Newsletter
Publication Date
Abstract

Supply Chain Frontiers issue #5. Read all articles in this issue

Dr Larry Lapide, Project Manager of the Supply Chain 2020 Project, meets Michael Dell during the Industry Advisory Council meeting hosted at Dell.

In December the MIT Supply Chain 2020 (SC2020) research group took its search for supply chain excellence to a master practitioner: Dell. A meeting of the SC2020 Project's Industry Advisory Council (IAC) hosted by the well-known company at its Austin, Texas Topfer Manufacturing Center included a session with founder Michael Dell.

"Dell is a Mecca of supply chain excellence, so it was a logical venue for the meeting," said Larry Lapide, Research Director at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics and manager of the SC2020 project. The multiyear research effort is mapping the evolution of successful supply chains up to the year 2020, and a key part of the project is identifying and analyzing the underlying factors that make a supply chain excellent.

The IAC meets four times a year to discuss progress and to brainstorm ideas about the future direction of supply chain management. At the December meeting Council members considered the latest project research on excellence in 10 industries, and ranked the operational objectives and metrics that are critical to achieving such performance. A presentation on supply chain practices at Dell, with particular emphasis on how it innovatively shapes demand, was followed by a look at one of the company's finely tuned and highly automated plants.

Also covered at the meeting was what global supply chains might look like in the year 2020. The Council took account of variables such as hikes in energy prices and changes in environmental regulations to reflect on the evolutionary path of supply chains over the next decade or so. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was explored in terms of its potential as a disruptive technology.

The next IAC meeting will be a webcast and is scheduled to take place in February 2005. "We now have more than 70 researchers working on the project, and are looking forward to sharing more of the findings at the next meeting as well as identifying the possible futures," said Lapide.

The IAC has 26 members including four organizations that joined recently to bolster its supply chain thought leadership: The Gap, Deloitte, The Scotts Company, and C & S Wholesale Grocers. The Council's sister organization, The European Advisory Council, has 14 members including new participant Infineon Technologies.

For the full list of members, and information on joining the project, go here. Larry Lapide can be contacted at: llapide@MIT.EDU.