The European Supply Chain Excellence Awards, which took place on Thursday, broke all records this year – more entries than ever before, more companies making it to the shortlist, and more people at the Awards dinner than ever before.
In fact, the event was a sell-out – filling the Ballroom at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London’s Mayfair.
That’s remarkable, given the events of the past year. At the time of the 2008 Awards ceremony, many companies were only just beginning to feel the effects of the recession. Now companies are looking forward to the recovery.
But this period has also been an opportunity to move supply chain up the agenda, seek out best practice and innovation, and extend collaboration across the industry.
The Overall Winner, Telefónica O2 UK, provides a striking example of how focus on the supply chain can build competitive advantage. Congratulations to them an all the other winners.
Our thanks to our partner PRTM, our sponsors Kewill and Toyota Materials Handling for helping to make it such a successful event.
Many of the themes that have come to the fore during the awards are inevitably going to be taken up at the Extended Supply Chain conference in March next year.
But central to ESC 2010 will be the concept of “dynamic supply chain alignment” with a keynote speech from Dr John Gattorna, renowned academic and author of the seminal work on the subject.
The thesis is that existing business models used in enterprise supply chains have outlived their usefulness, especially with the onslaught of more demanding customers and an increasingly volatile marketplace in these uncertain times.
There is no silver bullet, but there is a model which is increasingly being applied successfully by global corporations – dynamic alignment.
Gattorna has spent some 25 years developing and refining concepts to allow accurate prediction of changes in supply chain activity. ESC will provide an essential opportunity to get to grips with the concepts behind dynamic alignment as well as other innovations in supply chain thinking.
