Program

11th Annual Supply Chain and Logistics Summit 2013

The 11th Annual Supply Chain and Logistics Summit program is under development. If you would like to submit a paper, recommend a speaker, or be considered for our advisory board, please contact Joy Parr, Head of Production, by calling 416 214 6042 or by emailing: joy.parr@wtgevents.com


FOCUS DAY - DECEMBER 2

12:00-12:55

Registration and refreshments

12:55-13:00

Chair’s welcome address

Dave Malenfant
Vice President, Global Supply Chain
Alcon Laboratories

13:00-13:45

EMERGING SCM TRENDS

Interactive workshop: Working together to exceed customer expectations

  • Demonstrating the impact of business collaboration in a value chain makes customer satisfaction and the bottom line
  • Working with all partners in the supply chain to increase visibility and track assets in real-time
  • Improving performance without disrupting the successful delivery of your business partners’ needs
  • Offering best practices to build and maintaining end-to-end supply chain communication

Sponsored by: FORTIGO

13:45-14:30

EMERGING SCM TRENDS

Making supply chain an impact player in the boardroom

  • Discussing SCM’s evolving role in corporate culture and what supply chain professionals need to do to reinforce these trends
  • Articulating supply chain issues to C-level executives during project planning and implementation
  • Aligning SCM-driven insights with corporate goals
  • Obtaining the resources your need to secure your organization’s SC objectives
  • Illustrating supply chain performance as a profit center

David Parsley
SVP Supply Chain Management
Brinker International

TECHNOLOGY

Statistical forecasting techniques: Understanding demand in sales and operations planning

  • Clarifying where forecasting works best in S&OP
  • Understanding how different links in the value chain contribute to predicting demand and estimating rate of throughput
  • Harmonizing metrics and data collection processes across departments and regions
  • Comparing and contrasting the capabilities of different forecasting tools and tactics
  • Fine-tuning your model to bring continuous improvement to forecasting methodology

14:30-15:15

EMERGING SCM TRENDS

Interactive workshop: Optimizing logistics in regional, national, and international operations

  • Evaluating current time, space, transportation, and personnel requirements across the length and breadth of your organization’s footprint
  • Investigating and documenting how different divisions approach reliability and cost-effectiveness
  • Seeking internal and external input on logistical reform
  • Cross-pollinating best practices across silos

Sponsored by: INGRAM MICRO

TECHNOLOGY

Interactive workshop: Communicating within a demand-driven value chain

  • Synchronizing internal and external cross-functional data-sharing between distribution centers, suppliers, and 3PLs
  • Integrating inventory, order, and shipment visibility from end to end with POS data and marketing plans to create and sustain a competitive advantage
  • Leveraging statistical analysis based on both forecasting and real-time data to inform decision-making

Sponsored by: HAVI GLOBAL

15:15-15:45

Networking and refreshments

15:45-16:30

EMERGING SCM TRENDS

Fast, flexible, strong, and scalable supply chains to support the needs of e-commerce

  • What do supply chains need to do to support internet retailers?
  • Encouraging collaboration between supply chain, marketing, and sales executives to form a strong foundation for e-commerce
  • Creating an agile supply chain that balances speed, performance, reliability, cost, and customer service
  • Highlighting visibility both as an internal SCM tool and as a competitive edge for customer satisfaction

TECHNOLOGY

Case study: Putting your supply chain in the cloud

  • Making a strong business case for incorporating cloud computing into IT capability
  • Identifying what your organization hopes to gain from cloud computing, and seeking out the best tools to deliver those capabilities
  • Demonstrating ROI in terms of resiliency, data security, and improved performance

16:30-17:15

EMERGING SCM TRENDS

Interactive workshop: Seeking a healthy supply chain? Give it a checkup!

