Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Innovation and Logic at Crossroads 2007 Summit

Last week I attended the Crossroads 2007: Supply Chain Innovation Summit hosted by MIT in Zaragoza, Spain. Speakers included IBM, Johnson & Johnson, DHL and Best Buy. Supply chain innovation was the common thread between all the speakers and its interesting to hear about what supply chain innovation means to different people. For example, DHL's example of innovation was how they removed the windows on a plane to fit a box into a cargo hold. Innovation or logical, you decide. During the IBM presentation we discussed innovation as an employee that invented an electronic device. The device sticks to the boxes of our high end servers and it records if the box is tilted or tipped, which can cause damage. Knowing the precise time the box was tipped could pinpoint which 3PL is responsible. The device is currently patent pending.

What I was glad to see was that innovation isn't just about consumer devices like iPods and xBoxes, it's about thinking differently about processes and taking action. So in reality innovation can be a logical solution after all.

I am also trying to confirm in the clothing retailer, which is based in Spain, is named after the city of Zaragoza. Anyone know?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re: clothing retailer -- would you be referring to Zara?
- anonie

Christopher Sciacca said...

Yes, Zara is the retailer. I was wondering if they are named after the city.

Eric said...

It would be interesting to know more. I work for DHL and we are into a lot of stuff. That comes from being in the top 5 global employers in terms of size... Not sure that makes us better, just BIG.

Z Lebanese said...

Hi Christopher

Having studied SCM last year, I was always getting the ZARA case studies. I don't think the name is related to Zaragoza since the first Zara store was opened on a central street in Coruña.

By the way, you should moderate comments on your blog since you are getting spammed.

Anonymous said...

I assume this supply chain innovation summit is part of the Supply Chain 2020 initiative between MIT and ZLC. Have any of you found an easy way to keep track of the dialog happening at SC2020? A blog just highlighting summaries of interesting articles / research, for example.

Christopher Sciacca said...

Here is the Blog for 2020 http://www.sc2020.com/watch/

and the 2020 homepage
http://ctl.mit.edu/index.pl?id=5439

You may also want to contact Jim Rice at MIT for further comment
jrice@mit.edu

Anonymous said...

hXmova Your blog is great. Articles is interesting!

Anonymous said...

eSPgup Wonderful blog.

Anonymous said...

Wonderful blog.

Anonymous said...

Good job!

Anonymous said...

actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.

Anonymous said...

Wonderful blog.

Anonymous said...

Good job!

Anonymous said...

Good job!

Anonymous said...

Nice Article.

Anonymous said...

Hello all!