Supply Chain Frontiers issue #42
The Zaragoza Logistics Center (ZLC) has established the Supply Chain & Finance Institute (SFI) to promote the study of the interrelationship between supply chain and finance.
The global financial crisis and its aftermath have highlighted the importance of this interrelationship. In addition, bringing more financial rigor to supply chain management has become critically important in an increasingly globalized, highly uncertain business environment.
SFI’s mission is to provide best practices to supply chain and/or finance professionals by balancing the trade-offs among liquidity, risk, and profitability, and by actively engaging with academics and practitioners around the world. Operations managers often find it difficult to marry the physical flow of goods with the flow of capital, and SFI intends to bridge this gap.
The new institute draws on the expertise of MIT-Zaragoza faculty and academics from leading universities around the world as well as industry experts. SFI is headed by both Dr. Alejandro Serrano, Professor of Supply Chain Management MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program, Zaragoza, Spain, and Dr. Daniel Corsten, Professor of Operations & Technology Management at IE Business School, Madrid, Spain.
Service offerings fall into three broad areas: executive education, best practices, and research. Executive education includes custom programs tailored to a company’s specific needs and a series of events that focus on topical issues. Three seminars for senior and mid-level managers in the supply chain management and finance functions have been announced. The seminars, detailed below, will take place in the fall of 2011 in Zaragoza, Spain.
Financial Accounting for Supply Chain and Operations Managers (1.5 days) is aimed at executives in various functional areas, including purchasing, manufacturing, inventory, distribution, and planning. Attendees will learn basic accounting concepts and how to communicate effectively with finance specialists.
Financial Management for Supply Chain and Operations Managers (1.5 days) is designed for executives involved in project management, strategy development and execution, planning, purchasing, manufacturing, inventory control, and managing distribution. Managers will broaden their knowledge of finance and improve their decision making by being able to evaluate liquidity in the context of growth and profitability.
Ensure Liquidity for Growth (1 day)will give senior executives in operations – particularly procurement – and in finance departments the opportunity to learn about new techniques for improving working capital, reducing risk, and enhancing procurement-to-payment processes.
An annual roundtable conference is also planned. The Supply Chain Finance 2nd Annual Symposium will take place in Zaragoza, Spain, on April 12 and 13, 2012. This event is being organized by SFI in partnership with the Supply Chain Management Institute at the European Business School.
The link between supply chain and finance has attracted more attention over recent years, but the SFI is taking a unique approach to this important subject, says Professor Alejandro Serrano, head of research at the Institute. “Often, this important area of study is characterized as supply chain financing or the financial supply chain. However, we see it in a broader sense as how supply chain and finance relate to each other, and how the two disciplines can combine to improve liquidity and profitability,” he says.
For more information on the SFI and the events described above log on to http://www.zlc.edu.es/research/sc-and-finance/ or contact Roberto Martinez, Supply Chain & Finance Research Associate, ZLC, at: rmartinez@zlc.edu.es.