  • Auditing your current supply chain from end to end:
    • How does the performance data compare to the models?
    • Where does that difference routinely fall outside the standard variance?
  • Thinking lean: Inventory, warehouse, and distribution principles that work in practice
  • Seeking short-term efficiencies and building them into long-term corporate culture
  • Tracking both as cost savings and to demonstrate SCM’s contributions to competitiveness

Sponsored by: DAMCO

TECHNOLOGY

Interactive workshop: Bringing the next generation of RFID technology to supply chain inventory tracking

  • How have RFID capabilities changed in the last decade?
  • Unlocking new material handling tools and applications to improve:
    • Returns handling
    • Order buffering
    • Shipping sequencing
    • Inventory visibility
    • Speed to market
    • All-in systems integration
  • Integrating these new capabilities to work with existing processes and legacy assets

Sponsored by: INTERMEC

17:15-18:00

EMERGING SCM TRENDS

Interactive workshop: Leveraging the capabilities of true real-time supply chain visibility

  • Illustrating the extent to which improved visibility along the supply chain generates efficiencies in order cycles and inventory levels
  • Demonstrating the role technology plays in updating supply chain performance in real-time
  • Working with partners to coordinate SCM based on current data and accurate projects
  • Going beyond the models: Making decisions in real-time as situations evolve

TECHNOLOGY

Interactive workshop: Getting the most out of your automation storage and retrieval technology

  • Validating the practicality and ROI of automating ‘goods-to-person’ solutions through labor reduction, smaller footprints, and increasing accuracy
  • Leveraging wireless technology to improve performance, reliability, and flexibility
  • Unlocking automated material handling applications including returns handling, order buffering, shipping sequencing, and ‘all-in’ automated material hand integration
  • Generating a competitive advantage through enhanced customer satisfaction

17:30-17:35

Chair’s closing remarks

Dave Malenfant
Vice President, Global Supply Chain
Alcon Laboratories

18:00-19:00

Networking drinks reception


DAY ONE - DECEMBER 3

07:30-08:30

Registration and breakfast

08:30-08:35

Chair’s welcome address

Dave Malenfant
Vice President, Global Supply Chain
Alcon Laboratories

08:35-09:15

KEYNOTE

Forging a low-risk, cost effective, and flexible global supply chain in an era of rapid change

  • Discussing the future of multi-national footprint optimization: How does offshoring, near-shoring, and reshoring each contribute to the goal of maximizing performance and reducing risk?
  • Developing a supply chain management strategy that is resilient enough to support your business operations through both a worldwide economic recovery and a double-dip recession
  • Out with the old, in with the new? Exploring how companies are reacting to changing consumer bases
  • Improving high-level partnerships with government, industry associations, suppliers, and consumers during footprint optimization

09:15-09:50

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Case study: Driving innovation in SCM to grow a business in BRIC countries

  • Why are BRIC-based operations so challenging?
  • Preparing for the unexpected: Costs, regulations, finding local partners, etc.
  • Learning from early trailblazers and applying their solutions to your business
  • Building a corporate culture that encourages supply chain innovation and outside-the-box thinking

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Panel discussion: Working with 3PLs in the United States

  • Discussing how fuel surcharges work and debating the pros and cons of a flat rate
  • Understanding the workforce, regulatory, and capacity challenges facing long- and short-haul freight carriers
  • Exploring opportunities to reduce costs and environmental impacts through natural gas usage
  • Working with 3PLs to build a proactive SC culture

Keith Melcher
Global Transportation Manager
Texas Instruments

METRICS MANAGEMENT

Case study: Big Data analysis as a true driver of business success

  • What does a successfully working Big Data system look like?
  • Expanding upon existing performance management and measurement programs to collect enough information for a Big Data approach
  • Bringing stakeholders from every link of the value chain together to pool resources, and seek actionable information
  • Cutting through the noise to identify true KPIs: What are you really trying to understand?
  • Top tips to avoid being overwhelmed

INNOVATIONS

Case study: Updating warehouse tools and tactics to drive productivity

  • Assessing the capabilities of your current warehouse and distribution center systems
  • Identifying new tools and technologies that can bridge the gaps in legacy asset capabilities
  • Training your workforce to make the best use of the equipment and methodology available to them
  • Adjusting the interoperability of new and old systems based on performance metrics
  • Demonstrating the ROI of the new system through improved efficiency, productivity, and reliability

