What is supply chain orchestration? It's an outsourced service that some use in fragmented supply markets to have someone else select and manage a supply chain for each purchase order. For example, a retailer wants to offer a supply of pants in various styles and sizes. Rather than bid among hundreds of suppliers for raw material, zippers, buttons, sewing, and packaging, the retailer might hire a supply chain orchestrator to perform those roles for a fixed price per garment. Although buying the supplies well would save some money, the big gain comes in putting the supplies together so efficiently that large costs like markdowns, needing lots of inventory in shipment, and last minute air freight are reduced.

Who does this sort of thing? Li & Fung, an eight-billion-dollar firm is in this business, and co-authors Dr. Victor K. Fung and Dr. William K. Fung share their perspectives among plenty of examples of how others try to perform the same functions with less good results.

Many such books end up seeming like advertisements for the firm being described in part, but Competing in a Flat World escapes that narrow message with plenty of description of general principles for strategy and operations. The key differences between traditional management efforts and this new business model are summarized on page 194 in table 12-1. If you don't have time to read the whole book, start with that exhibit.

The book's insights build on the observations of Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat in describing the implications for business of converging technology, globalization, and the reduced effect of distances on costs and performance. If you thought that the Friedman book was interesting, this one will fascinate you more by drawing out more valuable points.

Because of the involvement of Wharton professor, Yoram (Jerry) Wind, the book has a professional academic feel without being inaccessible. There are many figures to illustrate the conceptual points that make the book easier to comprehend.

I was pleased to see that the authors appreciated that being good at supply chain orchestration will eventually require a focus on providing the same kinds of products to customers in the nations who are the low-cost producers for the offerings . . . a point that most Western-based businesses miss. I was also glad to see that the book drew on the idea of global contests to develop better models, but the discussion was pretty perfunctory. In many cases, such contests will be more important in global competition than supply chain orchestration will be.

I thought that the book didn't go far enough into getting into the specifics of how knowledge is acquired, tested, validated, retested, and distributed into a large organization that is a supply chain orchestrator. As a result, it's hard to know how important the value-added is for customers.

Many global commodities trading companies have often played similar roles in acquiring and distributing food, energy, and metals. I was surprised that the book ignored those organizations which provide similar streams of capability.

But for an introduction to network orchestration issues and opportunities, it would be hard to find a better book today.

I purchased this book after reading The World is Flat by Friedman. I was looking for a more practical guide to competing in the "flat world". This book is not a practial guide! It only serves to affirm Friedmans notion of a flat world and provides what ammounts to one companies success within the flat world. Unlike Friedman's book, this book gives very limited examples of successful companies that have prospered in the Flat World.

Now for some positive - It does show you that at least one company can compete successfully in this flat world. Furthermore, it coins the term "Network Orchestration" (although this term may have already been in use) to describe the neccesary skills required to compete in this new world. It does provide a small framework to achieve success in the new world at the end of the book that incorporates some specific "things" to do to foster success but give no indepth detail on really how to accoplish this task.

This book would get a 4 if Fung really expaned on the "NETWORK" he describes and provided detailed "do's and don'ts" for the network.