Our recent article and video on the Top 10 Supply Chain Innovations of All-Time has been very well received, and stirred a modes amount of debate and feedback.

To read the article, go to: The Top 10 Supply Chain Innovations of All-Time

To watch the excellent video, go to: Top 10 Supply Chain Innovations of All-Time Video Version

Our work triggered a number of responses, including one from Dr. Wolfgang M. Partsch, president of ISC GLOBAL Ltd. in Switzerland, who suggested we should have put the origimation of the term "Supply Chain Management" itself on the list.

We certainly did consider at least including that upfront, but just didn't have the space.

There is some modest debate about when and by whom the term was first spoken and used, but there is no doubt about when it was first seen in print. The image below is ihe first page of an article published in the German business magazine "Wirtschaftswoche" in 1982.

According to  Partsch, "In 1979/1980 a small team of consultants in the Operations Group of Booz Allen & Hamilton in Europe around Mr. Keith Oliver, Partner of BAH in London, coined the phrase of "Supply Chain Management". I was a member of this team from the BAH German office, and was the project manager of the documented first SCM-project, which was executed under this label, in the world! This project was a Pan-European Supply Chain Strategy plus implementation for the company Landis & Gyr (today integrated into Siemens) in Zug, Switzerland. The project was performed in the years 1980 - 1981 and published in the German business magazine "Wirtschaftswoche" in 1982.

Now we know. We believe the term surfaced in an article in English by Oliver not much after this.

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