“ My vision was to break up information silos ,” he says . Sound familiar ? He adds : “ The goal was to help businesses see from one end to the other , operationally , with no interruption of information .” Or , in today ’ s terminology , end-to-end supply chain visibility . Partsch ’ s revolutionary thinking was based not on business thinking , but natural science . “ It really struck me how , with earthquakes , you can measure shockwaves from thousands of miles away . My vision was of something similar for supply , whereby something like purchasing has an effect on sales and production at the other side of the chain ,” he explains . Partsch ’ s thinking here was crystallised by a seminal 1961 book called Industrial Dynamics , by Jay Forrester . “ Forrester was an industrial engineer , and it ’ s a very mathematical book , but I am a physicist , and so I understood his ideas .” It was in the late 1970s that Partsch ’ s vision for the future of supply began to take shape , and by the early 1980s , he had formulated a coherent supply strategy that was fit to be presented to boardrooms . It was on a journey to a Swiss client that Partsch and his team chanced upon a name for his concept , and all thanks to a snowstorm .. “ We were driving to a client through heavy snow ,” he recounts . “ We had to get the snowchains out to put on the wheels , and that ’ s when someone got the idea of using the idea of a chain to describe our strategy of managing supply , because chains have many links that form something whole .” Now , 40 years on , Dr Partsch ’ s thinking has helped hundreds of companies – including Pierre Cardin , Red Bull , Nestlé , Siemens , IBM , and Ferrari – save billions of dollars , by streamlining their supply chains , and making them run more efficiently .
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