Master Class Global Supply Chain & Logistics - Curriculum & faculty

In this interactive session, key supply chain principles will be reviewed and refreshed, translating business strategy into an adequate supply chain strategy, but also defining relevant business models. Omni-channel management will be discussed in terms of delivering customer value and clearly defining the customer proposition. Important aspects regarding people (change management), profit (topline revenue versus bottom-line costs), and planet (sustainability) will be discussed and applied in real-life settings.

The network and supply chain design is an important strategic logistics issue. Collaboration between companies is increasingly taking place in an international context. This not only involves the location of logistic activities but also the control over the whole international supply chain. One of the most important issues in designing (international) logistics networks is the potential for reacting to changed circumstances quickly and in a reliable way. Multiple sourcing, hybrid network structures, and synchronization of logistics processes are examples of such flexible logistic structures.

We will discuss several supply chain trends that have been arising in the past few years and are expected to materialize in the future. The increasing role of sustainability in the supply chain will be discussed (e.g. cradle-to-cradle, circular economy). Other emerging concepts such as machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, analytics, etc. will be framed within a supply chain setting. We will look into both the applicability and the limitations of these technologies.

In this module, we will consider the various modes of transport and distribution, their characteristics, and their combinations. Thus, we will dive into maritime shipping, air transport, road, rail, inland waterway, and pipeline transport. Principles of transport costing, logistics costs, and decision-making in transport will be conceptually explained and applied. With the help of a transport chain game and a chain cost model, we will provide illustrations of multimodal transport and the impact of policies and strategies on this. The sub-components of chains and various cost items will be illustrated and calculated, and trade-offs as well as cost shares will be indicated. We will also consider both out-of-pocket costs and time costs (i.e. generalized costs) and external costs.

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) has been around since the early 1990s but only really took off around 2005. We have seen successes and failures. In this session, S&OP has been substituted by Integrated Business Planning (IBP). As the objectives of S&OP formulated by the Oliver Wight Companies in 1990 are the same for IBP, we can use the vast experience on S&OP processes as a guideline when implementing IBP. We will touch upon the alignment of financials, resource use, forecasting order fulfillment and inventory management across the company. We will discuss how to organize decision support for IBP, both in human resources and ICT. And we will look into the key principles towards successful implementation of S&OP / IBP.

The added value delivered by your supplier basis is growing year after year. Unlocking the full potential of both your upstream markets and key suppliers is a crucial lever to deliver competitive edge throughout the entire supply chain. The expected output? Financial (cost & cash), value (performance, innovation & CSR) and risk management (supply, market). Business partnering, sourcing and SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) are the 3 pillars for any high-performing procurement function.

Forecasting and planning are at the heart of all business processes. Despite efforts over the last decades to increase value chain flexibility, forecasting demand is still of eminent importance in many companies. Entities in the value chain operate triggered by the expected demand from the (end) customer. The quality of the estimation of future demand directly influences customer service levels, inventory levels, and cost levels.

In today’s competitive world, optimizing inventory at each facility independently will not provide a sustainable competitive advantage. But adjusting total inventory across the entire network of facilities, taking into consideration the interdependencies among stocking locations, will significantly extend the potential benefits achieved from optimizing inventories at each separate location. In this session, we will consider the basic multi-echelon inventory systems and introduce the current state-of-the-art models for optimizing inventory policies. We will compare the installation / local and echelon stock policies and quantify the benefits of using echelon policies. Also, we will discuss the methods that are commonly used to further improve the performances of multi-echelon systems.

You will have the opportunity to add a company-based project supervised by the faculty. In face-to-face discussions on your case, the professors will help you to develop and formulate the relevant questions, based on your perceived business problem, including a well-defined description of the scope. Together, you will make a justified selection of methods and techniques for data collection and data analysis. You will apply these methods and techniques to find possible causes and explanations for your business problem, providing you with solid directions for improvement.