One of CSCMP's goals is to promote the supply chain management profession to students around the world. CSCMP's roundtables are vitally important to realizing this goal because they continuously build collaborative relationships with universities, colleges, and academia. As part of that effort, many roundtables offer scholarships to students who are rising supply chain stars. Here are a few examples.
The Arizona Roundtable proudly awarded its first annual supply chain scholarships in 2007 to Naomi Amparo, a student at Arizona State University (ASU), and Manish Sawlani, a student at the Thunderbird Global School of Management. Each received a scholarship of US $1,250. The roundtable also recently awarded a US $2,500 scholarship to Amanda Schmidt, a supply chain student at ASU who has been involved in sending medical supplies to various regions of Africa.
To fund these awards, the Arizona Roundtable contributes 75 percent of the net proceeds from its events to the scholarship fund. In addition to raising scholarship funds, this practice aids in event promotion and helps justify the expense for attendees. It also allows the roundtable to build a strong line of communication with the local education community.
The Columbus Roundtable, through its Bernard J. LaLonde Transportation and Logistics Scholarship program, awarded Steven Miko, a student at The Ohio State University, Fisher College of Business, a US $3,270 scholarship.
The New England Roundtable (NERT) awarded five US $1,000 scholarships to students at partner schools. Through its scholarship program, the Education Committee of NERT works with professors at area colleges and universities to recognize students who are interested in supply chain management and who excel both in the classroom and in extracurricular activities.
This year's recipients are:
Chris Chesebro will receive an MBA in management of operations and technology from Bentley College in 2009. He plans to focus his studies on textile supply chain management, which will allow him to be a fourth-generation contributor to Wigwam Mills, a well-known hosiery manufacturer.
Jarred Sternbergh is a 2010 candidate for a bachelor of science degree with a concentration in international business and logistics at Maine Maritime Academy. Sternbergh has been an officer in the Regiment of Midshipmen and has received the Rear Admiral Warren C. Hamm Jr. Leadership Award.
Erik Caldwell is a student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) master of engineering in logistics (MLOG) program. His research has focused on exploring how transportation pricing is correlated to other factors such as tender lead time and business policies. Before entering the MLOG program, Erik attended West Point, served in the U.S. Army, and worked in third-party logistics.
Marcia Muñoz Robles will receive a bachelor of science degree in international business with a concentration in supply chain management at Northeastern University. Robles, who is fluent in English, Spanish, and Italian, will also earn a dual degree with Universidad de Las Americas in Mexico. She is a research assistant to one of her professors, a position usually reserved for MBA students.
Helen Zhang is a 2009 candidate for a bachelor of science degree with a double major in supply chain management and management information systems at the University of Rhode Island. Zhang, who speaks Shanghai-dialect Chinese and is studying Mandarin, is an active member of the Supply Chain Management Club and assists faculty with various research projects.
Repeat performance
Student Showcase returns to CSCMP's Annual Conference
"Don't mess with success." That's a motto CSCMP takes to heart, especially when it comes to something as successful as CSCMP's Student Showcase! The showcase premiered at CSCMP's Annual Global Conference 2007 and featured students' case studies, projects, white papers, and résumés, all of which highlighted their unique talents and experience.
CSCMP developed the program last year after asking members if they would be interested in interviewing future supply chain leaders. Based on their enthusiastic response, we created the Student Showcase as a way to connect practitioners with supply chain students.
The 2007 Student Showcase in Philadelphia was overwhelmingly popular, and this year's event promises to be equally exciting. Companies will be able to schedule interviews with the best and the brightest graduate and undergraduate students at CSCMP's Annual Global Conference, October 5-8, 2008, in Denver, Colorado, USA.
The Student Showcase will be open Sunday, October 5, through Tuesday, October 7. Conference attendees will be able to view students' résumés, projects, and papers, as well as network with them. Students will be available for interviews on Tuesday, October 7, between 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
While the showcase is a new addition to the conference, student participation is a long-standing tradition. For more than 20 years, CSCMP's roundtables have been sponsoring college students so they can attend the annual global conference as part of CSCMP's extended staff. Students are selected by the roundtables based on their scholastic performance and passion for the profession. Each year, CSCMP's Annual Global Conference benefits from the participation of these outstanding young people, and the students benefit from the event's educational content and the opportunity to meet potential employers.
