Top 10 Must-Read Supply Chain Management Books for 2025!
Updated on Jun 17, 2025 | 19 min read | 9.14K+ views
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Updated on Jun 17, 2025 | 19 min read | 9.14K+ views
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Latest Update: Shein and Reliance Retail are teaming up to sell India-made Shein-branded clothes internationally within a year. This partnership not only strengthens India’s position as a manufacturing hub but also diversifies Shein’s supply chain amidst rising U.S. tariffs. A significant shift that’s transforming global fashion logistics! |
The top Supply Chain Management books for 2025 include The Supply Chain Revolution by Suman Sarkar. It teaches you how to integrate AI, blockchain, and IoT to enhance supply chain efficiency, transparency, and agility.
By reading this blog, you'll discover the top 10 books that will help you improve inventory management, forecasting, and logistics. These books offer actionable insights and practical applications, enabling you to optimize your supply chain operations and stay ahead of the competition.
Imagine working at a large retail company like Reliance Retail, where managing inventory across thousands of stores using a database management system (DBMS) is critical. Stockouts, excess inventory, and inefficient logistics continue to be persistent challenges that directly impact profitability and customer satisfaction.
By reading the supply chain management books listed below, you can gain valuable insights into improving demand forecasting, optimizing warehouse management, and using technology for real-time tracking.
If you're aiming to manage modern, data-driven supply chains efficiently, these upGrad management courses can help you build the right skills.
Now, let’s explore the top books that can help you transform your supply chain operations!
(Source: Amazon)
Author: Suman Sarkar
In The Supply Chain Revolution, Suman Sarkar presents a comprehensive guide to navigating the future of supply chains through digital technologies. The book emphasizes the importance of adopting technologies such as AI, blockchain, and IoT to make supply chains more agile and responsive.
Sarkar highlights how traditional supply chains are evolving into digital ecosystems and provides actionable steps for businesses to leverage these tools.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
This book directly addresses the inefficiencies of traditional, manual supply chains. By exploring digital technologies, it offers clear solutions to improve visibility, accuracy, and speed in operations. The key challenge it addresses is creating a future-ready supply chain that can respond quickly to market changes.
Real-World Use Case:
A business dealing with inefficient order processing can apply AI-driven inventory management and use blockchain for real-time tracking of goods. This would improve stock accuracy and reduce delays during peak seasons, ensuring better service to customers.
(Source: Amazon)
Author: Sunil Chopra & Peter Meindl
This is one of the most foundational Supply Chain Management books, offering a thorough understanding of the strategies and frameworks necessary for effective supply chain planning and operations.
Chopra and Meindl discuss supply chain integration, demand forecasting, procurement, and risk management, while focusing on global supply chains. Their models are used by many professionals to build optimized and cost-effective supply chains.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
This book addresses the issue of aligning supply chain strategies with overall business strategies. Many companies struggle with inefficiencies due to poorly designed operations or misaligned goals, which this book aims to resolve by providing specific, actionable steps for integration.
Real-World Use Case:
For global companies managing multiple suppliers, this book helps align procurement and distribution with long-term strategic goals. By applying natural language processing (NLP) tools to supplier contracts, teams can extract key terms, automate compliance checks, and streamline vendor selection processes. This improves efficiency, reduces risks, and ensures consistent performance across complex, multi-regional supply chain operations.
(Source: Amazon)
Author: Brad Stone
Brad Stone’s book provides a detailed history of Amazon’s rise and places a significant focus on its supply chain strategies. Amazon has revolutionized supply chain management through innovation, automation, and customer-centric logistics.
Stone outlines how Jeff Bezos built Amazon’s global network of fulfillment centers and distribution methods, enabling fast delivery and scaling to meet global demand.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
This book addresses the challenges of scaling a supply chain while maintaining operational efficiency. For businesses, particularly e-commerce platforms, it shows how Amazon’s strategies can be adapted to manage a complex, rapidly growing supply chain.
Real-World Use Case:
If you run a fast-growing e-commerce business, this book offers insights to scale operations using automation and data-driven logistics. By using AWS services like AWS Lambda, you can automate order processing, real-time inventory updates, and shipping coordination. This approach reduces lead times, improves fulfillment accuracy, and supports scalable growth without compromising service quality.
(Source: Amazon)
Author: Martin Christopher
This book is a comprehensive guide to understanding the logistics side of supply chain management. Martin Christopher’s approach focuses on how logistics decisions influence the broader supply chain, covering topics such as transportation management, inventory control, and order fulfillment.
