Transportation Roundtable
An examination of critical trends and issues in the market by leaders in logistics and supply chain management.
Welcome to this special issue, featuring LQ’s inaugural Transportation Forum. This issue was developed with the participation of David Closs, Ph.D. and Tom Menzter Ph.D. who created a framework for this forum through the questions that they prepared. These questions pertain to four important subject areas that they identified: transportation performance indicators, security (dealing with terrorism issues in the supply chain), supplier relations (negotiating successful outsourcing relationships) and creating proposals. Several questions in each subject area were articulated for editorial contributors to address.
When we began this process it was difficult to forecast what kind of a response would be produced. We were pleased and even surprised by the excitement that was generated. As articles and responses were submitted for review, LQ’s forum evolved to reflect the articles and insights of each of the contributors. At the beginning of the process we found that most of the companies that provided submissions opted for the question and answer format that LQ’s editors had initially devised. In other instances, stand-alone articles were provided. Finally, near the end of the process the structure of the forum itself was reconsidered and modified, and it was recommended that the responses to questions pertaining to security warranted a separate forum for a subsequent edition of LQ.
Each of this forum’s categories and questions evoked interesting and insightful responses from our contributors. The response to the topic of supplier relations, however, was particularly extensive, with traditional ideas as well as fresh thinking evidenced by LQ’s contributors.
The article in this edition prepared by Dr. John Langley, Jr., Professor of Supply Chain Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, is particularly comprehensive and offers a thought provoking look at the ingredients essential for successful partnerships.
Clearly, the questions for LQ’s Transportation Forum covered very fertile territory for leadership thinking in this field. I appreciate the time and dedication of each of the executives who contributed to this forum, as well as other contributors who provided articles with high quality ideas, such as the features provided by Oliver Silver, Ryder Canada and Chris Norek, Ph.D. of Chain Connectors. In addition, I would like to take this opportunity to thank those contributors whose articles were not published in this issue, were recommended for publication in upcoming issues of LQ.