PREVIOUS EVENTS
TRANSLOG Connect Congress | 25-26 November 2014
TRANSLOG Connect Congress - the leading transport, logistics and supply chain management congress for Central and Eastern Europe - organised for the 4th time, was the place to meet top logistics service providers and key decision makers on 25-26 November. More than 500 senior decision makers from over 30 different European countries gathered in Budapest to exchange ideas and find solutions for their major challenges in transportation, logistics and supply chain management.
The five-star event took place in the equally prestigious Corinthia Hotel Budapest, where delegates had the chance to meet Europe’s leading solution providers, offering a wide range of their latest products and services and find answers to today’s most pressing business challenges in the industry, reducing the amount of time required by senior management to reach future purchasing decisions. This year over 2 000 one-to-one business meetings pre-scheduled on the online Meeting Scheduler were conducted during the two days.
Extensive Speaker Lineup
The conference programme has been exceptionally well-received by the knowledgeable audience. Among the numerous acclaimed presentations, one of the most popular was Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kummer’s (Vienna University of Business and Economics), highlighting the logistics performance of CEE countries within Europe and how countries compete through logistics.
Delegates received fascinating presentations from leading industry professionals like Chaim Huijsman (Head of Corporate Sales at Gebrüder Weiss) who spoke about trends in logistics, Bernard Lefevre (Head of CEEMEA Logistics Purchases at P&G) providing delegates with exclusive information about how win-win collaboration with suppliers and customers generate company value, Stefan Putzlocher (Director Logistics at Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing) sharing insights on how to become and stay a successful supplier for an OEM, Michal Glacner (Customer Service Director CEE at Unilever) together with Jim Dickson (CE Supply Chain Development Manager at Tesco) were introducing the Tesco and Unilever collaborative approach and Rogier van Zon (Head of Global Warehousing & Distribution, Export Control Officer at TP Vision) spoke about export control and raised the question “How Secure is Your Supply Chain?”.
Recognizing Excellence in the CEE Region
The 2nd Central Eastern European Logistics and Supply Chain Excellence Award ceremony together with the cocktail reception was opened by Dr. Zoltán Doór president of the Hungarian Logistics Association, followed by Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kummer who announced the winners and handed out the award to CHEP and Flex. Emphasizing that the recently established methods with an already well proven track record will encourage professionals to constantly raise standards and come up with innovative and flexible solutions, to further contribute to the development of the rapidly growing CEE region. Applications were evaluated by an independent jury, by their level of innovation, transferability, sustainability, cost-effectiveness and customer value-contribution.
The projects had to be accomplished in any of the countries in the CEE region in one of the two categories: manufacturers and retailers firstly, and service providers with a customer related project secondly.
CHEP the winner in the service industry applied with a new quarter pallet. The new product allows building the promotional platforms faster, is more ergonomic to handle, has less carbon footprint, is more stable, is a more flexible display tool and allows implement RFID tracking projects in a less costly way. The new product was introduced in 2014 and is full of new ideas. The results of the audit done by RDC Environment showed that compared to the exiting quarter pallet, the new quarter pallet has a 10% lower carbon footprint. This was achieved by increasing the recycled material used in the pallet to 50% from 42%, decreasing the material used for the pallet to 1.94 kg from 2.1(8%) and increasing the interlocking capacity of the pallet which allows to stack 36 pallets instead of 30.
Flex the winner in the industry and retail category developed an integrated Supply Chain IT solution which enables the winner to plan and control the whole process and to realize a high degree of automation: the hard savings of $3.5 USD Million, the inventory reduction of $6 USD Million and the space reduction of 2500 m2 are really impressive. The jury deeply believes that the implemented supply chain solution can be a game changer by using standard solutions, quick implementations with wide range of configuration for specific customer needs.
Flex has been operating in CEE and especially in Hungary long time and in the application is was described how the Hungarian entity reacts to the really challenging changes that are going on in this industry and that it is able to resist the pressure Asian producers and Asian sides of the company are putting on the Hungarian production side. As stated “Efficiency, good quality, fast turn-around time, robust processes, unbeatable practices and excellent serviceability is needed to compete with China” to provide unique and customized solutions that combine different industries.
This year participants also had the exclusive opportunity to take part in one of the most popular programmes: the specially organised site visits to the SMR, Unilever and Mercedes-Benz plants.
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kummer further highlighted the importance of TRANSLOG Connect Congress as it has become a landmark for Supply Chain and Logistics Management in Central and Eastern Europe, to support an innovative Logistics and Supply Chain Management development.
