From the Director's desk December 2019

Welcome to the last edition of Supply Chain Link for this year. I hope you have a marvellous and relaxing holiday season. I wish a very Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate.

In this edition, we have three very interesting articles discussing three different problems facing supply chain today. The first article, written by Param Iyer, takes a critical look at the pricing policies used by Auckland Transport (AT) and offers some practical solutions that would further promote public transport usage. The second one, written by Mojtaba Mahdavi, proposes an interesting strategy to cope with the dual serving problem which has been a pressing issue since the emergence of daily deal platforms, like Groupon. The third article, written by myself, discusses the government’s plan to move the Ports of Auckland to Northport in Whangarei.

This article answers some strategic questions like what the direct effects of this plan will be on Auckland’s economy and New Zealand’s environment, and what fundamental infrastructure is required to actualise such plans.

Furthermore, Felicity Lawrence gives us a wrap up for the Strategic Supply Chain Management programme for this year. We strongly invite all of you to engage in this programme to further yours or your colleague’s future supply chain career. We also have an article about Holochain, a cutting edge technology which could be a huge game-changer with regards to online privacy, and another on sustainability in the fashion world which is a new “must-have” in this industry.

We had our final After 5s event this year on the 20th of November, where Matthew Wright, GM Digital Technology, Kotahi Logistics, and James Feeney, Managing Partner ComActivity NZ Ltd, discussed the latest technologies in supply chain. The event was well attended and went overtime because there was so much discussion! As always, please watch your email for upcoming events in the new year and do feel free to forward our announcements to anyone you feel may be interested.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the CSCM team for all their hard work this year. Most particularly, Marcus and Felicity for doing all the heavy lifting on organizing events and our executive programme. But also, thanks to Jillian and Aida for keeping the
ship sailing along smoothly.