January 19, 2007

Krannert global supply-chain conference focuses on sustainability

Ananth Iyer

Sponsored by the Global Supply Chain Management Initiative, the Sustainable Global Supply Chain conference is open to the public, area industry and faculty who are interested in discussing how choices made in getting the right products to the right places at the right time all over the world impacts sustainability concerns.

Other participants in the event will be graduate and undergraduate business program or industrial engineering students from Purdue, as well as the top 30 business schools in the U.S. 

"Modern global supply chains have increased the need for firms to consider how their social responsibility towards the physical and social environment impacts their customers, their employees and thus their competitiveness," said Ananth Iyer, the director of the Global Supply Chain Initiative and the Dauch Center for the Management of Manufacturing Enterprises, both at the Krannert School.

"The supply chain and its policies impact the firm's responsibility to balance costs with long- term impact. Some of these responsibilities are the result of country regulations, customer preferences, corporate image, etc. In short, business has to find a way to make doing good work in the same direction as being profitable. Our speakers bring their unique perspectives to this discussion through roles they play at their companies. They certainly represent best practice in this context."

Among the supply-chain issues that will be discussed at the conference on Friday are sustainable procurement, obtaining results in developing economies, providing environmentally friendly product designs, learning from low technology execution in emerging markets and managing to fulfill local responsibilities.

Companies represented at a series of panels in the Purdue Memorial Union South Ballroom include Starbucks Coffee, Method Products, Motorola, PricewaterhouseCoopers, CEMEX, Eaton Corp. and IRMCO. The first panel starts at 8:45 a.m., and the panels wrap up at 5 p.m.

Paul Goodman, the Richard M. Cyert Professor of Organizational Psychology at Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Industrial Administration, will be the keynote speaker at Stewart Center's Fowler Hall at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 1. He will present his film "Dabbawallas," which is about a group of entrepreneurs in India who deliver more than 100,000 hot lunches from their homes to offices every day using low technology. His talk is co-sponsored by the Purdue Center for International Business Education and Research.

A complete schedule and registration link can be found online at https://www.dcmme.org. Registration for all events is required. To sign up, contact Erica Wilson at (765) 494-7221, wilso106@purdue.edu.

The conference also will include concurrent undergraduate and graduate case competitions scheduled for 8 p.m. Feb. 1 in Rawls Hall.

Starbucks is sponsoring the undergraduate competition with $2,500 in prizes. E&J Gallo Family Winery, Chromcraft Revington and the Purdue Center for International Business Education and Research are co-sponsoring the MBA competition with $10,000 in prizes. Ten teams from the nation's top operations and supply-chain universities will compete. The undergraduate student teams will include both management and industrial engineering students.

The top three competition presentations will take place in the Memorial Union North Ballroom at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 2.

Writer: Maggie Morris, (765) 494-2432, maggiemorris@purdue.edu

Sources: Ananth Iyer, (765) 494-4514, aiyer@purdue.edu

Mary K. Pilotte, managing director Global Supply Chain, (765) 494-2860, gscmi@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

Global Supply Chain Management Initiative: https://gscmi.org/home

To the News Service home page