09:50-11:35

Pre-arranged one-to-one business meetings and refreshments

11:35-12:10

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Case study: Fast to market - SCM’s role in shortening product lifecycles in a customer-centric supply chain

  • Discussing how shortened and accelerated product lifecycles have placed new demands and greater responsibilities upon supply chain executives
  • Adjusting supply chain capacity in anticipation of a product launch while simultaneously supporting the retooling of plants and facilities for the next generation’s launch
  • Highlighting the growing role SCM plays in innovation, technology transfers, and ramping up production from prototyping to mass market manufacturing

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Update: Preparing U.S. infrastructure for the Panama Canal capacity increase

  • Illustrating how the Federal Government is working with public and private partners to improve port facilities, warehousing capacities, road and rail infrastructure, and other assets in anticipation of the widened Panama Canal capabilities
  • Reviewing the progress to date of the Panama Canal expansion project.
  • What is the schedule for completion? How does this line up with U.S. infrastructure improvement timelines?
  • Discussing next steps and how supply chain executives should prepare for a review of all their current transportation and logistics policies

Keith Lesnick
Assistant Administrator for Intermodal Systems
U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD)

METRICS MANAGEMENT

Case study: Applying lean strategies to the supply chain without disrupting performance

  • Identifying what changes can be implemented in a high-performance supply chain without overwhelming the system
  • Defining common metrics and KPIs for lean implementation
  • Showcasing some of the ways just-in-time delivery can be improved
  • Translating successful pilot projects across an organization
  • -How can lean programming evolve into a culture of continuous improvement?

INNOVATIONS

Attracting, retaining, and developing the next generation of SCM talent

  • How are the best companies attracting top talent to SCM?
  • Promoting supply chain management as an attractive career option among young people, women, and minorities
  • Investing in people to improve retention and develop new skillsets
  • Preserving institutional memory: Transferring skills and knowledge from one general to the next

12:10-12:45

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Interactive workshop: Launching and updating effective S&OP policies

  • Illustrating triggers that drive organizations to deploy S&OP for competitive advantage
  • Reviewing case studies from consumer packaged goods and high tech manufacturers: What lessons can we learn from their experience?
  • Making S&OP policies an organic and evolving playbook

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Interactive workshop: Working with top-rated carriers to reduce costs through superior performance

  • Building a business upon high performance rather than low upfront freight costs
  • Generating real cost savings through a holistic approach to transportation execution
  • Managing outbound, inbound, and third-party shipments in real-time
  • Enforcing internal and external compliance across all modes to reflect true freight cost

Sponsored by: RATELINX

METRICS MANAGEMENT

Interactive workshop: Demand-driven performance for inventory and operations management

  • Seeking the causes of inaccurate forecasting
  • Benchmarking your organization’s forecasting accuracy against business partners up and down the value chain
  • Understanding the forces at play upon delivery time tables
  • Mitigating these considerations to drive inventory and operations efficiency

INNOVATIONS

Interactive workshop: Transforming your organization’s transportation, warehousing, and freight forwarding strategy

  • Taking a holistic approach to combine strategy, planning, and management to enhance operational execution
  • Developing and acquiring skills and sharing knowledge between different links of the supply chain
  • Bringing IT solutions to bear on common SC challenges
  • Encouraging a culture of continuous improvement and grassroots innovation to drive long-term performance

Sponsored by: BARLOWORLD

12:45-13:45

Networking lunch

13:45-14:25

PANEL DISCUSSION

Supply chain’s role in optimizing the footprint of worldwide operations

  • Comparing the decision-making process of young companies versus established international conglomerates when it comes to new markets and global footprint optimization
  • How do supply chain executives balance the workload between new and existing operations?
  • Developing new expertise about regions quickly and efficiently: How do you learn the lay of the land?

