Convermex, Dal-Tile, Transplace, Werner, and Whirlpool Receive Top Supply Chain Award at CSCMP Conference

Lombard, Illinois, USA (October 24, 2012)

By initiating collaborative efforts that consolidated low- and high-density freight across companies onto the same vehicle, the team of Convermex, Dal-Tile, Transplace, Werner Company, and Whirlpool Corporation was able to reduce transportation resource demand and costs.

“The winning case, Opposites Attract–Shippers Consolidate Truckloads to Improve Capacity Utilization and Sustainability, showed the power of true collaboration combined with innovative thinking and excellent planning and management implementation,” said Eric Peltz, CSCMP’s Research Strategies Committee chair and associate director, National Security Research Division, RAND Corporation. “The team’s close-to-perfect matching of complementary loads and routes dramatically cut the number of truck and boxcar loads it takes to ship their combined cargo, reducing costs and environmental impact.” 

“The Supply Chain Innovation Award™ competition was an incredible experience,” said Sonney Jones, Dal-Tile’s director of transportation. “Not only did it challenge us to properly document and illustrate our case, it also allowed us to bring together all the partners in this collaboration to jointly celebrate our success. It was a wonderful forum, well executed, and greatly appreciated. Our next challenge will be to sort out the opportunities to expand our collaborative efforts as a result of the exposure we received at CSCMP’s Annual Global Conference.”

The corporate team of Cardinal Health and ThermoSafe received second-place honors for its Innovative Packaging for Shipping Refrigerated Pharmaceuticals initiative. The team’s case study detailed the launch of a new packaging solution for refrigerated pharmaceuticals designed to improve patient safety. The packaging utilized phase change materials designed to maintain the narrow product storage range for refrigerated pharmaceuticals throughout the delivery cycle. An industry first, the new packaging is environmentally friendly, reusable, and nontoxic.

“This award recognizes years of innovation and hard work that challenged the current industry practices for refrigerated pharmaceutical packaging with a focus on safe and reusable resources,” said Chris Anderson, director of quality systems at Cardinal Health. “Our packaging initiative raised the bar on improving the integrity of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Taking second place in the Supply Chain Innovation Award™ competition demonstrates to pharmacies, healthcare providers, vendors, and the industry as a whole the commitment that Cardinal Health has to improve patient safety by ensuring that sensitive refrigerated pharmaceuticals will be delivered within their labeled temperature storage ranges.”

The winning cases were selected from a strong field of eight finalist teams recognized at the closing session of CSCMP’s 2012 Annual Global Conference, according to Judith M. Whipple, CSCMP Research Strategies Committee member and associate professor of logistics and supply chain management at Michigan State University. “The teams were selected from a field of more than 40 submitted case studies, and were invited to present their innovations during the conference. The Research Strategies Committee and SupplyChainBrain staff look forward to an even more exciting competition next year.”

The Supply Chain Innovation Award™ competition, presented by CSCMP and SupplyChainBrain, was part of CSCMP’s 2012 annual conference, which was attended by more than 3,000 supply chain professionals from 38 countries. Now in its eighth year, the award recognizes innovations developed by corporate supply chain teams that demonstrate quantifiable and sustainable cost savings, as well as revenue-generating or customer-satisfaction achievements.

CSCMP members and conference attendees may access the Supply Chain Innovation Award™ winning and finalist case studies and 2013 submission guidelines at cscmp.org on the Resources & Research tab, Awards/Supply Chain Innovation Award links. For additional information about the competition, contact Jessica D’Amico at [email protected].

Founded in 1963, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals is the leading worldwide professional association dedicated to education, research, and the advancement of the supply chain management profession. With more than 9,000 members globally, representing business, government, and academia from 63 countries, CSCMP members are the leading practitioners and authorities in the fields of logistics and supply chain management.

Madeleine Miller-Holodnicki, ABC

Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP)

333 East Butterfield Road, Suite 140

Lombard, Illinois 60148-5617 USA

[email protected]

SOURCE: Submitted by CSCMP