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Six years ago, logistics guru Page Siplon decided to roll the dice, betting his Georgia Center of Innovation for Logistics could successfully launch a state-led, industry-driven annual logistics summit, something no state had done before.
He started out simply in 2009 with a luncheon in Atlanta designed to bring logistics leaders together. He sent out invitations, hoping to draw as many as 200 people.
He knew he was on to something when 450 showed up.
The next year, attendance nearly doubled and the Georgia Logistics Summit was well on its way to becoming a “must do” conference, not just for Georgians, but for logistics providers around the country and beyond.
Fast forward to 2015.
Siplon has moved to the private sector and Jannine Miller has seamlessly stepped in as director of the Center for Logistics, last week welcoming 2,000-plus attendees from most of the 50 states and a number of foreign countries to the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta for the two-day summit.
The following is a recap of some of the conversations and presentations:
Workforce development
In addition to making sure everything was running smoothly at the summit, Miller took to the podium on several occasions to talk about this year’s priorities for the Logistics Center, one of six state-sponsored Centers of Innovation.
“Workforce development is a major focus for us in 2015,” Miller said, adding that the center was taking a three-pronged approach to the issue.
“We’re looking at ways to enhance entry level training, working to get our military veterans trained and into the workforce, and we’re launching a comprehensive survey to find out what Georgia companies need on a whole spectrum of levels,” she said.
A prime local example of the first priority is in Savannah’s backyard, where the logistics center has joined forces with the Coastal Workforce Investment
Board and Savannah Technical College to launch the Fast Track Coastal Initiative, a program for qualified students to earn a warehouse and distribution specialist certificate.
The first eight-week course, which began in February with 26 enrollees, combines classroom instruction and online learning with hands-on safety and operations skills practice in a “living lab” warehouse environment.
Students who successfully complete the course will get a minimum of two interviews with participating logistics companies as well as a certificate.
The second priority, helping veterans train for a civilian job, also has a local component through Georgia Tech Savannah’s Veterans Education Training and Transition program. The four-week program is free to active duty military within 180 days of completing.
Already, a number of aviation-trained soldiers from Hunter Army Airfield have spent time at Gulfstream Aerospace, learning how to translate their military skills and values into successful civilian careers.
The third priority, a survey to be undertaken by Kennesaw State University, will delve into what shippers and logistics providers need to be successful.
Vietnam trade exploding
Bernd Baunack, national manager for Vietnam at Kuehne + Nagel, asked his audience how many of them owned Samsung smartphones. About a third of the crowd of 1,000–plus put their hands up.
“I guess you know what I’m going to ask next,” he said. “Do you know where your phones were made? It’s Vietnam. If your impression of this country comes from 30-year-old war movies, you don’t know the new Vietnam.”
The Southeast Asian nation has become a hub of manufacturing, he said, with no fewer than 20,000 people employed full-time making Samsung phones.
“And approximately 60 percent of Nike products are made there as well.”
Savannah’s maritime community is more aware than most of the emergence of Vietnam as a trading partner. The country ranks 12th on the list of Georgia’s top 25 importing countries, accounting for $1.25 billion in trade in 2014.
Why Georgia?
Rodney Dickey is president of OA Logistics for JLA Home, the operations division of E&E Co., Ltd. of California, a globally integrated company that imports a variety of products for the home, including furnishings, rugs and art.
“We basically started our operations about 20 years ago and, in that small time frame, we’ve really grown the business to the point where it’s a major player on the retail side as well as in e-commerce,” Dickey said.
“We had double-digit growth throughout the recession,” he said. “We never saw a slowdown in our business and, as a result, never slowed down in our expansion.”
In 2007, when the company wanted to grow on the East Coast, Dickey said he traveled the coast from Miami to New Jersey.
“At the end of the day, Savannah and the state of Georgia was, without any question, the place we needed to be,” he said. “So, in 2009, we purchased a 700,000 square-foot warehouse in Savannah. Just recently, we announced that we will build a 1.1 million square-foot facility that will bring about 300 to 400 jobs into the Savannah area.
The company has headquarters in California, but Dickey said that may change.
