The engineering sector is late on the supply chain bandwagon but the challenge of low cost overseas manufacturing means logistics is fast moving up the agenda. What does the future hold?
Author: Alexandra Leonards
Chris Webster described the selection of this year’s
Overall Winner as ‘the toughest I’ve seen during
Capgemini’s years of involvement in the Awards’, a
sentiment echoed by the other judges.
Recruiting, retaining and motivating staff is a long-standing problem for logistics operations, made more acute, in the UK at least, by the current relatively high levels of employment. What makes a company good to work for?
‘Managing a business is really about managing the supply chain,’ says the global operations director of De La Rue Cash Systems.
As usual, a very disparate set of entries in this category makes comparisons invidious. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) entered specifically to gain recognition for the efforts of their team co-ordinating the initial
Computacenter is a familiar name in the ESCE Awards, their UK operation having reached the finals in previous years. This time, however, it was the company’s German Logistics and Service Centre at Kerpen that was under the microscope.
There were three finalists in this category, but the judges also chose to consider the sole finalist in the otherwise week Process Industries category here.
This month acquisition activity has focused around global Swiss logistics provider Kuehne + Nagel International.
Inventory management used to be about lean systems and JIT but accurate real time information is now more essential as demand-driven supply networks come on-stream. Perhaps one day, stock-outs really will be consigned to history.
In recent weeks I have been able to meet a broad cross-section of European logistics professionals during the autumn round of conferences in Central and Western Europe.