For more information about the Student Showcase, or if you, a colleague, or your human resources staff are interested in participating, please contact Sherrie A. Nauden, CSCMP Manager of Roundtables, at +1.630.645.3466 or
Global risk, crisis and leadership: An insider's view
Few people know as much about global risk, crisis preparation, and leadership as Frances Fragos Townsend. Townsend, who will be the keynote speaker at CSCMP's Annual Conference October 5-8, 2008, served as assistant to President George W. Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism and chaired the Homeland Security Council from May 2004 until January 2008. During that time, Townsend was known for having the ear and respect of the president, advising him almost daily on matters of global security.
Since resigning from her post, Townsend has been bringing that expertise to the corporate world. She currently provides consulting services on global strategic risk and contingency planning to companies worldwide. Her keynote address, "Global Strategic Risk: Anticipate, Prepare, and Mitigate," promises to expand attendees' view of global risk, showing how it can affect them no matter the size, location, or other characteristics of the markets their companies serve. She will then address what they can do to mitigate those risks.
Other major sessions include "Curved Thinking in a Flat World: How to Capitalize on Future Uncertainty" by Dr. Mahender Singh, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Supply Chain 2020 research project, and "Faster, Better, Smaller: Leading in an Era of Exponential Change" by noted futurist and best-selling author Jack Uldrich.
Powered by supply chain professionals
Intel becomes first corporate partner in CSCMP's Supply Chain Management Professional Recognition Program
The "Intel Inside" brand awareness campaign made sure consumers knew that their personal computers were powered by Intel microprocessors. Now, with a little help from CSCMP, the company's supply chain professionals are doing a little awareness raising of their own. Through the Supply Chain Management Professional Recognition Program, the company is making sure its employees know that supply chain professionals inside Intel are powering the company's success.
Intel Corporation is the first corporate partner of CSCMP's Supply Chain Management Professional Recognition Program, a collaborative effort between CSCMP and global businesses to formally recognize top-performing supply chain talent. Under the program, partner companies honor their outstanding supply chain practitioners with two designations, Supply Chain Management Professional (SCMP) and Senior Supply Chain Management Professional (Senior SCMP).
The program does not award an academic or training certification. Instead, supply chain practitioners are evaluated based on their companies' specific criteria, which typically include the level of execution expertise and the professional's influence within both the company and industry. Supply chain professionals who earn these designations are recognized by the organizations they work for, under the auspices of CSCMP. The individuals receive recognition on CSCMP's web site and in various association publications.
Intel Corporation's senior supply chain master and SCMP program chair, James R. Kellso, was recognized with the Senior SCMP designation. The following Intel Corporation employees received the SCMP designation: Simon Barrett, Nikhil Chhabra, German Ham, Isaac Hooper, Scott Kornak, Pallas Kwok, Shelly Lafree, Kenneth Loop, Chris Philippi, K.C. Quah, and Michael Virani.
"We commend these practitioners on their commitment to professional excellence," said Rick Blasgen, CSCMP's president and CEO. "Earning one of these designations is a noteworthy achievement. It increases the profile of the individual receiving the recognition as well as that of the profession by creating company- and industrywide awareness of the supply chain professional's significant role in the global marketplace."
CSCMP's Supply Chain Management Professional Recognition Program benefits both individual firms and the industry as a whole by recognizing and utilizing the expertise and knowledge base within a company. Any organization that employs supply chain professionals, regardless of its mission, size, or location, may participate in the program. There is no cost to participate.
If you haven't already signed up to join Denver, Colorado, USA, now is the October 5-8, 2008, in Global thousands of your peers from around the world at CSCMP's Annual Conference, time to register and make your hotel reservation. Save US $280.00 if you register by July 31, 2008. Conference fees cover all program events, meal functions, and materials.
Information about the conference agenda, track topics, accommodations, activities in Denver, and more is available here.
To register online, go here and click on "Register Now."
Benefits for Amazon's customers--who include marketplace retailers and logistics services customers, as well as companies who use its Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform and the e-commerce shoppers who buy goods on the website--will include generative AI (Gen AI) solutions that offer real-world value, the company said.
The launch is based on “Amazon Nova,” the company’s new generation of foundation models, the company said in a blog post. Data scientists use foundation models (FMs) to develop machine learning (ML) platforms more quickly than starting from scratch, allowing them to create artificial intelligence applications capable of performing a wide variety of general tasks, since they were trained on a broad spectrum of generalized data, Amazon says.
The new models are integrated with Amazon Bedrock, a managed service that makes FMs from AI companies and Amazon available for use through a single API. Using Amazon Bedrock, customers can experiment with and evaluate Amazon Nova models, as well as other FMs, to determine the best model for an application.
