The final day of Logistic Manager of the Year has begun. The finalists have now taken the stage. In a video and a short pitch, they explain why they should become Logistics Manager of the Year. A team of three experts then put them through their paces.
Mark Bär, logistics manager at Stamhuis Group, kicked off the event. Shop fittings are put together by Bär and his team as well as possible beforehand, so that very little time is needed on site and the shop can open faster. This means less lost sales for retailers. According to the logistics manager, a shop conversion by Stamhuis is much like a military operation. After a brief presentation on his work in shop conversions, the team of experts asks Bär whether he still gets around to managing, as his work involves so many tasks. Another asks if Bär is actually a logistics person. "Or are you more of a project manager?" Bär thinks his work is indeed logistics. "We deal with many disciplines in our work and therefore with many people who don't understand logistics. My job is to still get the logistics as good as possible in that project and optimise those processes every day."
"Why are you the right ambassador for this profession in the coming year?", the chairman of the day asks him. "I have the passion and interest. Construction logistics is a terribly interesting market in which a lot is happening. It's good to talk about this."
Marc van het Bolscher works as global supply chain manager at Tanatex Chemicals. Here, he introduced Lean six sigma and S&OP, among other things. "Within a very short time, I turned a logistical chaos into a well-organised supply chain within Tanatex," Van het Bolscher tells himself. "Our delivery reliability has gone up tremendously and our customer satisfaction has increased." In his video pitch, the supply chain manager is praised by his colleagues for his stature and presence. "When he enters the room, he is really there. He is honest and direct. Not everyone appreciates that, but I do." Another colleague praises him for improving delivery reliability. "Marc has gone into that very dogmatically and made considerable strides," he says.
After the video pitch, the experts wondered what distance Van het Bolscher had to go to get his colleagues to go along with that change. According to Van het Bolscher, it was quite a distance. "There was no consultation between sales and supply chain. It was all little islands. I put people together and let them talk about the situation. We solve the problems with S&OP. We now discuss daily with each other what is going to happen that day. That saves a lot of e-mails."
"The way of working has changed quite a lot because of Arie," says a colleague in Arie van der Tempel's video pitch. By this he is referring to the WMS that the logistics manager implemented at Europet Bernina International. Where everything used to be done on paper, it is now done with telephone scanners. Van der Tempel is also implementing - together with a WMS party and a stacking software company - a system where orders are calculated in advance. The picker immediately receives stacking instructions, effectively making the packing department redundant. "You can see that the demand for accurate data is becoming increasingly important. Think weight, packaging, cubic metres, you name it. Arie has developed a system that makes that data transparent," says his colleague. A warehouse employee explains that Van der Tempel really likes an orderly warehouse. "Arie doesn't like junk in the aisles. Everything has to be tidy. He is constantly picking things up."
Van der Tempel was not initially among the finalists. Due to Arthur Böhmer dropping out, he was still allowed to participate. "How do you view the jury because of this?", one of the experts asks him. "I still really like the jury," jokes Van der Tempel. "I think the bottleneck was in the scale and the fact that the project is not quite finished yet. We are still implementing."
Former winner Iwan te Winkel wonders who will take over from him this afternoon.
The five-member jury will now deliberate. This afternoon it will be announced who can call themselves ambassador of logistics for a year.
Editorial LogistiekProfs