“We are fast approaching a situation where we are becoming more Savannah/East Coast based,” he said.
“Georgia is such a business-friendly state,” he said. “It brings a lot to the table. And the Port of Savannah is run by an incredibly professional team.
“When we bought our building in 2009, the industrial vacancy rate in the area was about 20 percent. Now it’s around 5.4 percent,” Dickey said. “That alone should tell you something good is happening in Savannah.”
All about collaboration
Curtis Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, knows all about good things happening in Savannah and beyond. And he knows why.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in this business, and I’ve traveled all over the country,” Foltz said. “Candidly, you aren’t going to find another state where you see this collaboration at all levels, whether it’s the governor’s office, the department of economic development, the department of transportation, the trucking industry or our railroad partners.”
“We get it. We all work together. We’re not concerned with who gets the credit. We’re much more concerned about pulling together as one team Georgia to provide transportation solutions that are next to none.”
For calendar year 2014, GPA has experienced strong growth across all business platforms, Foltz said.
“What we’re dealing with now is somewhat of a tsunami on the container side of the business.
“For the first eight months of fiscal year 2015, which started July 1, container volume is up almost 14 percent,” he said. “This is about four times the growth rate we projected for this fiscal year.”
Reasons for the growth spurt include West Coast labor issues, congestion at other East Coast ports and Georgia Ports’ ability to handle the extra traffic, he said, adding that, while some diverted traffic will return to the West Coast, some is expected to become stick with the East Coast.
All about the customer
From a retail merchant’s point of view, it’s all about the customer, said Craig Menear, chairman and CEO of The Home Depot.
“I have a very strong belief that customer service in the retail world starts with in-stock,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how great your product is, how hard you work with your suppliers or what innovation you bring to the marketplace. It doesn’t matter how much time and energy you spend training your associates to provide a great experience. It doesn’t matter how much money you invest in a website to be able to service customers as their needs are changing.
“None of this matters if, at the end of the day, you don’t have what the customer needs when they need it and in the quantities they need,” he said. “If that doesn’t happen, all of that energy and effort is for naught.”
Retail has probably changed more in the last three years than it has in the 30 years prior, Menear said.
“Three years ago, social networks were all about connections,” he said. “Today, they drive commerce. Three years ago in our business, we didn’t even have something called ‘buy online, pick up instore.’ Three years ago, experts were sounding the death knell for brick and mortar stores. Today online-only businesses are wondering if they need to add physical stores.”
These changes mean retailers have to change, he said.
“At the Home Depot, if we were to stay customer-centric, we had to evolve from a company that measured its success in new square-footage growth to one that measured its success in productivity and efficiency. It was one of the hardest pivots we had to make.”
But the digital environment has truly changed the landscape, he said.
“In 2014 we grew our sales by $4 billion – and $1 billion of that was digital.
We had 1.4 billion transactions coming through our stores, but we had 1.2 billion digital visits to our website.
Make no mistake, whether retailers like it or not, the customer is in control today, he said.
“They’re going to choose how they engage with you as a retailer — when, where and how they want — and , if you are going to survive, you have to be able to deliver that experience when, where and how the customer wants.”
Learning opportunities
Steve Markham, president of Atlanta-based BLG Logistics Inc. and Josip Tomasevic, vice president of AGCO Corp., a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural equipment, were featured speakers on the “International Logistics: Partnerships and Possibilities” panel Tuesday morning.
But they were also promoting BVL International, a global nonprofit founded in 1978 to increase awareness of the importance of logistics and supply chain management, to provide research on logistics issues and develop methods to resolve them.
Specifically, the two were promoting upcoming regional Supply Chain Day events:
• Friday - a tour of the BMW manufacturing plant in Greer, S.C., to learn how experts manage the automaker’s complex supply chain
• April 16 – a look at supply chain management at BLG Logistics, Inc., beginning at the Mercedes-Benz U.S. International Training Center in Vance, Ala.
• April 16 – a facility tour of the new Kuehne + Nagel Atlanta operations in East Point.
For more information, go to www.supply-chain-day.com.