14:25-15:00

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Interactive workshop: Bringing lean efficiencies to the supply chain

  • Offering tactics and technology that bring about meaningful and sustained change to your organization’s supply chain
  • Targeting the bottlenecks: Identification, analysis, and solution implementation
  • Showcasing SCM optimization in action based on read-world examples

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Interactive workshop: Auditing transportation costs to reduce leakage and improve deliverables

  • Lowering your expenses with accurate freight bills and better cost management
  • Standardizing contracts among an effective and trusted carrier base
  • Identifying, documenting, and recovering carrier overcharges through invoice auditing
  • Transitioning from major reforms to monthly compliance monitoring of an overhauled process
  • Seeking further efficiencies through benchmarking your plan against similar transportation systems

Sponsored by: TRENDSET

METRICS MANAGEMENT

Interactive workshop: Conquering supply chain complexity through an outsider’s perspective

  • Illustrating how performance management strategies can change relationships with key clients
  • Asking the question: What defines your customers’ success?
  • Creating a system of external monitoring and feedback on KPIs that trigger corrective action in your own business processes to drive positive outcomes for your business partner

INNOVATIONS

Interactive workshop: Tools to optimize warehouse space

  • Working with what you have: New approaches to space utilization to avoid costly facility expansions and refurbishments
  • Walking through options in storage and automation solutions: What works best in different scenarios?
  • Overhauling best practices to improve performance during the course of efficiency initiative rollouts

Sponsored by: DEMATIC

15:00-16:20

Pre-arranged one-to-one business meetings and refreshments

16:20-16:55

PLENARY WORKSHOP

Interactive workshop: New communication tools to harmonize supply and demand decisions

- Integrating supply chain management and sales and operations planning functions together through a cloud-based communications system
- Connecting every link of the supply chain together to share data and asset visibility in real-time to respond to emerging challenges and drive performance improvement
- Demonstrating the new tools in action based upon real-world case studies

Sponsored by: KINAXIS

16:55-17:30

KEYNOTE

“So there I was…” Nightmares and glory days from a supply chain troubleshooter

Using entertaining stories of the improbable but true, this keynote presentation will celebrate the modern supply chain executive as a wearer of many hats: The architect of complicated wonders; the foreman who oversees construction; the mechanic who gets dirty to keep things running; the firefighter on constant call to keep things from burning to the ground.

Punctuated with anecdotes and off the cuff opinions, this session will ask the Who-What-Where-When-Why-and-How of the supply chain troubleshooter extraordinaire:

Who do I want to talk to when I’m looking for my next great idea?”
What do I do when my company asks me to work my magic?”
Where do I get the nerve to call myself an expert on any given topic in a crisis?”
When is time worth more than money, and how do I convince my boss that now is that time?”
Why do the complicated things always sound so simple in the beginning?”
How do I make this look so easy?”

With a few stories that will likely strike a chord with every supply chain executive’s own experience, this final session of the day will be the perfect summary of the day’s case studies and get the conversation started for the drinks reception to follow.

17:30-17:35

Chair's closing remarks

Dave Malenfant
Vice President, Global Supply Chain
Alcon Laboratories

17:35-19:00

Networking drinks reception


DAY TWO - DECEMBER 4

08:00-08:30

Networking and breakfast

08:30-08:35

Chair’s opening remarks and review of day one

Dave Malenfant
Vice President, Global Supply Chain
Alcon Laboratories

08:35-09:10

KEYNOTE

Taking supply chain risk management to the next level

  • What qualifies as a world-class supply chain? Why is it so difficult to maintain?
  • Asking the tough questions about your organization’s resiliency and reliability
  • Identifying and mitigating risk in a global end-to-end supply chain: What is realistic?
  • Striking a budgetary balance between versatility and efficiency: How much is deliverability worth to your company?
  • Illustrating the value of contingency plans, built-in redundancies, and rainy day funds
  • Treating both successes and failures as learning opportunities as you move your risk-based SCM strategies forward step by step

09:10-09:45

PLENARY WORKSHOP

Interactive workshop: The new rules of retail: Building supply chains for the world’s toughest marketplace

Consumer behavior has radically changed over the last two decades: The internet, new technologies, globalization, and a saturated marketplace are all driving expectations to seek the best price and the best quality delivered at the very moment of purchase.

