On March 23rd and 24th 2011 the Campus for Supply Chain Management took place for the 8th time on the Campus of the WHU  - Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar. We want to thank all our speakers, supporters, corporate participants and students for two amazing days in Vallendar.

With this years topic “Managing Sustainability  - Redefining Future Strategy” the congress exactly tapped the pulse of our time and gave an excellent opportunity for people with very different backgrounds to come together and discuss ongoing challenges, measurements and preventive actions to shape our future business strategies in a more sustainable way.

Famous corporate and academic speakers attended both days of the CSCM 2011 leaving behind a very good impression on all participants.

The first day, March 23rd  was characterized by a mixed program, which included speeches, a career fair, at which participants could get in touch with the companies represented on the campus this year, and workshops by all four big partners: Adidas, Deutsche Post DHL Inhouse Consulting, Capgemini Consulting and Accenture. In these workshops students weren’t only able to get first hand impressions of the firms in a convenient environment through active participation and interesting discussions of current challenges, but were also able to start establishing their own network within the corporate industry. Speakers on Wednesday were John McNamara (Head of Global Supply Chain, adidas Group) and Kai Nowosel (Executive Partner SCM and Head of Sourcing and Procurement Practice EMEA, Accenture) who both mentioned the current challenges to establish sustainable practices in company processes. Mr. McNamara gave an interesting presentation on how adidas is approaching the challenges of going-green and what adidas has already done to improve their own sustainability track record. In contrast to that, Mr. Nowosel was able to approach the topic from a consulting point of view to show the best strategies and practices that Accenture is currently carrying into the firms and economies.
The first day found its end with a nice Gala-Dinner and Get-Together after the very interesting Keynote Speech by Mr. Michael Behrendt, CEO of Hapag Lloyd, who used the opportunity not only to introduce Hapag Lloyd as a company, but also referred to the current challenges of steeply increasing global trade and how to manage this opportunity in a sustainable and efficient way.


Thursday was embossed by excellent speeches from corporate speakers like Dr. Georg Spranger (Director Strategy and Marketing, Fiege Stiftung & Co. KG), Dr. Alexander Rochlitz (former Management, REMONDIS AG & Co. KG) and Thorsten Roggenbuck (Managing Director, Deutsche Post DHL Inhouse Consulting). Coming from very different industries they explained the particular challenges in a very good and interesting way and all showed there own path to establish an effective, reliable and at the same time sustainable supply chain. In the afternoon the program was somewhat different, because after Heiko Tiedmann (Process Analytics Manager EMEA, Avery Dennison Central Europe GmbH) gave a nice introduction how also tools and software can be used to achieve a further commitment to sustainable processes in a firm, Dr. Sandra Dornbach (Project Leader, The Boston Consulting Group) introduced a study to the audience in which BCG in cooperation with the chair of logistics at WHU had examined different sectors of the industry and their commitment to implement sustainable processes. This gave a very good impression of what the atmosphere in the industry is really like at the moment and to which extent new goals of efficiency in cooperation with sustainability have really been accomplished.
The Campus for Supply Chain Management 2011 came to an end with a remarkable Panel Discussion about: “Competition – the driver or bottleneck of a green supply chain?”. It was presented by Prof. Dr. Stefan Spinler (Professor of Logistics Management at WHU) who moderated the discussion between Prof. Dr. Carl Marcus Wallenburg (Professor of Logistics and the Kuehne Foundation Chair of Logistics and Service Management at WHU), Dr. Martin Raab (Vice President and Head of Supply Chain Management, Capgemini Consulting) and Heiko Tiedmann (Process Analytics Manager EMEA, Avery Dennison Central Europe GmbH). These three very different persons with very different experiences led to an interesting discussion about sustainability and what the industry has already achieved but still has to do in order to accomplish the defined goals and how strong industry competition will enforce this.

We, the CSCM Team, are already looking forward to the next Campus for Supply Chain Management that will be held on March 23rd and 24th 2012.
We would like to welcome you to WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and are already looking forward to having a great conference next year.