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WHEN THE COUNCIL OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PROfessionals (CSCMP) meets in Denver later this year, the group will celebrate its 50th anniversary. When thinking about that, I realized that the
first annual conference I attended—when the group was called the
Council of Logistics Management—was during its 25th anniversary. It’s
hard to digest the fact that I’ve been writing about supply chains and
logistics for a quarter of a century.
In those days, I was writing for Purchasing magazine, a once very successful magazine that sadly ceased publication a couple of years ago. I was
an experienced reporter when I took that job, but I was new to the world
of freight transportation, material handling, procurement, and all the
associated practices that we now call supply chain
management. I still recall in my first week asking my
editor exactly what “LTL” meant.
The term “supply chain management” was still in its
infancy at the time. Trucking and rail deregulation
were less than a decade old and shippers and carriers
(and lawyers) were still grappling with their implementation. Some of the nation’s largest motor carriers
failed to adapt to the new environment and either
closed their doors or were absorbed by more agile
truckers. Those bankruptcies led to the battle over
what was called the filed-rate doctrine. (If you don’t
know what that is, be grateful.)
It would still be a few years before intrastate trucking
deregulation took hold—an effort oddly led by an air
express carrier, Federal Express. The term “3PL” would come along a couple of years later, and the big debate was whether asset- or nonasset-based
providers would win shippers’ business. Logistics and warehousing technology was still in its infancy. My colleague James Cooke recalls it as
about the time businesses were beginning to make the transition from
mini computers to desktops, and entrepreneurs were bootstrapping
development of nascent warehouse management systems.
The profession has evolved in some remarkable ways over the past 25
years. Supply chain professionals now have a seat at the executive table. The
term “supply chain” is now common in the news. Managing complex supply chains is a high-order skill, and top performers are in great demand.
What will the next 25 years bring? In 1988, even science fiction didn’t
anticipate you’d be able to carry a powerful computing device in your
pocket. So I wouldn’t even try to guess how technology will develop.
But I think it’s fair to say that as long as there’s trade, as long as there’s
commerce, as long as the laws of physics apply to goods and materials,
logistics and supply chain will offer good, rewarding careers.
