Fun and (LogistX) Games in Louisville

In a warehouse near Louisville, Ky., two teams—one from UPS and one from Genentech—each slalom a loaded pallet jack around an obstacle course consisting of stacks of pallets. The race is neck and neck until the competitors back into each other, causing UPS’s parcels to topple and allowing Genentech to pull into the lead.

That was one of many exciting moments during the Louisville LogistX Games, a concept dreamed up by Kevin A. Grove, a senior vice president and partner at the industrial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis. Grove sees the event as an opportunity to celebrate the skills of the often-overlooked warehouse associate and promote Louisville as a logistics hub. This year’s Games drew teams from DCs across the Louisville area, including UPS’s WorldPort, Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and this year’s winner, Clark Material Handling Co.

The Games consist of four events carried out in sequence. In the first event, some team members stack variously sized packages on a pallet, while others carefully pack a special box containing a bottle of wine, a bottle of vodka, and, of course, a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, which is then set aside. In the second event, the teams load their pallets onto pallet jacks for a relay race around an obstacle course.

Next, they wheel their pallets over to a storage rack, where they vie to be the fastest and most accurate at putaway.

Finally, that special package is trotted out for everyone’s favorite event: the Box Put. One player from each team throws the box as far as he or she can. The package is then unwrapped and inspected, with five feet deducted from the distance for each broken bottle. (Supply chain services company Houston-Johnson had a particularly impressive throw this year— nearly 80 feet with just one broken bottle.) The team that performs best overall takes home the coveted Golden Pallet trophy.

The Games are held in several cities, and regional winners compete at a national event in Louisville. But Grove has bigger dreams for the LogistX Games. He wants to see them expanded to 12 more cities, including the FedEx stronghold of Memphis, where he hopes to play off the UPS/FedEx rivalry. Grove also envisions the LogistX Games becoming a charity fundraiser, perhaps for local food banks.

Want to compete? Interested in hosting? Check out logistxgames.com. ;

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Meet the new boss

Whom do you report to? A vice president of logistics, distribution, or supply chain, perhaps? That might be what it says on the organizational chart, but according to software vendor Manhattan Associates, that’s not who’s really calling the shots.

A promotional video aired at the opening session of Manhattan’s Momentum user conference in San Diego began with this invitation: “Meet the new boss of your supply chain”—immediately followed by a huge photo of a teenage girl surrounded by a laptop, a cell phone, and a credit card.

The audience laughed, but the
message was clear: The end con-
sumer is using technology to make
decisions—and those decisions are
shaping the way companies manage
their supply chains. As Eddie Capel,
Manhattan’s executive vice presi-
dent and COO, explained, “The Net
Generation” is increasingly relying
on technology to research, place,
track, and pay for orders. That’s
putting pressure on retailers to
coordinate information sources and
enable separate applications to
“contemplate each other.”
To satisfy customer demand that
will be conveyed via new and con-
stantly changing platforms (such as
social networking sites), retailers
must be able to unify information
across inventory, order manage-
ment, promotions, merchandising,
and execution systems. This unified
view will help them create and man-
age “virtual pools of inventory”—
inventory that’s segmented by sales
channel but not physically separated
and can be dynamically reassigned
based on forecasts and actual
demand. ;