Cross-border shipping is complex and full of intricacies on both sides of the border. The current challenges with COVID19 have contributed to a notable imbalance in Northbound vs Southbound freight. With Mexico becoming the new China for trade and more companies nearshoring their manufacturing, costs are rising, capacity is tightening, and the need for full freight tracking and visibility, it may be time to re-evaluate your cross-border logistics solution.

Session will focus on the framework, practice, benefits and process for interacting with suppliers.

Tradition Procurement organizations have become very good at delivering cost reductions. Data Analytics, Automation and Cognitive sourcing have allowed us to continue delivering on that expectation year after year. However, by focusing only on cost reductions we are missing the most significant opportunities to improve our organizations bottom line and to enable growth! Majority of the life-time costs of a Product is determined during design but traditionally, Procurement has spent little time in that phase. Standardization, feature set analysis, co-designs, market feedback are just a few opportunities that can improve not only the bottom line but also the total solution Value. We cannot cost reduce ourselves into growth. Modern organizations are focusing on Design for Value!

In an increasingly competitive environment, how do you boost your team’s productivity while retaining top talent? In this presentation we will explore how to align at multiple levels to improve your team’s engagement, efficiency, and outcomes. Working across your organization to understand the landscape to increase your team’s ability meet organizational expectations and challenging work tasks to focus your team on the right activities to increase your team’s ability to deliver. As well as investing in your individual team members success through coaching, professional development, and opportunity to increase team member satisfaction.

Coming Soon!

A journey into UCB’s Digital Procurement Strategy. How UCB Procurement is transforming into a Digital Procurement Organization. Robotics, AI, ML, AA: Findings, Learnings, and Mistakes along the way.

Transformation of procurement from a support function to a partner will help make manufacturing decisions that complements core competency of the company. Transitioning decision making processes from traditional make vs buy analysis to defining core competency for the product group and developing supply chain and manufacturing strategies that complement the core competency of the company. Decisions are made on based on multi-dimensional aspects and not just the cost.

If two years ago, there would have been a scary movie entitled COVID-19 and the impact to Supply Chain, many of us would not have believed it. Who would have envisioned shortages in basic toiletries, the inability to physically be close to individuals, the lack of a cohesive national strategy, and the overall devastation to the economy? Although we could not imagine this, how can Supply Chain leaders prepare to respond in a more agile way to devastating world events? In order to answer this question, we have to define what does the word “Risk” mean? The definition is different for each individual, function, company, and country. In this presentation, we will discuss how to identify, prioritize, and address risk while becoming a stronger organization.

Supply Chain is the CORE of every company that is involved in the production and distribution of a commodity. NO idea, no invention is possible without supplies and the chain it follows. Whether it is raw materials, to components to direct and indirect materials, success of our company depends on getting your product to the market at the right time and at the right price. This of course depends on effective purchasing strategy, which is “to procure at the right price and the right time” Optimizing your portfolio of sources and locations though diversification reduces the risk of catastrophic failures in supply chain.

In an increasingly virtual workplace, how can supply chain leaders instill a lasting feeling of connection and community in their workforce? As some employees begin to move back into the workplace, supply chain leaders are beginning to face an unprecedented divide between those in the office, and those who continue to work remotely. In this challenging year, managers will need to harness the community and buy-in from their employees like never before. Tom Gimbel’s 3e Management: Education, Empowerment, Empathy system combines three individual elements that work in tandem to kickstart an employee’s experience and ensure that they are given the correct tools to thrive at every stage of the supply chain.

Artificial Intelligence will revolutionize the technology world we live today personally and professionally. AI technology will reboot procurement to the next level where world-class procurement is expected and ubiquitous. Mike Shin Global VP of Procurement for FLIR Systems will address the next practical step in making the “CPO Digital Cockpit” a reality by 2022.

It’s OK if your Supply Chain broke because of COVID -19. But it’s not OK if you were surprised. Even with vast amounts of resources there is no way to completely safe guard against supply chain interruptions. It is going to take strategy, collaboration, and likely investment to create a resilient supply chain. It takes active management to identify and weigh the risks.

Organizational design, effective processes and performance management tools can transform the procurement function from transactional to a strategic organization. In this presentation, we will analyze several best-in-class procurement organizational structures. We will explore how to design and implement the most effective structure, create and upgrade processes and performance management tools that complement and enhance the structure in order to build a capable and world-class procurement organization.

Every company’s supply chain is unique, and yet they all have a common subset of characteristics that make up their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Operations excellence is achieved by prudent investments in the right capabilities in the right order, at the right time. Companies have to balance investments in supply chain planning as well as execution, as both are critical to becoming best in class. At the same time, companies have to balance the market, financial, technological and execution risks in a constantly shifting environment

Today’s consumer has evolved to expect a diverse set of choices that can be delivered upon instantaneously. This dynamic while exciting for the end customer has driven a new set of challenges into the supply chain . A byproduct of this altered landscape is the need to better balance cost and service in a way that resonates with consumers while preserving margins. Your ability to do this could impact the very existence of your organization. I like to share some things we’ve learned and applied in an effort to drive savings while increasing service.

