DC Velocity - October 2013

inbound

Here’s our monthly roundup of some of the logistics community’s good deeds and donations:

▪ FedEx Ground, the small-package ground unit of FedEx Corp., has honored 24 individuals for displaying selfless courage and promoting human welfare above and beyond basic human responsibility. Awardees, who provide pickup and delivery services, rescued people in life-threatening situations, including highway and industrial accidents, lost children, medical emergencies, and house and vehicle fires.

▪ Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. donated a tractor to the Johnston Community College Truck Driving School in support of the school’s driver training program for soldiers. The school’s eight-week program is geared toward helping exiting military members and their spouses earn a commercial driver’s license. The first of the school’s six courses kicked off in August at Fort Bragg, N.C.

▪ The Motorola Solutions Foundation’s 2013 Innovation Generation grants will provide $4.4 million to more than 100 organizations that ignite passion and interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects and careers for teachers and students, especially girls and underrepresented minorities. ;

Logistics gives back

Each year, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) presents a series of awards that recognize practitioners, academics, and other individuals for outstanding achievements and contributions to the profession. CSCMP has announced the winners of three of those awards, to be presented at its 2013 Annual Global Conference in Denver:

▪ Dr. Abré Pienaar, chief executive officer of iPlan, will receive CSCMP’s highest honor, the 2013 Distinguished Service Award. “[Pienaar] is a champion of innovation and creativity, converting ideas into actions, and helping others to do the same,” said Rick Blasgen, CSCMP’s president and chief executive officer, in announcing the award.

▪ Dr. Jason A. Acimovic, assistant professor of supply chain and information systems at Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business, will receive the 2013 Doctoral Dissertation Award for his research titled “Lowering Outbound Shipping Costs in an Online Retail Environment by Making Better Fulfillment and Replenishment Decisions.”

▪ Keiko Arai, leadership development program participant at Textron; Florian Schick, head of strategy and business development (Germany) for Merck Serono; and Amanda Tolhurst, senior manager, internal materials operations at Whirlpool Corp., are the recipients of CSCMP’s new Emerging Leader Award. The award recognizes outstanding supply chain management and logistics professionals, age 30 and under, for their contributions to and promise of future influence on these two industries. ;

CSCMP bestows
annual awards

The Mississippi and China’s Yangtze River have a lot in common. Both serve as main arteries of commerce for their countries and both represent cultural touchstones. It is this spirit of commonality between the United States and China that characterizes the 2013 American Society of Transportation and Logistics (AST&L)

Conference.

This year’s conference emphasizes two of the association’s efforts to create bilateral cooperation between logistics professionals in the U.S. and China: the Sino-American Logistics Conference (SALC) and the Yangtze-Mississippi Strategic Cooperation Forum (YMF). The event is co-sponsored by the China Communications and Transportation Association, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and China International Talent Exchange Foundation.

The conference, to be held in Chicago Oct. 28–30, will address successful China distribution strategies, infrastructure investments, inland rivers and port development, and the retail, e-commerce, and transportation outlook in China and the United States. SALC tracks will focus on e-commerce fulfillment, retail distribution strategies, and global supply chain innovations. The YMF tracks will look at how to foster regional cooperation, inland logistics parks, port specialization, and economic development.