Achieving Global Logistics Excellence
By Staff -- Logistics Management, 12/1/2007
It’s no secret that today’s supply chains are growing more global in nature. In this webcast, attendees learned what it takes to execute world-class supply chain strategies in order to improve global logistics operations and help even the savviest shippers improve their relationship with the corner office. Christopher Gopal, Ph.D., director at Deloitte Consulting, walked attendees through the fine points of achieving this level of excellence.
A former vice president of worldwide operations at Dell Computer and director of global supply chain and operations services at Ernst & Young Consulting, Gopal is a leading authority on logistics and integrated distribution management. He’s recognized for both his thought leadership, and for his execution ability in global supply chain operations and information.
Gopal started the session by giving attendees the traditional definition of the supply chain: the management of materials, cash, information, spares, and assets from the point of supply to the end consumer. The supply chain is driven by several key components, he adds, but the glue that holds it together is the logistics, or the relationships between the shipper to the consignee along multiple paths.
The supply chain itself is not linear in nature, Gopal points out, and carries with it a great degree of risk that include regulatory, safety, and security issues, all of which are in some way connected by the Web. “In other words, it’s a mess,” says Gopal. “Each facet has its own paperwork and compliance requirements, with the only function that makes sense being the logistics that drive it to be more rational and linear.”
In order to take that “mess” and make it into something that creates shareholder value through operations excellence, says Gopal, companies must be constantly innovating and asking themselves questions like: How do we make money? What are customers looking for? What are our customers’ needs and demands? “You can’t be all things to all people,” says Gopal, “so evaluate with brutal honesty how good and effective you are at meeting those demands and then innovate based on those strengths.”
Gopal used many detailed graphs to illustrate his points, and wrapped up the session by presenting a few key challenges facing today’s supply chain professionals, such as how to get global supply chains to operate better in terms of profitability, liquidity, and customer satisfaction. He also discussed how to use supply chains to drive profitable growth, manage the customer experience to greatly increase customer dependence and switching costs, gain more collaboration among trading partners, innovate and structure supply chains to truly get a competitive advantage, and get CEOs and CFOs engaged in the overall supply chain process.
The following links offer a synopsis of the seven individual Webcasts that made up this year’s GSCC.
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The Five Core Disciplines of Strategic Supply Chain Management
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KEYNOTE: Supercharging Global Logistics: Creating Shareholder Value Through Operations Excellence
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Leveraging Hybrid Transportation Networks to Accelerate Product Flow from Asia
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