Using profiles and case studies from some of the largest retail companies in the world, this presentation will discuss:

  • Evolving business models to respond to new demands
  • New frontiers in marketing to an informed, elusive, and savvy customer base that expects both perfection and instant satisfaction from its purchases
  • Designing efficient support systems that can keep pace with trends and scale up and down in time with demand

Sponsored by: KURT SALMON

09:45-10:20

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Finding the win-win of supply chain sustainability

  • Taking a sustainability inventory:
    • What is demanded of your organization by regulation?
    • What do your customers want? 
    • Where is the motivation or incentive to exceed the first two requirements?
  • Satisfying the expectations of both shareholders and stakeholders
  • Highlighting easily implementable first steps that can serve as ambassadors in the drive to large-scale sustainable initiatives
  • What are realistic metrics for success? How can that information be collected and the benefits translated?

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Update: The Federal Government’s ongoing efforts to enhance the security of the maritime supply chain

  • Offering an update on recent and ongoing federal projects to implement maritime security improvements 
  • Assessing new and emerging technologies that secure, monitor, and track maritime cargo containers
  • Discussing required enhancements communication infrastructure to support a risk-based approach to maritime supply chain security
  • Reviewing the status of efforts to scan 100% of U.S.-bound cargo containers

Stephen Caldwell
Director, Maritime Security and Coast Guard Issues, Homeland Security and Justice Team
U.S. Government Accountability Office

METRICS MANAGEMENT

Getting what you want when you want it: SCM’s part in replenishment planning

  • Examining the complexities of retail forecasting and wholesale planning
  • Contingency planning for disruptions in supply chain, transportation and emerging markets
  • Improving production capacity
  • Managing multiple channels to ensure stock is there and ready for customers

Michael Richardson
Vice President, Wholesale Planning
Perry Ellis

INNOVATIONS

Change management: The must-have competency of supply chain executives

  • Discussing why corporate cultures resist change to their supply chains
  • Securing workforce and management buy-in when updating and adjusting supply chain policies
  • Understanding the importance of timing, training, and step-by-step roll-outs of new SCM processes
  • Communicating change up and down the value chain
  • Emphasizing the importance of leadership soft skills and teamwork to ensure the success of a new project

10:20-11:10

Networking and refreshments

11:10-11:45

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Interactive workshop: Contract negotiation with service, solution, and 3PL providers

  • Selecting the best partner to address the challenges your organization is facing in the short- and long-term
  • Building a trust-based relationship from the beginning through clear communication about both parties’ expectations
  • Ensuring your cost estimates and work scope is fair, and building in cost visibility mechanisms into the contract
  • Reaching an agreement that incentivizes both parties

Sponsored by: DATA2LOGISTICS

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Interactive workshop: Logistics partnerships: Capacity issues in an evolving carrier landscape

  • Seeking a business partner capable of supplementing and adding flexibility to your capacity capabilities
  • Vetting possible partnerships based on an understanding of company abilities and motivations
  • Optimizing fuel surcharge structure to reduce all-in transportation costs
  • Building a long-term working relationship upon mutual benefit

Sponsored by: ROEHL TRANSPORT

METRICS MANAGEMENT

Interactive workshop: Performance management - Improving your business through enhanced number crunching

  • Asking the real question: What do you hope to achieve? What is the quantifiable goal?
  • Creating a system of relevant metrics and properly identified KPIs
  • Teaching your team to collect relevant and reliable data
  • Working through the data to find the root causes of bad outcomes
  • Drawing in stakeholders to devise a strategy to remove or mitigate those issues
  • Leveraging your performance management system to monitor progress of reform in real-time

INNOVATIONS

Interactive workshop: Making it work: Building new capabilities through mergers and acquisitions

  • Creating a supply chain organization greater than the sum of its original parts
  • Recognizing the opportunities M&As offer for optimization and the cross-pollination of ideas and innovations
  • Avoiding an ‘Us versus Them’ dynamic in the workforce and among different points of the supply chain
  • Encouraging collaboration and celebrating shared success