Calling the launch “the next step in our AI journey,” the company says Amazon Nova has the ability to process text, image, and video as prompts, so customers can use Amazon Nova-powered generative AI applications to understand videos, charts, and documents, or to generate videos and other multimedia content.
“Inside Amazon, we have about 1,000 Gen AI applications in motion, and we’ve had a bird’s-eye view of what application builders are still grappling with,” Rohit Prasad, SVP of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence, said in a release. “Our new Amazon Nova models are intended to help with these challenges for internal and external builders, and provide compelling intelligence and content generation while also delivering meaningful progress on latency, cost-effectiveness, customization, information grounding, and agentic capabilities.”
The new Amazon Nova models available in Amazon Bedrock include:
Amazon Nova Micro, a text-only model that delivers the lowest latency responses at very low cost.
Amazon Nova Lite, a very low-cost multimodal model that is lightning fast for processing image, video, and text inputs.
Amazon Nova Pro, a highly capable multimodal model with the best combination of accuracy, speed, and cost for a wide range of tasks.
Amazon Nova Premier, the most capable of Amazon’s multimodal models for complex reasoning tasks and for use as the best teacher for distilling custom models
Amazon Nova Canvas, a state-of-the-art image generation model.
Amazon Nova Reel, a state-of-the-art video generation model that can transform a single image input into a brief video with the prompt: dolly forward.
Economic activity in the logistics industry expanded in November, continuing a steady growth pattern that began earlier this year and signaling a return to seasonality after several years of fluctuating conditions, according to the latest Logistics Managers’ Index report (LMI), released today.
The November LMI registered 58.4, down slightly from October’s reading of 58.9, which was the highest level in two years. The LMI is a monthly gauge of business conditions across warehousing and logistics markets; a reading above 50 indicates growth and a reading below 50 indicates contraction.
“The overall index has been very consistent in the past three months, with readings of 58.6, 58.9, and 58.4,” LMI analyst Zac Rogers, associate professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University, wrote in the November LMI report. “This plateau is slightly higher than a similar plateau of consistency earlier in the year when May to August saw four readings between 55.3 and 56.4. Seasonally speaking, it is consistent that this later year run of readings would be the highest all year.”
Separately, Rogers said the end-of-year growth reflects the return to a healthy holiday peak, which started when inventory levels expanded in late summer and early fall as retailers began stocking up to meet consumer demand. Pandemic-driven shifts in consumer buying behavior, inflation, and economic uncertainty contributed to volatile peak season conditions over the past four years, with the LMI swinging from record-high growth in late 2020 and 2021 to slower growth in 2022 and contraction in 2023.
“The LMI contracted at this time a year ago, so basically [there was] no peak season,” Rogers said, citing inflation as a drag on demand. “To have a normal November … [really] for the first time in five years, justifies what we’ve seen all these companies doing—building up inventory in a sustainable, seasonal way.
“Based on what we’re seeing, a lot of supply chains called it right and were ready for healthy holiday season, so far.”
The LMI has remained in the mid to high 50s range since January—with the exception of April, when the index dipped to 52.9—signaling strong and consistent demand for warehousing and transportation services.
The LMI is a monthly survey of logistics managers from across the country. It tracks industry growth overall and across eight areas: inventory levels and costs; warehousing capacity, utilization, and prices; and transportation capacity, utilization, and prices. The report is released monthly by researchers from Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, and the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).
Specifically, 48% of respondents identified rising tariffs and trade barriers as their top concern, followed by supply chain disruptions at 45% and geopolitical instability at 41%. Moreover, tariffs and trade barriers ranked as the priority issue regardless of company size, as respondents at companies with less than 250 employees, 251-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-50,000 and 50,000+ employees all cited it as the most significant issue they are currently facing.
“Evolving tariffs and trade policies are one of a number of complex issues requiring organizations to build more resilience into their supply chains through compliance, technology and strategic planning,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “With the potential for the incoming U.S. administration to impose new and additional tariffs on a wide variety of goods and countries of origin, U.S. importers may need to significantly re-engineer their sourcing strategies to mitigate potentially higher costs.”
Freight transportation providers and maritime port operators are bracing for rough business impacts if the incoming Trump Administration follows through on its pledge to impose a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% tariff on China, analysts say.
Industry contacts say they fear that such heavy fees could prompt importers to “pull forward” a massive surge of goods before the new administration is seated on January 20, and then quickly cut back again once the hefty new fees are instituted, according to a report from TD Cowen.