The book emphasizes the integration of logistics and supply chain operations to improve overall performance.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
Christopher’s book tackles the issue of fragmented logistics operations. It shows how integrating logistics into the broader supply chain strategy helps businesses optimize transportation, manage inventory more effectively, and meet customer demands on time.
Real-World Use Case:
For businesses facing late deliveries, this book offers strategies to streamline logistics and improve coordination across supply chain functions. By deploying containerized logistics apps using Docker and orchestrating them with Kubernetes, teams can monitor and adjust routes in real time. This enhances delivery accuracy, reduces transit delays, and ensures scalable, agile logistics management.
(Source: Amazon)
Author: Daniel Stanton
This book provides an accessible introduction to supply chain management for beginners, offering a straightforward, jargon-free explanation of complex concepts.
Daniel Stanton covers everything from demand forecasting and inventory control to supply chain optimization techniques.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
It solves the problem of making supply chain management approachable for newcomers. This book simplifies complex topics and provides actionable steps that small business owners or managers can use to set up and optimize their supply chain systems.
Real-World Use Case:
For a small business looking to implement an efficient supply chain for the first time, this book guides you through the entire process, from setting up relationships with suppliers to choosing the right inventory management systems and organizing logistics, in simple, easy-to-understand steps.
(Source: Amazon)
Author: James A. Tompkins
James Tompkins’s comprehensive guide focuses on optimizing warehouse operations within the context of the broader supply chain management. The book offers actionable strategies for improving space utilization, inventory control, and order fulfillment processes to increase warehouse efficiency.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
The book addresses inefficiencies in warehouse management. It provides detailed strategies to optimize warehouse layouts, enhance inventory accuracy, and reduce lead times in fulfillment. These are all crucial for strengthening overall supply chain performance.
Real-World Use Case:
For small businesses setting up supply chains, this book offers clear steps for building efficient, cost-effective systems from scratch. By using Scala-based inventory tools, teams can automate stock tracking and streamline data processing for real-time visibility. This improves accuracy, reduces manual errors, and supports scalable growth with minimal tech complexity.
Author: Wolfgang Partsch
Wolfgang Partsch’s Supply Chain 4.0 book focuses on the next generation of supply chain management, driven by digital technologies such as Big Data, AI, and IoT. The book explains how these technologies are transforming the way companies manage their supply chains and how they can be integrated to enhance performance.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
The book solves the problem of integrating emerging technologies into traditional supply chain systems. It helps businesses adopt digital tools to optimize their operations, enabling real-time decision-making, better demand forecasting, and greater overall efficiency.
Real-World Use Case:
For companies struggling with demand forecasting, this book provides a roadmap to adopt AI-driven predictive analytics for accurate planning. By integrating Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming and utilizing Go language for building scalable forecasting services, teams can respond more quickly to demand shifts. This improves inventory accuracy, reduces stockouts, and enhances responsiveness across the supply chain.
(Source: Amazon)
Author: Michael H. Hugos
Michael Hugos provides a clear and concise guide to the essentials of supply chain management. This book focuses on the core processes involved in managing supply chains effectively, offering strategies for procurement, logistics, and inventory management. This is aimed at improving efficiency and reducing costs.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
This book addresses the challenge of optimizing core supply chain processes. Hugos helps businesses simplify operations, eliminate waste, and streamline workflows to improve overall performance and meet customer expectations.
Real-World Use Case:
If your retail business struggles with slow inventory turnover, this book offers lean strategies to improve forecasting and procurement efficiency. By building interactive dashboards using ReactJS or VueJS and handling backend logic with NodeJS, teams can monitor inventory flow in real time. This enhances visibility, reduces overstocking, and ensures high-demand products remain available.
Author: John J. Coyle, Edward J. Bardi, and Robert A. Novack
This book provides an in-depth examination of logistics within supply chain management. It explores transportation management, warehouse management, and inventory control, offering strategies to optimize these areas for maximum efficiency and cost savings.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
It helps businesses improve their logistics operations, ensuring that transportation and distribution are managed efficiently. This reduces costs and improves customer service.
Real-World Use Case:
For companies managing logistics across distribution centers, this book offers strategies to optimize routes and reduce operational expenses. By using Flask to build lightweight fleet tracking dashboards, teams can visualize delivery metrics and monitor performance in real time. This enhances route planning, reduces fuel costs, and ensures faster and more reliable deliveries.
