2021 CSCMP EDGE conference report

After going to a virtual format last year during the pandemic, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ annual EDGE conference was back in person this year. Attendees at the event, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in September, came both to gain a glimpse of the future of the discipline and to find solutions that they could implement today.

While there, attendees enjoyed keynote sessions, educational seminars, the annual Academic Research Symposium, networking receptions, and the Supply Chain Exchange Exhibition, which showcased supply chain technologies, equipment, and services.

Not able to attend the conference this year or unable to sample everything that was offered? This roundup will help you fill in some of the gaps.

CSCMP’s 2021 awards recognize industry excellence

 Every year at its annual conference, CSCMP honors individuals and organizations that are helping to push the supply chain discipline to new heights. The following are some of the recognitions given out this year.

• 2021 Distinguished Service Award was presented to Dale Rogers, ON Semiconductor professor of business in the supply chain department at Arizona State University.
• The 2021 inductees into CSCMP’s Supply Chain Hall of Fame were Rogers and John “Jock” Menzies, founder of American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN).
• Gail Rutkowski, the outgoing president of the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council (NASSTRAC), was honored for demonstrating excellence in transportation and/or logistics strategies with the NASSTRAC Shipper of the Year Award, which was renamed the Gail Rutkowski Transportation Excellence Award, in her honor.
•  Gleb Mikulich, a supply chain specialist at the supply chain software company ToolsGroup received the 2021 Emerging Leader Award for outstanding supply chain professionals age 32 and under.
• Rebekah Brau of Brigham Young University won the Doctoral Dissertation Award for her paper “Integrating Systems, Processes, and Human Judgment: Three Essays on Value Creation with Supply Chain Analytics.”
• Bernard J. La Londe Best Paper Award was given to Travis Tokar of Texas Christian University and Brent D. Williams and Brian S. Fugate, both from University of Arkansas, for “I Heart Logistics—Just Don’t Ask Me to Pay for It: Online Shopper Behavior in Response to a Delivery Carrier Upgrade and Subsequent Shipping Charge Increase.”
• Marat Davletshin and Susan Golicic of Colorado State University received the E. Grosvenor Plowman Award for their research paper, “The Ties that Pay: The Impact of Buyer-Supplier Network Closure and Gender Diversity of Boards of Directors on Sustained Revenue Growth.”
•  2021Teaching Innovation Award was presented to Shane J. Schvaneveldt, Francois Giraud-Carrier, and Evan Barlow of Weber State University for their submission entitled: “Exploring Supply Chain Disruptions: An Active Learning Exercise for Connecting High School Students to SCM.” 

CSCMP session sampler

With three keynote presentations and over 100 educational sessions, CSCMP EDGE 2021 attendees had a wide variety of educational opportunities to choose from. Here are highlights of just a few.

• Supply chain miracle. The development of the COVID-19 vaccine in nine months has been hailed as a medical miracle. Just as much of a miracle? Building the supply chain that manufactures and distributes that vaccine. Jim Cafone, vice president of strategy and business operations for Pfizer, detailed the challenges the company faced during the opening keynote session.
  
  From the beginning of the pandemic, Pfizer’s focus was on collaboration and how the company could contribute to eradicating the pandemic. “We never used the word ‘compete,’” said Cafone. “We were willing to share our tools and insight with anyone we could.” This commitment to collaboration included a willingness to share Pfizer’s significant global manufacturing capacity.
  
  The biggest hurdle was the need for speed. Decisions were made in a rapid-fire fashion and traditional timeframes were crunched. For example, instead of developing the new manufacturing process in a standard, serial fashion, all of the stages occurred in parallel. This reduced the creation of the manufacturing process from 24 months to six. 
  
  
• Reshore or onshore? That is the question. Many executives are growing concerned about their dependence on other nations for critical goods and supplies. As a result, a number of companies are assessing whether reshoring should be part of their future strategic plans.
  
  “Learning how you can make better decisions on sourcing onshore and offshore is critical,” noted Harry Moser, founder and president of the nonprofit organization Reshoring Initiative during an educational session.
  
  To help make the decision-making process easier, the Reshoring Initiative has developed a total cost of ownership (TCO) tool that looks at 29 cost factors and includes freight rates from 17 countries. This free, customizable tool is available online at reshorenow.org. 
  
  
• Warehouse space shortage to continue. Soaring e-commerce shopping rates have combined with building delays in many regions to cause a crunch in the supply of new warehouse space, explained a panel of real estate experts during a session on industrial real estate.
  
  The pandemic has triggered a “firestorm” of demand for distribution centers (DCs), due to increased online shopping, a corresponding jump in product returns, and a shift from just-in-time inventory management to greater stockpiling of goods, said Stephanie Rodriguez, vice president of leasing and development for Duke Realty.
  
  Despite all the challenges, demand for warehouse space will continue to rise because of basic economics, said John Morris, executive managing director at the real estate firm CBRE. Transportation costs represent between half and two-thirds of logistics spending, so retailers are highly motivated to rent DC space close to their customers, he said.
  
  
• Consumer-focused supply chain. The supply chain is increasingly shaping the consumer experience and playing a significant role in customer satisfaction. That realization needs to start guiding how companies structure their supply chain operations, according to a panel of experts who presented at CSCMP. “We should all be thinking about the consumer marketplace, not just retailers,” said Terry Esper, associate professor of logistics at The Ohio State University.
  
  According to Esper, taking a consumer-centric approach to the supply chain does not mean that companies should abandon their focus on their direct customer. Instead, they should adopt a perspective similar to bifocal glasses, with one lens focused on their customer and one lens on the consumer.
  
  The shift to consumer-centricity, however, will not necessarily be easy. It will require a cultural change, including different key performance indicators.
  
  
• Ocean freight tsunami. It’s been a rough ride for ocean freight of late. Container ships wait for days to dock at ports, and labor shortages keep containers from being unloaded. Even once the containers are unloaded, there aren’t enough drivers to haul them away. And there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight, according to panelists who presented during a session on the problems facing ocean freight at CSCMP EDGE.
  
  “Until consumption starts to slow down, we won’t see relief,” said Joshua Bowen, senior director of trade development at CEVA Logistics.
  
  The panelists suggested transportation providers to use air freight to help with capacity issues, look for third-party solutions, invest in transloading to add capacity, and find a way to keep trucks moving by making driving more “trucker friendly.”
  
  For importers and exporters, the panel advised leaning into relationships with providers, building trust by being transparent and living up to your commitments, and finding locations where you can ground containers and get them off the maritime terminals.