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Council of Logistics Management

A Personal Perspective on Being a Member of the CLM Roundtable Executive

by Michael Dibden

Now just past the half-way point in my first year as a member of the Toronto CLM Roundtable Executive, I wanted to share my experiences and encourage others to participate. I must admit to some doubts when I was approached to take a role on the executive. My doubts were due to concern about the time commitment required and I was relatively new to the CLM organization. Nevertheless, I agreed to do what I could to help and I have found it to be a very rewarding experience.

At the time of my decision to participate I was aware of CLM as the preeminent global logistics association that focuses on educating and building awareness within the logistics community. I was also aware of the existence of a local roundtable that periodically hosted topical logistics presentations. What I didn’t fully appreciate is that there is a small group of talented and dedicated professionals who volunteer their time to plan and coordinate high quality events that provide a forum to both educate and exchange ideas among local members.

This is the Toronto Roundtable’s third and perhaps most ambitious year. The executive team is composed of individuals who have significant demands on their time; therefore, we have adopted a “back-to-basics” approach. This approach was taken to ensure we focus our efforts on providing consistently high quality events with interesting, diverse topics rather than struggling to meet an arbitrary quantity objective and sacrifice event quality while increasing the level of stress on those organizing the event. In a market with no shortage of conferences and courses, we felt it was imperative to have quality speakers addressing interesting subjects with broad appeal.

With a July to June fiscal year, we have successfully completed four events with one-to-two more being planned. In addition, we are also planning to support the Annual CLM Conference that will be held in Toronto on October 17 – 20, 1999. The events so far this year include:

• A breakfast presentation on Strategic Sourcing that provided the attendees with an approach and case studies on how organizations can better leverage their external expenditures to reduce the total costs associated with procuring goods and services.
• A Beer-Game dinner, which was a tremendous success. The Beer Game is a supply chain simulation that illustrates the importance of synchronizing the physical flow of goods with the supply chain information processes. With more than 55 attendees, the participation was high and the competition became spirited. It was thoroughly enjoyable and educational evening.
• A tour of the Toronto Hub of UPS Canada. This facility, which handles 20,000 packages per hour, is a critical link in UPS’s global distribution network. The tour provided us with an excellent opportunity to take a closer look at how a global company employs technology to serve its customers.

Our annual transportation evening, chaired by Dan Goodwill, once again proved to be a popular and informative event, with a rich panel of senior speakers representing truck, rail and logistics practitioners.

We are now planning one or two more dinner events prior to the conclusion of our fiscal year. Once finalized, the dates and topics will be placed on the CLM Web site (www.clm1.org).

Preparations for the 1999 CLM Annual Conference are well underway. The Toronto Roundtable will play a large coordination role and will look to the Toronto logistics professionals for contributions to profile some of the leading organizations and practices in our community.

Four Toronto Roundtable executive members will be chairing tour tracks. The tours are always a major draw at the annual conference and we expect this year to be no different. At press time we had ten corporate tours of local facilities set.

Being a member of the Roundtable executive has been a truly rewarding experience for me as it has exposed me to an association with high quality logistics professionals and provided an opportunity to assist in providing these outstanding services and events. To contribute to the success of your Toronto Roundtable, start thinking about volunteering next year. Your contribution will help the Toronto Roundtable to deliver better service to all logistics professionals within your area.