As a measure of the potential economic impact of that uncertain scenario, transport company stocks were mostly trading down yesterday following Donald Trump’s social media post on Monday night announcing the proposed new policy, TD Cowen said in a note to investors.
But an alternative impact of the tariff jump could be that it doesn’t happen at all, but is merely a threat intended to force other nations to the table to strike new deals on trade, immigration, or drug smuggling. “Trump is perfectly comfortable being a policy paradox and pushing competing policies (and people); this ‘chaos premium’ only increases his leverage in negotiations,” the firm said.
However, if that truly is the new administration’s strategy, it could backfire by sparking a tit-for-tat trade war that includes retaliatory tariffs by other countries on U.S. exports, other analysts said. “The additional tariffs on China that the incoming US administration plans to impose will add to restrictions on China-made products, driving up their prices and fueling an already-under-way surge in efforts to beat the tariffs by importing products before the inauguration,” Andrei Quinn-Barabanov, Senior Director – Supplier Risk Management solutions at Moody’s, said in a statement. “The Mexico and Canada tariffs may be an invitation to negotiations with the U.S. on immigration and other issues. If implemented, they would also be challenging to maintain, because the two nations can threaten the U.S. with significant retaliation and because of a likely pressure from the American business community that would be greatly affected by the costs and supply chain obstacles resulting from the tariffs.”
New tariffs could also damage sensitive supply chains by triggering unintended consequences, according to a report by Matt Lekstutis, Director at Efficio, a global procurement and supply chain procurement consultancy. “While ultimate tariff policy will likely be implemented to achieve specific US re-industrialization and other political objectives, the responses of various nations, companies and trading partners is not easily predicted and companies that even have little or no exposure to Mexico, China or Canada could be impacted. New tariffs may disrupt supply chains dependent on just in time deliveries as they adjust to new trade flows. This could affect all industries dependent on distribution and logistics providers and result in supply shortages,” Lekstutis said.
Grocers and retailers are struggling to get their systems back online just before the winter holiday peak, following a software hack that hit the supply chain software provider Blue Yonder this week.
The ransomware attack is snarling inventory distribution patterns because of its impact on systems such as the employee scheduling system for coffee stalwart Starbucks, according to a published report. Scottsdale, Arizona-based Blue Yonder provides a wide range of supply chain software, including warehouse management system (WMS), transportation management system (TMS), order management and commerce, network and control tower, returns management, and others.
Blue Yonder today acknowledged the disruptions, saying they were the result of a ransomware incident affecting its managed services hosted environment. The company has established a dedicated cybersecurity incident update webpage to communicate its recovery progress, but it had not been updated for nearly two days as of Tuesday afternoon. “Since learning of the incident, the Blue Yonder team has been working diligently together with external cybersecurity firms to make progress in their recovery process. We have implemented several defensive and forensic protocols,” a Blue Yonder spokesperson said in an email.
The timing of the attack suggests that hackers may have targeted Blue Yonder in a calculated attack based on the upcoming Thanksgiving break, since many U.S. organizations downsize their security staffing on holidays and weekends, according to a statement from Dan Lattimer, VP of Semperis, a New Jersey-based computer and network security firm.
“While details on the specifics of the Blue Yonder attack are scant, it is yet another reminder how damaging supply chain disruptions become when suppliers are taken offline. Kudos to Blue Yonder for dealing with this cyberattack head on but we still don’t know how far reaching the business disruptions will be in the UK, U.S. and other countries,” Lattimer said. “Now is time for organizations to fight back against threat actors. Deciding whether or not to pay a ransom is a personal decision that each company has to make, but paying emboldens threat actors and throws more fuel onto an already burning inferno. Simply, it doesn’t pay-to-pay,” he said.
The incident closely followed an unrelated cybersecurity issue at the grocery giant Ahold Delhaize, which has been recovering from impacts to the Stop & Shop chain that it across the U.S. Northeast region. In a statement apologizing to customers for the inconvenience of the cybersecurity issue, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize said its top priority is the security of its customers, associates and partners, and that the company’s internal IT security staff was working with external cybersecurity experts and law enforcement to speed recovery. “Our teams are taking steps to assess and mitigate the issue. This includes taking some systems offline to help protect them. This issue and subsequent mitigating actions have affected certain Ahold Delhaize USA brands and services including a number of pharmacies and certain e-commerce operations,” the company said.
Editor's note:This article was revised on November 27 to indicate that the cybersecurity issue at Ahold Delhaize was unrelated to the Blue Yonder hack.