SCM Forum 2007: Leave your competition behind through supply chain optimization

On November 28, 2007, ant Technologies held the first Russian Supply Chain Management Forum 2007 at Marriott Royal Aurora. The Forum was attended by about 100 representatives of Russian, CIS and European large-scale companies engaged in a variety of business activities, including logistics operators, distributors, retail chains, production companies, etc.

One of the highlights of the Forum was the participants getting a chance to acquaint themselves with hands-on experience of those Russian and foreign companies taking the leading positions in their respective areas of business. The speakers included the top managers of Smart Logistic Group, Sanna Liter Terminal, UniTrans Logistic, Coca Cola, Chipita, and Bananamama.

How can we make a company more competitive by optimizing its logistics? What are the modern trends on the Russian and European logistics markets? What are the new methods of arranging for supply and distribution processes? What role is information technology to play in the effective organization of a supply chain? These and other questions attracted a great interest from the Forum audience and were reflected in those presentations dedicated to the hands-on experience of Russian and foreign FMCG companies and 3PL operators.

“The key objective of this Forum is to provide a business site for logistics market players to exchange their professional experience, expertise and opinions,” said ant Technologies’ CEO Alexander Usov in his presentation. “We find it important and interesting for us to create new opportunities for market players to acquaint themselves with hands-on foreign experience and the best Russian business cases in the area of logistics. Furthermore, we all work on the IT market and, therefore, we strive to ensure that those modern technology innovations successfully used on the global market are widely implemented in the Russian logistics sector.”

As a special guest, Greg Tanner, Managing Director of Vocollect, , the global leader in voice identification systems, which are very popular on the Western logistics market, spoke at the Forum. Since 1987, Vocollect has been developing voice solutions based on the Pick-by-Voice technology, which are widely used in warehousing logistics applications to ease the work of warehouse operators and generally enhance the warehouse performance. The Vocollect systems are successfully used in more than 30 countries all over the world. Mr. Tanner’s speech at SCM Forum 2007 was the first official presentation of Vocollect products and solutions on the Russian market and aroused a great interest from the audience. Given the huge selling potential of the Pick-by-Voice technology in  Russia, Mr. Tanner stressed Vocollect was going to have its products certified and localized as early as in the beginning of 2008 to launch them onto the Russian market.

Various IT solutions from a number of foreign developers were also presented at the Forum. Yiannis Panagiotopoulos, Managing Director of Mantis, a strategic partner of ant Technologies, described the new trends on the foreign market for SCM solutions and the benefits of using the Logistic Vision Suite product line, which is aggressively promoted in Russia by ant Technologies. A world-class system, the Logistic Vision Suite has already gained popularity on the Russian market and become a de-facto warehouse chain automation standard for many large-scale logistics companies, including UniTrans Logistic, Russian Logistic Service, Eurosib Group, TBN Logistic, ABX Logistics, Distributing Center, etc.

Tony Abouzolof, Managing Director of Syncron UK, a company that has firm positions on the global market for supply chain planning and optimization solutions and is also a partner of ant Technologies, identified the opportunities to improve logistics processes and described today’s most topical areas of supply chain management automation. Syncron also presented a portfolio of its supply chain planning products, which ant Technologies started promoting on the Russian market in this year.

The presentation ofOrtec, a company that specializes in developing software solutions for distribution and transportation planning and optimization, became another Russian premiere of logistics automation products. Ortec solutions result in optimized fleet routing and dispatch, vehicle and pallet loading, workforce scheduling, delivery forecasting and network planning.