[2] They created dramatic improvements in manufacturing,[3] distribution,[4][5][6] procurement,[7] product design,[8] forecasting,[9] metrics,[10] and inventory control[11][12][13][14] efficiencies; leading to the publication and adoption of their methods outside HP.

[15] Notable contributions include: The team was established in 1989[21] by Corey Billington[22] (currently a professor at IMD) who had recently joined HP and was working with Sara Beckman[23] (currently a Senior lecturer at UC Berkeley).

The name SPaM came from HP internal location code (LOCXXXX STRAT PLAN MODEL) initially assigned to the group during the days of limited identification fields.

The combination of the shapes is meant to represent SPaM's intention of using analytics to enable decision making under uncertainty to improve asset management performance.

[33] Brian Cargille, previously the SPaM Director and now the Vice President of Inkjet and Print Solutions at HP, has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Supply Chain Management Review, an industry magazine, since 2006.