Supply Chain Frontiers issue #12. Read all articles in this issue
The MIT Supply Chain 2020 research project will use a process for mapping the future of supply chains that is based on Royal Dutch Shell's well-known scenario planning methodology and widely used by successful Fortune 500 companies. Larry Lapide, head of the MIT SC2020 project, announced the plan during a symposium called Building the Future Supply Chain Now held this November in Cambridge, MA. Over the next year or so the SC2020 research team will use this method to "develop scenarios that will enable us to identify and map the factors that are critical to the success of supply chains up to the year 2020," said Lapide. The symposium also featured discussions on scenario-building work carried out by UPS, panel discussions, and speakers from MIT and other leading companies.
Attendees mapped the supply chain management implications of three scenarios derived from the UPS research. The most optimistic scenario, called Networks Without Borders, envisages a politically stable world with no trade barriers, where enterprises are highly connected via open networks and markets are dominated by fast-moving technologies aimed at consumers. Less positive is the Company City scenario, where the world is dominated by a select group of global corporations, there is a growing global middle class and worldwide secularism. In the Bordered Disorder world, citizens are subjected to rising terror and security threats, extensive regulation and protectionism, and heavy emphasis on the protection of intellectual property. "These scenarios provide an excellent introduction to the way the scenario mapping process works and will be built upon during the SC2020 project", said Mahender Singh, the SC2020 project's research manager.
Echoing the futuristic theme of the symposium, Joe Coughlin, head of the MIT AgeLab, gave a sobering account of how the rise of the baby boom generation will have far-reaching consequences for the way companies manage their supply chains. Professor Thomas Malone, MIT Sloan School of Management, gave a presentation on the future shape of the workplace. This was followed up with a panel session during which senior executives from Dell and Staples gave some insights into how distributed decision-making - a hallmark of the Malone view of tomorrow's workplace - influences supply chain management in their organizations. ExxonMobil Company then discussed the future of energy, and panelists from C&S Wholesale Grocers, Masterfoods, and P&G explored the implications of increased energy costs on their supply chains.
The following day members of the SC2020 Industry Advisory Council convened to delve further into the supply chain implications and principles that will drive future supply chains.
For further information on the MIT SC2020 project contact Larry Lapide.