inbound
Ocean race tests logisticians’ mettle, creativity
PHOTO COURTESY OF DHL
As any logistics professional will attest, it’s
nearly impossible to predict what the job
will bring from one day to the next, and
boredom is definitely not a problem. But
it’s a good bet there were times over the
past nine months when DHL’s Reinier
Vens and his colleagues were wishing for a
little less excitement.
Vens is DHL’s project
director for the 11th
Volvo Ocean Race, which
pitted six high-tech sailboats in a ’
round-the-world competition that
began in Alicante, Spain,
in November 2011 and finished in Galway,
Ireland, in July 2012. As the official logistics partner for the race, DHL was responsible for ensuring that each team’s equipment and spare parts as well as the Race
Village pavilions and the equipment needed for setup and breakdown were delivered on time to the 10 stopovers along the
nearly 45,000-mile route.
That in itself was a mighty challenge
that involved more than 150 40-foot containers of ocean freight, another 20 containers of air freight, some 16 tons of loose
air cargo, and more than 100 express air
shipments. To make sure critical supplies
were available for each leg of the race, Vens
and his group kept two identical sets of
ocean containers in motion. The teams
used the contents of the first set during the
first leg of the race, then picked up equipment and supplies from the second set of
containers to use on the next leg, and so
on around the world. Sequencing the right
containers in the proper order was no easy
task, Vens said in an interview during the
race stopover in Miami.
A “control center” in the Netherlands
oversaw the entire mission. DHL kept
emergency stock like spare masts and
rudders at its Amsterdam facility near
Schiphol Airport. Amsterdam was an
ideal staging area because it’s a gateway
to destinations worldwide, Vens said.
DHL dedicated a team of six people to
the race, including some who traveled
from port to port ahead of the boats. On
call 24/7, they worked closely with the
Volvo Ocean Race’s own logistics staff.
DHL offices worldwide pitched in to provide support services like customs clearance and share their local expertise.
Local know-how helped to solve one of
the most challenging
logistical problems of the
race. When one boat lost
its mast in mid-ocean,
the sailors motored to
the nearest land—Tristan
da Cunha, a remote
island in the South
Atlantic between Argentina and South
Africa. Now what? DHL’s Cape Town
office had a solution: charter a local ship
to deliver a new 100-foot mast, then pick
up the yacht from the barely inhabited
island and bring it to South Africa. “You
can’t plan for that creativity,” Vens said.
Vens and colleagues handled many
other dicey—indeed, potentially life-threatening—situations during the race.
For example, when pirate attacks suddenly increased on the planned route from
Cape Town to Abu Dhabi, they chartered
a large ship to lift the boats out of the
ocean and carry them from East Africa to
safer waters in the United Arab Emirates.
A chartered vessel also picked up one
damaged yacht in Auckland, N.Z., and
delivered it to Savannah, Ga., for repairs,
and plucked another from the water and
delivered it to Itajaí, Brazil. Quick action
was needed to ship critical parts to such
widely scattered locations as Chile, New
Zealand, Brazil, and Spain, sometimes
just a few hours after a call came in.
Few logistics managers have to contend with the kind of unpredictable and
sometimes dangerous challenges the
DHL team confronted, but everyone can
learn something from the team’s experience. It takes careful preparation to meet
logistical challenges when time is of the
essence, Vens believes. “Being ready [for
an emergency] every time—that is what
it’s about,” he said. ;
CSCMP, Competitive
Insights contribute
to U.S. supply chain
security policy
The Council of Supply Chain
Management Professionals
(CSCMP) and Competitive
Insights LLC (CI) recently
announced that research on
supply chain risk mitigation
conducted by the two organizations was used to shape the
National Strategy for Global
Supply Chain Security, released
by President Barack Obama in
January 2012. CSCMP and CI
said that they provided data to
national security staff on how
the private sector might
respond in the event of a catastrophe, the consequences of a
breakdown in supply chains,
and the resilience measures
needed to strengthen supply
chains in order to support
efforts to respond.
“Any response effort to a cat-
astrophic event in the U.S.
would require substantial par-
ticipation by the private indus-
try,” said Rick Blasgen,
CSCMP’s president and CEO,
in a statement. “CSCMP and CI
were able to shape this security
policy with real-world supply
chain expertise to ensure that it
will be quicker to implement
and more effective in the long
term.”
“This is a serious topic given
the nature of the global supply
chains that companies must
manage today,” said Richard
Sharpe, CEO of CI, in the state-
ment. “We are pleased that our
efforts could be put to good use
for our national security.” ;