(Source: Amazon)
Author: John Gattorna
John Gattorna’s book focuses on the digital transformation of supply chain management, exploring how technologies like real-time tracking, AI, and cloud computing are reshaping operations. It emphasizes the importance of digital tools in enhancing responsiveness and agility in modern supply chains.
Key Features:
Problem Solved:
This book addresses the issue of outdated, fragmented supply chains that struggle to respond quickly to changing conditions. It provides practical advice on integrating digital tools into existing systems to improve decision-making, enhance visibility, and reduce delays.
Real-World Use Case:
For companies facing delays and poor data flow, this book shows how to enable faster decisions through digital supply chain integration. By utilizing Power BI and Tableau, teams can visualize operations and identify bottlenecks across procurement, logistics, and inventory management. This enhances coordination, reduces lead times, and drives end-to-end supply chain agility.
Having explored the top Supply Chain Management books, let’s now turn our attention to the essential tools and technologies that can help implement their strategies effectively.
Supply chain managers play a critical role in ensuring that goods move smoothly from suppliers to customers. Due to the complexity and responsibility of this role, it's not surprising that the average salary for a supply chain manager can range from ₹ 8 lakh to ₹ 27.5 lakh annually, depending on experience and location.
For them to earn these high salaries, they need to be equipped with the right tools and technologies to carry out their job effectively.
Here are some of the essential tools and technologies you should consider for efficient supply chain management:
Suppose you’re overseeing the inventory of a large distribution center. ERP software with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) helps track stock and procurement in one system. It improves cash flow, reduces storage costs, and enhances overall supply chain responsiveness.
If you are responsible for shipping goods to customers, a TMS allows you to optimize delivery routes. It also helps you monitor transportation costs. You can use TMS to choose the best carriers and reduce shipping delays.
By finding the shortest route and most cost-effective delivery method, you can reduce fuel expenses and improve delivery times.
Managing a warehouse requires constant tracking of stock movements and space management. A WMS helps you organize warehouse layout, track inventory in real time, and automate the picking and packing process.
By using barcode scanning to keep track of items, you reduce human error and ensure faster order fulfillment.
Let’s say you are in charge of managing global shipments. Supply chain visibility tools give you real-time insights into where products are in the supply chain.
You can track your goods as they move from the supplier to your warehouse. This allows you to spot any delays or issues early on and take corrective action.
To forecast product demand for upcoming months, use software that analyzes historical data and current market trends. Excel-based models can help visualize patterns and support accurate inventory planning.
For example, you can use it to predict how much stock of a popular product you’ll need for the holiday season. This helps you avoid overstocking or stockouts.
In supply chain management, real-time access to data is essential for coordinating global operations. Cloud platforms like Azure enable secure, location-independent data storage and sharing. This ensures seamless collaboration across suppliers, warehouses, and teams operating in different time zones.
By using a cloud-based system, you can easily communicate with teams across different time zones and keep your data synchronized in real-time.
If you manage order processing, RPA can automate repetitive tasks like invoice generation, order entry, and inventory updates.
For example, once a customer places an order, RPA software can automatically update the inventory. It can also create the necessary shipping labels, saving time and reducing manual errors.
In managing a large number of suppliers, AI and machine learning can help you identify the most reliable and cost-effective partners. These technologies analyze past performance, delivery timelines, and pricing patterns to support smarter supplier selection and risk management.
For example, by integrating AI into your supplier evaluation process, you can streamline the selection of the most reliable partners.
If you’re managing products that require strict traceability, such as pharmaceuticals, blockchain ensures transparent throughout the supply chain. It records every transaction securely, allowing you to trace each product’s complete journey from origin to customer.
If there’s an issue with a batch of food products, blockchain helps trace exactly where the problem originated, allowing for quicker corrective actions.
If you're overseeing sensitive goods transportation, IoT components can track temperature, humidity, and GPS location in real time.
For example, if you're shipping perishable goods, you can use IoT sensors to monitor temperature. If it falls outside the required range, you’ll receive alerts, helping you maintain product quality and reduce waste.
In conclusion, The Supply Chain Revolution by Suman Sarkar stands out as the best book for 2025, offering actionable insights on integrating AI, blockchain, and IoT to enhance supply chain efficiency.
To excel in this field, you'll need skills in data analysis, technology integration, and strategic planning. upGrad’s courses provide hands-on training in these areas, equipping you with the skills to stay ahead and advance your career!
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References:
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/shein-reliance-aim-sell-india-made-clothes-abroad-within-year-sources-say-2025-06-09/
https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Salaries/supply-chain-manager-salary-SRCH_KO0,20.htm
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