiate confidence and power. They feed only on ambrosia and drink only nectar. In peace, they stride confidently and can invade a world simply by sweeping their hands grandly over a map, pointing their fingers decisively up terrain corridors, and blocking defiles and obstacles with the sides of their hands. In war, they must stride more slowly because each general has a logistician riding on his back and he knows that, at any moment, the logistician may lean forward and whisper: “No, you can’t do that.” Generals fear logisticians in war and, in peace, generals try to forget logisticians.
Romping along beside generals are strategists and tacticians. Logisticians despise strategists and technicians. Strategists and tacticians do not know about logisticians until they grow up to be generals – which they usually do.
Sometimes a logistician becomes a general. If he does, he must associate with generals whom he hates; he has a retinue of strategist and tacticians whom he despises; and, on his back, is a logistician whom he fears. This is why logisticians who become generals always have ulcers and cannot eat their ambrosia.

- Author unknown
Made available by Major William K. Bawden, RCAF

Perhaps it’s the name. Does it really sound like a profession? “Logistics” seems to get a better response. Perhaps it is just the fact that our area is so large, so diverse, and often invisible to someone who stands outside it. Even to those within a company where that function is alive and well, it is the last on the list of internal functions they recall.

I agree with Richard, that this must be sheeted back to us. Somehow we need to make it more precise, more appealing, more familiar, both in the corporate world and to the general public. Trouble is, how?