Supply Chain Thought Leaders 3 days at Dinalog

Supply Chain Thought Leaders conference at Dinalog Breda July 6-9

More than 40 leading supply chain and logistics professors from around the world visited Dinalog in Breda. The initiative from Jo van Nunen and Jan Fransoo to hold this prestigious meeting in the Netherlands was because of the start of Dinalog. The annual Supply Chain Thought Leaders conference (SCTL) started in 1998, as an initiative of Hau Lee to have a debate with leading scientists about new developments in the field, without presenting research results. The relative privacy of the conference enables the participants to debate thoroughly and openly and test new ideas. The SCTL is a network of maximal 50 professors and it adopts new members by means of co-optation.

In Breda, important names as Hau Lee of Stanford, Yossi Sheffi of MIT and Luk van Wassenhove of INSEAD were present.  Also upcoming talents such as Julie Swann of Georgia Tech (in the New York Times of 8 July) and Geert-Jan van Houtum of the TU Eindhoven were present at this event. Due to the sudden death of Jo van Nunen, the only Dutch members of the SCTL are now Ton de Kok and Jan Fransoo.

During the workshop sessions there were extensive discussions on the 4C concept about horizontal collaboration, which is one of the research themes of Dinalog. Many significant ideas were generated which can be used in the Dinalog projects. There were also sessions on topics such as the influence of scarce material on the structures of supply chains, the role of the logistics at large humanitarian operations (with a focus on Haiti) and the importance of logistical clusters.

During the sponsor diner in the Castle of Breda, there was plenty of opportunity for interaction with the Dutch industry. Representatives from Dutch businesses enjoyed the unique presence of the Members of the SCTL in the Netherlands. The diner got extra depth because of the discussions between 4 representatives of the businesses and 4 professors. Finally there was an extensive visit to the port of Rotterdam, the Port Authority of Rotterdam and ECT Delta.

In a discussion with the management of Dinalog a number of ideas was suggested to bind the SCTL, by means of Dinalog, permanently to the Dutch businesses and to reinforce the open innovation concept of Dinalog also internationally in this way.

Click here for further information about the participants and the program of the SCTL conference.