The single largest gathering of supply chain management professionals on the African continent assembled at the 37th SAPICS conference and exhibition at Sun City from May 31 to 2 June.

The Pulse of African Supply Chains was the theme of this year’s event.

In his opening address, SAPICS president Cobus Rossouw, said it was exciting to see over 1 000 people actively engaging with each other over a three-day period, all of whom, he said, were leveraging their supply chain networks.

“I have no doubt that this conference will live up to all our expectations, even with us raising expectations again, ” he remarked.

Rossouw said the individual members of SAPICS continue to form the backbone of the organisation and thanked the event’s volunteers, sponsors and exhibitors for their contributions. “Most importantly,  thank you to every employer that has made it possible for their people to be here. We recognise the investment and cost in time – we trust that it will be rewarded many times over.

“We at SAPICS recognise that some enterprises question the benefit of association of SAPICS beyond attending a conference or being an individual member. This references those enterprises that are not commercially involved as sponsors. We are changing that,” he reaffirmed.

Want, want, want

“We want all enterprises to benefit from their association with SAPICS. We want all enterprises to want to share their stories, good and bad, to benefit the entire supply chain community. We want all enterprises to drive supply chain education using the body of knowledge that SAPICS and our partners represent. We want all enterprises to share our passion and contribute towards the development of young supply chain professionals.

We know it is probably naive to expect such high levels of engagement. But we certainly want to work towards it,” he stated.

Rossouw added that the merger of APICS and the supply chain council in 2014 provided an excellent opportunity for SAPICS to expand beyond helping individuals achieve their career goals.

“It also helps corporations and enterprises to achieve their strategic goals. The APICS supply chain council engagement model allows for affiliation of those enterprises that wish to drive supply chain transformation. With this affiliation comes a multitude of other benefits, including education benchmarking, sharing of executive secrets and added support,” he said.

Food for thought

Rossouw added that SAPICS had aligned the efforts of the South African leadership team with supply chain council and the SAPICS exco and board of directors.”Mungo Park is leading that on our behalf. But SCOR is only one way; one channel of engagement for SAPICS with enterprises. As an analogy, you could think of APICS supply chain council as one page in our menu – a menu with many pages – a menu with some pages still in development.

“We are one of the leading representatives and partners of APICS in terms of the international certifications CPI and CSCP. We’ve offered the certified professional forecaster for a few years and started certified demand-driven planner recently and will be offering certified supply chain analyst certification soon.”

The ASTL certifications are growing in recognition. “We have plans in place to make this much more relevant. The recently announced merger between APICS and ASTL is very exciting for our market where logistics professionals as part of the supply chain community are actively involved.”

SAQA recognition remains a work in progress. “This year for the first time, we have TETA, the transport sector education training authority as an exhibitor and participant at the conference. We’re also putting in place endorsement policies to make sure that our education is relevant. We still have an open page in the menu thinking of how we can help organisations structure their supply chain management education. One element that will be added is much better exposure to the APICS competency model that is not being well promoted in our region,” he stated.

“We have recently added specific focus on young professionals. The future of our profession. We are pleased to welcome many young supply chain management professionals to the conference. We’ve developed a mentorship programme and we welcome all organisations to participate in that.

“One page of our menu that needs to improve is how we share intellectual capital. During the conference you will again be exposed to many papers and case studies, from theory right through to practice. We have to get better at sharing this and allowing people to learn from each others successes and failures.

“We also have to drive recognition harder. At SAPICS, we’ve been promoting education excellence for a few years and we’ll continue to do that. And this year, four of the board members of SAPICS are judges at the logistics achievers awards.

“We’ve had some debates about the role we can play to validate or promote service providers. For now, we don’t have the capability to reference anybody more than recognising those that are willing to invest in their association with SAPICS.  We’re happy to introduce you as users of services to providers of services through an event like this. More than that, we don not plan to do at this stage.

“The most colourful page of our menu is our events page. This includes regional conferences, professional development events, events with our partners and then the most extravagant of all, the annual conference at Sun City. Welcome again to everybody, enjoy the conference,” he concluded.