DC Velocity - February 2018

72 DC VELOCITY FEBRUARY 2018 www.dcvelocity.com TO US HUMANS WHO POPULATE THIS ROCK, THE HORIzon doesn’t really seem to move at all. That, of course, is an illusion. The earth actually rotates at just over 1,000 miles per hour, so while the horizon may seem both static and a long way off, it is actually moving toward you at a pace more twice that of a commercial jetliner.

The same can be said of the changes looming in the business world. Many emerging trends—think artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and autonomous vehicles—may seem to be way out on the horizon, but they’re actually coming toward us at a furious pace.

That creates a quandary for managers. Even if you feel you have a sense of “where this is all going,” you are likely not quite sure what course you should plot to get there.

That is the basis of “Logistics 2030: Navigating a Disruptive Decade,” a robust mul-tiyear research effort aimed at guiding logistics and supply chain professionals through the uncertain times that lie ahead. Kicked off last month with the first in what will be an ongoing series of focus groups, executive interviews, and surveys, “Logistics 2030” is led jointly by the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council (NASSTRAC); the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP); DC VELOCITY and its sister publication,

CSCSMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly; and Auburn University.

Among its objectives are:
b To identify critical challenges and opportunities facing the
logistics field in the next 10 years, with an emphasis on work-
force development, freight transportation, strategic practices, and
enabling (and potentially disruptive) technologies;
b To develop recommendations and best practices to help com-
panies navigate these emerging challenges;

b To raise general awareness, particularly at the state and federal levels of government, of the importance of logistics to the broader national and global economies, with a focus on regulation and infrastructure investment.

“We’ve launched this research effort to identify the trends
and issues that will drive supply chain strategy and practice over
the next 10 years,” explains professor Brian Gibson of Auburn
University. “The pace of change in technology introduction, the
expanding risks faced by practitioners, and the
pressures to deliver consistent results have become
so severe that supply chain professionals have lim-
ited time for strategic thinking and thinking ahead
to 2030. We anticipate that our research efforts will
provide these types of longer-range insights to drive
planning for the future.”
The research team plans to select a special area
of focus each year. For instance, in 2018, it will
tackle the topic of transportation. “The goal of the
project in the first year is to redesign the trans-
portation management function
within the shipper community,”
explains NASSTRAC Executive
Director Gail Rutkowski. “This
project will allow us to rip apart
the transportation functions cur-
rently being performed among
shippers and redefine them, as
well as identify the new skills
needed for shippers to ‘push up’
into their new responsibilities.”
As for the public awareness
part of the project’s mission,
CSCMP’s President and CEO
Rick Blasgen believes the initia-
tive could prove invaluable in
raising logistics and supply chain’s profile at the
highest levels of government. Blasgen can speak with
some authority on that matter—he currently serves
as chair of the Department of Commerce’s Advisory
Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness. “We
have a voice directly to government,” he says, “and
this initiative will provide us with useful data to fur-
ther support the case that logistics and supply chain
needs to be front of mind in Washington.”
The future is coming at us fast. Logistics 2030
aims to help guide the way.