The COVID-19 crisis delivered bitter lessons on supply chain risk and resilience to organisations around the world. Still reeling from the impact of the pandemic, businesses have faced further disruptions or black swan events as they are known. Risk and resilience have become prime focus areas for business executives as they strive to keep supply chains on track to deliver on time, meet customer expectations and contain costs.
To empower the African supply chain community to prepare and protect their supply chains against future chaotic disruptions, SAPICS (The Professional Body for Supply Chain Management) has included a workshop on this important topic in the programme for the upcoming 2022 SAPICS Conference.
Presented by international supply chain risk management specialist, Gregory Schlegel, the workshop includes case studies across multiple industries. Schlegel has been a supply chain executive for several Fortune 100 companies and a professor at Lehigh University in the USA. He is a renowned author and founder of the global Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) Consortium.
In this SAPICS workshop, he will discuss the risk management strategies and tools employed by successful companies during the COVID-19 crisis. “With the pandemic covering two calendar years, and the inability to visit with companies, many service providers, including the SCRM Consortium, built cloud-based assessment tools utilising artificial intelligence (AI) and machine language to lead, guide, direct and coach companies to survive and thrive during COVID-19 and beyond.
“This SAPICS Conference workshop will provide context, including case studies describing how AI and machine learning algorithms are producing computer-generated risk analyses and action recommendations to effectively start and drive a successful supply chain risk and resilience journey,” he explains.
Now in its 44th successful year, the annual SAPICS Conference is Africa’s leading knowledge sharing and networking event for supply chain professionals. Hosted by SAPICS – The Professional Body for Supply Chain Management – it takes place from 12 to 15 June 2022 at Century City Conference Centre, Cape Town, South Africa.
SAPICS president MJ Schoemaker notes that the annual SAPICS Conference has the proud distinction of being one of very few events to offer powerful workshops as a value-add, at no additional cost to delegates. “This year, we have 10 workshops, including Professor Schlegel’s discussion.
Warehouse of the future
Also on this year’s workshop agenda is a session in which presenter Martin Bailey will examine how warehousing is evolving in the digital age. “In this workshop, we will develop scenarios for future warehouse infrastructures, along with the integration of future warehouse facilities into the total supply chain.
“We will look at trends for developing warehouses and how the metaverse will change the way we do things – along with all the associated technology. We will discuss changing marketplaces and how we must adapt to market needs, as well as the ‘want it now’ culture,” Bailey says. This workshop will also cover the explosion of ecommerce and the design of infrastructure to cope with ecommerce will be examined, together with strategies to handle an explosion of SKUs (stock keeping units) and smaller and smaller order sizes, he adds.
The 2022 SAPICS Conference workshops take place on the afternoon of Sunday, 12 June 2022 and the morning of Wednesday, 15 June 2022. Contact Gugu Mashiane on Gugu@sapics.org.za or Caidan Makin on Caidan@sapics.org.za or call SAPICS on +27 (0) 11 023 6701
