NEWS FROM THE CONFERENCE AND TRADESHOW CIRCUIT roadtrip
NITL president: Shippers willing to
pay for infrastructure improvements
IN A SIGN OF THE TIMES, THE PRESIDENT OF A PROMINENT INDUSTRY GROUP
has gone on record stating that the nation’s shippers would be willing to accept higher fees
or taxes to help finance badly needed improvements to the nation’s infrastructure. Speaking
at the National Industrial Transportation League’s annual meeting in November, Bruce J.
Carlton, the group’s president, said that given the situation’s gravity, users of transport services are willing to pay a higher user fee to fund a modernized infrastructure and are more
amenable than in the past to accept an increase in diesel fuel taxes. “Shippers get it,” he said.
Infrastructure issues are expected to take on increased importance in the incoming
Obama administration and on Capitol Hill. And NITL will be working on a comprehensive legislative initiative to shore up the nation’s crumbling network of roads,
bridges, and tunnels. “It is our number one legislative project,” Carlton said. The initiative, one of the most ambitious in NITL’s 101-year history, will lay out a 20- to 30-
year blueprint for infrastructure modernization.
Still, that’s no guarantee of quick action. Washington insiders attending the conference predict it will take at least two years for any infrastructure legislation to reach
President-Elect Barack Obama’s desk.
March 2–5
Users of SAP’s logistics and supply
chain solutions can attend educational sessions and swap tips at
Logistics and Supply Chain
Management 2009 in Orlando, Fla.
For information, visit www.sap-
scm2009.com.
all bets are on!
What happens in Vegas … just might end up saving your company a lot of money. That is, of
course, if you’re going to Sin City to attend the Reverse Logistics Association’s annual conference
and expo. The event, which is scheduled for Feb. 3–5, is designed to give attendees an opportunity to learn about best practices in reverse logistics.
Keynote speaker Kevin Winneroski, vice president of secondary markets for Best Buy, will kick
off the event by describing the revenue opportunities the retailer has found in its end-of-life,
close-out, and returned/refurbished products. Executives from top companies like Philips, Sun
Microsystems, and Dell will also be on hand to talk about reverse logistics support services, the
challenges of remanufacturing, and creating green reverse logistics supply chains.
RLA will also offer pre-conference workshops on topics like designing for value recovery, successful outsourcing, and enhancing profits by improving reverse logistics. The event includes an
exposition featuring third-party service providers, hardware repair companies, reverse logistics
software companies, and more. For more information, visit www.rltshows.com.
March 16–19
Organized by the Institute for
Defense and Government Advancement, Performance-Based Logistics
2009 will highlight how government and industry are partnering to
overcome the barriers to PBL implementation. The event takes place in
Washington, D.C. For information,
visit www.idga.org/us/pbl.
April 5–8
The Grocery Manufacturers Association will hold its Information
Systems/Logistics Distribution
Conference in Miami. The event
includes sessions on implementing
new logistics initiatives in the consumer packaged-goods industry. For
information, visit www.gmaisld.com.
taking the long view
Times may be tough right now, but executives from leading retail and consumer products companies will nonetheless be focusing on the challenges of the future at the Retail
Industry Leaders Association’s Logistics 2009 conference. Speakers at the event, which
runs from Feb. 8–11 in Dallas, will discuss issues like the changing labor landscape, the
supply chain legislative outlook, and the shifting global outsourcing picture. In addition, a panel of Wall Street analysts will predict how today’s dreary market conditions
will affect corporate operations and consumer actions in the coming months.
But the conference will not be all doom and gloom. At the luncheon session, award-winning ESPN sports commentator Chris “Boomer” Berman will inject some levity
into the proceedings with a keynote address about leadership and team building.
For more information, visit www.rila.org.
April 26–29
The Warehousing Education and
Research Council’s Annual Conference takes place in Atlanta. Session
topics include sustainable DC
design, labor management metrics,
vendor scorecarding, and effective
picking and putaway. For information, visit www.werc.org.
April 21–22
Ethical Corp.’s 2nd Green Supply
Chain Summit in London will focus
on how a greener supply chain can
improve efficiency, create savings,
and reduce risk. For information,
visit www.ethicalcorp.com/green-supplychain.