11:45-12:20

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Reduce, reuse, and recycle: How reverse logistics saves money and mitigates environmental impact

  • Finding opportunities to apply sustainability-inspired reform to your organization’s surplus assets
  • Using reverse logistics to repurpose and capitalize on equipment beyond their original function
  • Refurbishing and repairing goods as an alternative to new purchases and fresh stock
  • Integrating reverse logistics and distribution planning to produce an efficient and cost-effective supply chain process

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Case study: Lessons learned from the Yemen printer bombs that keep the skies safe in the War on Terror

On October 29, 2010, two packages disguised as printer ink cartridges -- each containing plastic explosives-- were found on separate cargo planes bound from Yemen to the United States.

This presentation discusses:

  • How these bombs were found
  • The lessons U.S. Customs and the Department of Homeland Security have learned from this incident
  • The work the Federal Government is doing with industry supply chain experts to develop a nimble security strategy to identify and neutralize threats on an ongoing basis
  • - What does this mean for supply chain management?

Dan Baldwin
Executive Director, Cargo and Conveyance Security, Office of Field Operations, US Customs and Border Protection
Department of Homeland Security

METRICS MANAGEMENT

Case study: Levi Strauss’s experience customizing global operations based on regional conditions

  • Understanding the unique realities of SCM in the apparel business
  • Discussing the right way to grow a company like Levi Strauss in North America, Europe, and in Asia
  • Auditing performance and tailoring solutions to fit with region-specific challenges
  • Applying a risk-based approach to procurement and distribution decision-making
  • Taking lessons from other companies and applying them to your own growth strategy

Vijay Khare
Senior Director Logistics Planning
Levi Strauss

INNOVATIONS

Case study: Optimizing distribution center operations

  • Evaluating the performance of your organization’s warehouses and distribution centers
  • Identifying root causes of negative outcomes through performance metrics
  • Demonstrating how employee engagement programs contribute to debottlenecking strategies
  • Implementing small scale programs and monitoring change over time
  • Scaling up successful innovations throughout your organization

12:20-13:35

Themed lunch

Benefit from some additional networking and ask your questions about specific topics at themed lunches hosted by our commercial partners. Places are limited so sign up in the registration area during Day One and the morning of Day Two. 

13:35-14:35

KEYNOTE

What finishing more than 100 marathons on all seven continents has taught me about success

This motivational speaker is an international athlete and certified running coach who helps organize the Dallas Marathon. With a background in supply chain management, he has over 25 years of experience as an international IT executive responsible for managing warehouse, procurement, RFID, inventory, supplier management, logistics, shipping, transportation, supply chain, and analytical applications.

He will talk about risk management, leadership skills, and teambuilding using lessons learned from his globetrotting adventures running races in Antarctica, Kenya, and around the world.

14:35-15:10

KEYNOTE CASE STUDY

What crisis management can teach us about future supply chain innovations

  • Reviewing the actions taken during recent emergencies: How did agile supply chains react?
  • Post-gaming decisions made in the heat of the moment: {sub-bullets)
    • What happened when the contingency plan made contact with reality?
    • What factors were missing that would have impacted the eventual outcome?
    • Why were they important?
  • Transferring the SCM decisions with the best outcomes forward onto a hypothetical project:
    • Does it have to be a crisis to succeed?
    • How can everyday performance and reliability be improved?
    • What would these decisions offer to ongoing risk-aversion and flexibility strategies?

15:10-15:45

KEYNOTE

Including commodity market fluctuations in procurement plans

  • Understanding the impact commodity markets can make on the budgets of projects with long planning horizons
  • Evaluating what drives these price changes beyond simple supply and demand
  • Seeking price security through an optimized supplier contract
  • Balancing the pros and cons of stockpiling when prices are low

15:45-15:50

Chair’s concluding remarks and close of summit

Dave Malenfant
Vice President, Global Supply Chain
Alcon Laboratories