Spring 2006 Symposium
CVCR Symposium on Value Chain Adaptability
May 9, 2006
Rauch Business Center
Lehigh University
621 Taylor Street, Bethlehem, PA
Speakers and Abstracts:
- Joel Sutherland (Managing Director, CVCR), Collaborative Transportation Management: Enhancing Supply Chain Adaptability & Resiliency
In 1999-2000, a pilot study was conducted in the area of Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM) with Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and J.B. Hunt Transport all participating. Significant opportunities for improvement in the transportation process were identified. As a result of these initial findings, the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards (VICS) Association appointed a committee (the CTM committee) to develop processes and standards for this critical area. Today, CTM has become the answer for eliminating transportation inefficiencies and improving overall supply chain performance.
For anyone interested in finding out what CTM is, what the potential benefits are, and how they can get started, this presentation will help to answer those questions. This talk will provide an overview of the transportation and logistics industry; address specific issues, developments, and opportunities for improvement; and then provide a case study of a major retailer employing the principles of CTM to achieve enhanced supply chain adaptability and resiliency.
- Steve Radosevich (Director of Supply Chain Operations for NA Computer Imaging and Printing Hardward, Hewlett Packard) and Teresa McCarthy (Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management, Lehgih University), Interfirm Demand Integration: Matching Supply and Demand
As firms recognize that competition is no longer limited to company versus company, but rather supply chain versus supply chain, reliance on trading partners to help bridge the supply-demand gap and achieve competitive advantage becomes more important. As such, it is essential for trading partners to understand how to integrate supply and demand activities in order to deliver superior customer value. This discussion will present a multiple-case-study research project currently underway to test a model of Interfirm Demand Integration, describing the infrastructure and processes that firms can integrate to bridge the supply-demand gap. Hewlett Packard will present their Holistic Value Chain, the HP approach to integrating activities with their trading partners that synchronizes the supply chain by working backward from the customer, truly understanding demand, and focusing on business processes.
- Theresa Neumann (Business Value IPT Leader, Boeing) and Mike Kolchin (Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, College of Business and Economics, Lehigh Univeristy), Moving Beyond the Factory and Into the Service Sector
More and more the major share of revenues for many corporations comes from the provision of services. As companies move into the service area, they need to determine how to ensure the delivery of high quality service to their customers. The project undertaken by the Boeing Company and Lehigh University investigates how service customers measure service quality and how these measures link to internal performance metrics of the service provider. In addition, part of the study is looking at how these measures of service quality are impacted by cultural values of customers. The ultimate purpose of the project is to identify what systems and metrics need to be in place to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction.
During the presentation, we will be discussing the preliminary results of a questionnaire sent to buyers of industrial services investigating how customers evaluate service quality. We will also discuss how critical dimensions of service quality vary across industry sectors and cultures.
- Thomas K. Cassidy (Manager of Performance Improvement Advisory Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP), Corporate Fitness and the Resilient Organization
Given recent changes in the Global Marketplace, companies today must consider the impact of a wide variety of events on their business. Crises such as pandemics, natural disasters and terrorism have been added to the list of CEO concerns previously focused on operational and tactical issues.
In this presentation, we will discuss the changing business landscape and introduce you to the concept of Corporate Fitness. We will demonstrate the impact the level of "fitness" has on a company's ability to avoid or respond to a crisis. Additionally, we will discuss the correlation of high-level, C-suite concerns with respect to underlying value chain activities and varying approaches to business continuity planning.
Attendees will leave this session with a more comprehensive understanding of the role sustainable fitness plays in a company's ability to avoid, respond to and recover from crisis events. They will gain a better understanding of the actions today's senior executives are taking to mitigate risk as well as handle the impact of events.
- S. David Wu (Dean, Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Lehigh University) and Chris Armbruster (Director of Supply Chain Strategy, Agere Systems), Managing Demand Uncertainty for High-Tech Products
Over the past decade, the high-tech industry has been rapidly innovating technology and introducing new products. Firms have moved from vertically integrated operations to horizontally integrated operations that include contract manufacturers. In September 2002, Agere Systems recognized that they needed new tools for managing the capacity in their increasingly complex, global supply chain. Agere and the Center for Value Chain Research at Lehigh University formed a team to develop new methods for characterizing the demands of short life-cycle technology products. The team developed a “leading-indicator engine” that identifies products that provide advanced warning of demand changes for a group of products. For a data set including 3500 semiconductor products, the analysis identified leading indicators that predicted the demand pattern of the product group one to seven months ahead of time with high correlation. The leading-indicator concept provides a new perspective on managing demand uncertainty in the supply chain and can be extended to other supply chain functions such as capacity planning and revenue forecasting.
- John Dischinger (Program Director of University Initiatives and Programs, IBM) and Lawrence V. Snyder (Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Co-Director of CVCR, Lehigh University), Resiliency in a Global Value Chain
Every value chain faces supply uncertainty ranging from minor production delays to catstrophic disruptions, and the value chain must be resilient to this uncertainty if it is to function efficiently. In this talk, we discuss the key concerns, opportunities, and investments for building a resilient global value chain, providing illustrations from IBM's ongoing efforts to develop strategies for value chain resiliency. We also discuss an ongoing project by IBM and CVCR researchers to develop techniques for adjusting inventory levels and locations to take advantage of advanced warning of supply disruptions.
- Michael D. Zisman (Managing Director, Internet Capital Group),
The Impact of the Internet on Industry Structure and Value Chains
The Internet creates high levels of price transparency, driving down margins and forcing firms to reduce costs by becoming far more efficient. At the same time, a ubiquitous communications infrastructure reduces transaction costs between firms. As transaction costs decline and the communications infrastructure enables better collaboration between individuals in different firms, there is a natural tendency for firms to “unbundle” and for industries to “disaggregate” and evolve into ecosystems—resulting in more fine-grained value chains. As transaction costs decline, firms tend to outsource more and insource less. Rationally done, this leads to more efficient industries and more efficient firms within these industries. Indeed, to the extent that industries suffer the impacts of price transparency and do not exploit the declining transaction costs available to them, long term structural problems will emerge, as seen in the airline and automotive industries. This session will focus on these two opposing forces driven by the Internet, and how some industries and firms are responding.
Slides (click link for pdf file):
- Sutherland (436 KB)
- Radosevich-McCarthy (191 KB)
- Neumann-Kolchin (47 KB)
- Cassidy (244 KB)
- Wu-Armbruster (472 KB)
- Dischinger-Snyder (517 KB)
- Zisman (197 KB)
- CVCR Intro (79 KB)
- CVCR Wrap-Up (72 KB)
Associated White Papers (click link for pdf file):
- Sutherland (193 KB)
- Radosevich-McCarthy (397 KB)
- Wu-Armbruster (294 KB)
- Zisman (280 KB)
Additional Links:
- Symposium Summary (40 KB)