May is CSCMP Member Appreciation Month and to celebrate, CSCMP is launching the first-ever Supply Chain Professionals Appreciation Day on May 21, 2018.

The idea for a professional organization of distribution managers was first conceived in May 1962, to meet an urgent need for continuing education and to provide an opportunity for an interchange of ideas in this rapidly growing profession that has come to be known today as supply chain management.

Today, CSCMP serves over 100,000 members and engaged followers.

Who better to declare a holiday than the professional association that has been serving the supply chain industry and the professionals that work within it for the last 56 years.

Happy Supply Chain Professionals Day!

Click "Learn More" to hear about all the exciting things we are doing during the month of May to celebrate CSCMP members and supply chain professionals around the world.

The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) will release the 29th Annual State of Logistics Report™ during a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on June 19, 2018. CSCMP collaborates with global strategic management consulting firm, A.T. Kearney, as the author and researcher, with Penske Logistics continuing in its longstanding role as presenter of the report.

This year's National Press Club panel is comprised of:
- Cheryl Capps – Vice President Global Supply Chain of Corning Incorporated
- Joe Carlier – Senior Vice President Global Sales of Penske Logistics
- Sylvia Fouhy – Vice President, Customer Experience, North America for Johnson & Johnson
- Erik Hansen – Vice President, Intermodal for Kansas City Southern
- Sean Monahan – Partner with A.T. Kearney and report lead author
- Joseph Ruddy – Chief Innovation Officer for the Port of Virginia
- Kevin Smith – President of Sustainable Supply Chain Consulting and panel moderator

The report includes: a focused narrative on the economic environment impacting logistics; insights from interviews with industry leaders, including shippers, carriers, and analysts; a spotlight on relevant trends; and a strategic point of view on the state of the industry. The report has tracked and measured all costs associated with moving freight through the U.S. supply chain since 1988. This year’s report will present an overview of the economy during the past year, the logistics industry’s key trends, and the total U.S. logistics costs for 2017.

This report is available for free to CSCMP members and will be emailed to members on Tuesday, June 19, after it is released. Visit cscmp.org for details.

In addition to being CSCMP Member Appreciation Month, May is also National Military Appreciation Month, and CSCMP is proud to join the nation in extending our thanks to the nation's service members.

Supporting our heroes is incredibly important to CSCMP, and we would like to announce several discounts we are offering to both active duty and veteran military members.

Thank you for your service.

Click "Learn More" to learn about the new offerings and reduced pricing available to active duty and veteran service members.

U.S. military members have some of the most advanced training in the world, making them highly-valuable job candidates. As a national nonprofit, Hire Heroes USA offers free career services to military members, veterans and military spouses. We also provide personalized services for military-friendly employers, too.  

As more veterans enter the workforce, Hire Heroes USA recognizes that employers may seek guidance on building a veteran hiring program within their organization. We’ve developed a suite of self-guided, e-learning modules to help employers educate their recruiters, hiring managers and human resources personnel on the best veteran hiring practices. Topics covered include: Understanding the Issue and Military Culture; How to Create the Program; Develop Recruiting Method; and, Onboard Programs and Retention

Experienced supply chain executives have likely been involved in multiple implementations of sales and operations planning (S&OP), but few have a process that functions as intended. S&OP success has eluded businesses for more than four decades, despite widespread support and employment of integrated processes.

A new white paper from UT’s Global Supply Chain Institute outlines what true demand and supply integration (DSI) looks like and the issues that contribute to ineffective results such as restricting integration to S&OP. The paper also provides seven best practices that benchmark organizations use to take DSI to an advanced level.

The paper also conveys five more basic practices that must be present in an organization before companies can leverage DSI at a benchmark level—all disciplines working toward a single goal instead of simply optimizing their function; basing demand plans on unconstrained demand and supply plans on demonstrated capacity; leadership owning the DSI push; DSI influencing business decisions; and the DSI process including results assessment and plan development.

Advanced DSI Best Practices is the first installment of the Supply Chain Strategy white paper series from UT’s Global Supply Chain Institute.

An "athlete" is a person who is proficient in sports and other forms of physical exercise. With definitional expansion of terminology, a "supply chain athlete" is a person who is proficient in the operational activities that result in the right products, at the right price, and at the right time to achieve value in the consumer’s demand mindset.

To be an athlete, a person is constantly working to increase his/her proficiency through experiences, capability building, and value driven outcomes-based decision-making. The consumer is demanding, the marketplace is dynamic and global, the labor force is human and automated, the distribution points are varied and complex and the asset utilization is complex. Supply chain professionals are challenged with the edict "be an athlete."