AT ITS ANNUAL GLOBAL CONFERENCE IN DENVER, WHICH
takes place Oct. 20 to 23, the Council of Supply Chain Management
Professionals (CSCMP) will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Over 3,000
supply chain professionals are expected to be on hand to help commemorate the history as well as reflect on the future of this premier
supply chain organization.
Founded in 1963 as the National Council of Physical Distribution
Management (NCPDM), the group was the brainchild of 13 educators,
consultants, and practitioners who envisioned a future where warehousing, transportation, and inventory management would be treated
as parts of an integrated whole, not as stand-alone functions. If these
13 were with us today, they no doubt would be amazed at the extent to
which their dreams have materialized. While the
organization started off modestly, it has grown to a
membership of over 10,000 industry professionals. I
have had the privilege of being a member for 46 of
those 50 years, and it has been both exciting and
rewarding to be a part of the development, not only
of the organization, but of the industry as a whole.
Early on, the group saw the value of recognizing
the individual contributions of thought leaders
(and what today we call “rainmakers”) and in 1965,
established the John Drury Sheahan Award. This
award, named for a leading consultant of the era,
was the forerunner to the current Distinguished
Service Award. The first recipient was Will Gribble, who was director
of customer service for The Pillsbury Co. and one of the 13 founding
members.
As the membership expanded, so did the NCPDM mission, and it
was a rare year when some enhancement was not made to the organization’s educational efforts. For example, in 1978, the late Bob Delaney
became frustrated at the lack of reliable information regarding the total
cost of logistics, and a few years later authored the first State of
Logistics Report. This year, the 24th annual edition of this report was
presented by Rosalyn Wilson, who has ably produced it since Bob’s
2006 passing.
1985 brought a name change. NCPDM became the Council of
Logistics Management (CLM), more accurately reflecting the industry
responsibilities at that time. The change was welcomed since it better
described the state of the discipline, and CLM was a much friendlier
acronym than NCPDM.
1997 was a year that many of the longer-term members still talk
about. That year, the CLM Executive Committee commissioned a well-known author, Daniel Pollock, to write a novel about logistics. And that
BY CLIFFORD F. LYNCH fastlane
Happy birthday, CSCMP!
he did! At almost 500 pages, Precipice was
described as a logistics thriller, and it was
released just prior to the 1997 annual conference. Critic Martha Grimes said in the Los
Angeles Times, “One would hardly expect to see
the word ‘logistics’ and ‘thriller’ in the same sentence … yet they are.” Still available on
Amazon.com, it is a little tedious, but all in all,
not a bad read.
In 2005, 20 years after CLM was born, it was
time for another name change, and the group
was rechristened the “Council of Supply Chain
Management Professionals.”
This name elevated the
group to a new level, one that
once again reflected the dramatic changes made in the
industry and the responsibilities of its players. At the
time, not everyone was
thrilled with the choice of
names. Twenty years earlier
when “CLM” was being considered, some joked that
whatever was selected could
not be a more difficult acronym than
“NCPDM.” However, when “CSCMP” was
announced, many felt the leadership had met
that challenge. (What do logisticians have
against vowels, anyway?) It proved to be a good
choice, however, and today the membership
consists of thousands of leading supply chain
practitioners from all over the world.
So, happy birthday, CSCMP! It has been a
good ride and should be an even better one over
the next 50 years. Next name change, though,
let’s go with at least one vowel. ;
Clifford F. Lynch is principal of C.F. Lynch & Associates, a provider
of logistics management advisory services, and author of Logistics
Outsourcing – A Management Guide and co-author of The Role
of Transportation in the Supply Chain. He can be reached at
cliff@cflynch.com.
