2021 Virtual Summit: Developing a game plan for the future

Each December, the focus of the issue is our annual Executive Guide to Supply Chain Resources. This is a comprehensive guide to services, products and educational opportunities targeted specifically to supply chain professionals. But, as with years past, we’re also featuring several articles we trust will give you something to think about in the coming year.

Let’s start with an excerpt from “A Shot in the Arm: How Science, Engineering, and Supply Chains Converged to Vaccinate the World,” the latest book from MIT’s Yossi Sheffi. In it, Sheffi brings his unique combination of research and reporting to document the race to develop a life-saving vaccine in record time and in the midst of a pandemic. Needless to say, supply chain played a key role. To learn more, you can listen to my interview with Sheffi on the “Talking Supply Chain Podcast,” which is available wherever you get your podcasts.

We also offer our annual look at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ State of Logistics Report, authored by the partners at the consulting firm Kearney. As you might imagine, COVID-19 played a huge role in shaping 2021, in some surprising ways, with the authors predicting that it will continue to affect supply chain in 2022.

Based on Kearney’s report, and what every supply chain professional is experiencing every day, we know that the cost of transportation and logistics is skyrocketing. What can you do about it? One suggestion is to transform your operations in the short-term and long-term to become a shipper of choice. Authors Lee Clair and Robert Sabath from Transportation and Logistics Advisors offer a blueprint to make that happen.

Finally, Jim Tompkins, one of the industry’s best-known thought leaders, offers his take on the seven permanent changes he sees as a result of the pandemic, and what business needs to do to respond for future success.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend NextGen 2021, Supply Chain Management Review’s annual conference focused on the technologies that are shaping tomorrow’s supply chains, you can still register to view the conference online. Sessions will be available until April 2022. Please visit the registration page at nextgensupplychainconference.com. You won’t be disappointed.

As always, the editors at SCMR wish all of our readers a successful year to come. We hope that the information and insights contained in this issue will play some part in that success.