Discover how emerging innovations intersect with supply chain management. Since 2014, Crossroads has been offering a unique learning opportunity for participants by connecting experts from MIT, the world’s foremost center for technological innovation, with the foremost business & management industry leaders, and researchers from the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL), the global leader in supply chain education and research.
No other event provides this blend of expertise in one day. "Crossroads has become the industry’s most compelling forum for the ideas that will shape tomorrow's supply chains," says Yossi Sheffi, Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT and Director of MIT CTL.
Crossroads 2024 coming spring 2024. CTL Supply Chain Exchange partners, the MIT community, and alumni attend Crossroads for free. Learn more about becoming a Supply Chain Exchange Partner.
As we marked the 50th anniversary of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, the milestone led us to ponder over the evolution of the supply chain and logistics field—after all, the term “supply chain” itself is only 40 years old. Crossroads 2023 consisted of a series of informal, intimate discussions with leaders from at the fore of industry: leading shippers, carriers, tech companies, consumer products firms, and contract manufacturers. Each discussion focused on understanding the current supply chain climate and dynamics, but with a look to the future and exploration into leading-edge innovations in the field as well as what today’s supply chain professionals need to plan and prepare for in the future.
Our world has become much more complex since supply chain design conventions were established from research carried out in the 1990s. The competitive environment in which firms operate experiences more volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—such that it has even become its own acronym: VUCA. With technological advances over the last two decades enabling incredibly detailed data visibility, the conventional approach to network design—focusing only on cost minimization—is now only one of many approaches. What does it take for companies to thrive in today's VUCA environment, exploring new considerations for supply chain design that companies need to maintain a competitive advantage, when aspects like resilience, demand uncertainty, and green logistics become a vital part of the supply chain design process?
The labor shortages that are disrupting supply chains are part of a wider set of work-related challenges that include demographic shifts, the impact of automation, and AI-driven changes to job specs. In this rapidly changing employment landscape, leaders must find ways to ensure that their organizations can recruit and retain the workforces they need to stay competitive over the next decade.
The year 2020 was less than a month old when the coronavirus outbreak erupted in China. The crisis provides a stark reminder of the uncertainties that supply chains face today – and throughout the new decade. The Crossroads 2020 one-day conference explored these uncertainties, as well as measures that companies can take to prepare for them.
Discovering how emerging innovations intersect with supply chain management. Topics: Digital Disruption, New Materials, Artificial Intelligence, Visual Analytics.
New advances in artificial intelligence, the impact of self-drive vehicle technology and its evolution over the coming years, the policy and legal ramifications of autonomous vehicles, and the implications conversational commerce has on business operations are some of the developments that supply chain professionals will learn about at Crossroads 2018.
The six presenters at the 2017 CTL Crossroads conference came from markedly different parts of MIT – studying business, economics, computer science, chemistry, and civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering – but their talks shared common themes connected to supply chains.
The impact of autonomous vehicles on logistics operations, new research on the security of food supply chains, and the latest developments from the cutting edge of online education are some of the topics that will be covered at Crossroads 2016.
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