The COVID-19 pandemic is only one of a series of disruptions that are increasing in frequency and severity. Every decade, companies lose half a year’s EBITDA, on average, due to supply chain disruptions. This is a critical moment, particularly for companies affected by a multitude of events in recent years from severe weather events and geopolitical tensions to technological disruption and talent shortages. The decisions executives make and the moves their suppliers take next will be critical. Join us for a discussion on how resilience directly ties to a company’s ability to withstand value-chain shocks and the pivotal role of operations for a stronger, more resilient future.

Just because a supplier has what you need in terms of goods or services, doesn’t mean that they are the right fit for your company, especially for a strategic supplier. How does their culture and sophistication fit within your company? Do you like the people you are dealing with? If not, probably not a company you will build a partnership with. Do you feel comfortable and hold them accountable as well? These are some of the considerations you should explore when selecting suppliers.

As the Baby Boomer generation retires from the workforce, numerous industries are finding in difficult to fill positions. This has lead to more companies looking toward automating as many lower skilled tasks as possible to free employees to focus on other tasks. In this presentation, Aaron Prather will discuss some of the best practices to follow when deploying robotics and other automation into your operation and how to make your existing employees not only part of the process, but team players in wanting the robots as part of their team.

Most organizations are exposed to some level of risk from commodity price volatility, which is the measure for variation of the price of commodities such as energy, metals, refined petroleum products, and agricultural products. Firms have been utilizing financial hedging approaches with established trading markets for over a century to offset this form of price risk. However, there are also a variety of supply chain approaches firms can consider for mitigating the detrimental financial effects of commodity price volatility. The purpose of this presentation is to provide insight into sourcing and contracting strategies that supply chain professionals should consider in mitigating commodity price risk.

For a high growth company, ensuring supply coverage that allows for a high level of flexibility in meeting financial targets can be a business imperative. Additionally, the use of tools and processes that enable near real time views of supply and demand allow for fine tuning of plans outside of the S&OP cadence. In this presentation we will review how the S&OP process and collaboration with IT and contract manufacturing has allowed the supply chain to stay nimble and meet financial targets.

In 2030, Gen Z employees will be over a third of the workforce. These early career employees need to be engaged differently from the generations before. Hear the perspective of a leader of teams that has hired over a hundred Gen Z engineers. Walk away from this presentation with practical guidance to improve the effectiveness of your engagement of Gen Z employees!

When crises occur, a company’s ability to weather the storm usually is determined by several factors, but at least for product based companies, none is more important than the resilience of the supply chain. Depending on the type and scale of the crisis, in some cases the survival of the company itself may hang in the balance. During these times, operation excellence, that is, the ability of the organization to execute, is important, but it usually won’t be enough to avoid disaster. True resiliency comes from careful prior planning, a deliberate effort to build flexibility into all of the major factors of the supply chain. Because the interactions between the various parts of the chain can change dramatically when crisis hits, it’s imperative that the supply chain is evaluated as an end to end system, not as individual components, using what’s sometimes known as system thinking. In many cases, it’s important to evaluate how the supply chain interacts with other parts of the business, as well as outside socioeconomic and political systems.

During the pandemic, the U.S. apparel and footwear industry saw its revenues drop off a cliff at the same time its traditional approach to supply chains broke apart. As we come out of this crisis, we will explore what lessons have been learned and what brands and retailers should consider as the economy, and the industry, begin to recover.

Supplier partnership management doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Let’s discuss how to use common sense to segment your suppliers, and then establish strategies for how to manage them (or not!). All suppliers are not created equal, and recognizing this basic truth is half the battle…

Risks are inevitable especially when going past the boundaries of Earth, but with a plan, the proper data and a well-designed information system Supply Chain risks can be significantly reduced increasing mission success. Nasa Goddard has made substantial advancements in the last few years, come learn what we have done to reduce our Supply Chain risks.

Supply chains succeed or fail based upon their talent. The best strategy paired with innovative technology will melt in the hands of an incapable or unwilling organization. Yet, many supply chain organizations take an improvised approach to talent development and retention. Organizations are hesitant to invest in development or retention and often employ one-size-fits-all plans that work for no one. This session will dispel common myths that persist about talent development and offer a strategy for how to systematically approach human capital as the core enabler of supply chain management that it is. While much of this discussion is generalizable to any organization, the evolution of integrated supply chain management and its progression into a digitalized era make talent THE critical challenge for supply chain leaders.

If you are managing product families that have some products with steady demand, some with sporadic or infrequent demand, and some with one-time shots or customer-specific demand, then the standard ABC categorization of SKUs will lead you astray. How can you focus your forecasting, demand planning, and inventory management efforts for the greatest impact, when you are dealing with thousands of SKUs that have a wide variety of demand patterns? Learn one practitioner’s approach that has been applied in both distribution and manufacturing environments.