5 Things You Need to Know from the CSCMP Edge Conference

Center of Innovation for Logistics Associate Director Sandy Lake recently attended the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ (CSCMP) virtual conference, CSCMP Edge. Sandy shares her five takeaways regarding end-to-end supply chain education from the September conference.

1. Navigating the new normal – Resiliency, flexibility and agility are consistent themes in 2020 as fragile supply chains examine how they can better manage risk to become more resilient in the face of the unexpected. Supply chain is a holistic approach now, not solely a transportation division.
2. Talent – Upstream supply chain jobs have increased demand for jobs such as forecasting, demand planning, inventory management/optimization, and supplier management. Downstream, its supply chain network design has many companies racing to get closer to customers. Continue to focus on cultivating women leaders in supply chain and ensuring social responsibility and diversity in the workplace.
3. Capacity – With the explosive rise in e-commerce resulting from the pandemic, shippers are facing a very tight transportation market, which will only intensify as we enter the holiday season. Freight flow patterns — both in terms of types of freight and geography — have shifted fairly dramatically since the onset of the pandemic.
4. Technology – There is acceleration in digital transformation for the supply chain as the need for more optimization and increased efficiency is spurred on by the need for speed in today’s on-demand economy.
5. Uncertainty in demand – companies grapple with demand forecasting in a time when online spending has accelerated to a rate that, under normal circumstances, would have taken four to six years to achieve. The usual measures many companies used to forecast sales are out the window. Due to the dramatic shift in demand patterns, companies are not forecasting as they normally would and are instead willing to incur greater inventory-carrying cost to meet demand.