EMEA Logistics Summit 2023 in Kraków

This year beautiful Kraków welcomed us for our second EMEA Logistics Summit. On this occasion, 30 colleagues from Logistics & Supply Chain Teams in the EMEA region met from 23rd to 24th of May in our Polish office.

Many of us met each other for the first time in person, so we used the chance to introduce the Logistics teams of our newer EMEA Legal Entities - Greece, Austria, and the Baltics. Moreover, two new roles are now enriching the Central Logistics & Supply Chain Team. Slaviša Filipovic (Global Customs & Trade Manager) and Patrick de Potter (Global HSE Manager) introduced their initiatives to support the different Legal Entities in the future.

The main goals of our summits are to update everyone on the ongoing projects which are relevant to all of us and to align on a common Supply Chain Roadmap. One of these projects is the Transport Management Digitalisation with Transporeon. Currently, we are working on a pilot implementation of Transporeon's Transport Management System in Luxemburg and Germany. If you would like to know more details - stay tuned for the next r.e.source articles.

To experience firsthand which big impact good communication and alignment across Sales, Procurement and Operations can have, we invited EyeOn consulting, who instructed us to the concept of S&OP (Sales & Operations Planning) and performed with us an interactive Supply Chain Game. Besides fun, the game was meant to make us experience the Bullwhip-Effect as well as the value of end-to-end visibility and the role of forecasting within a Supply Chain.

Of course, we also discovered the city of Kraków - during a guided walking tour - and enjoyed great food.

We started the next morning with some updates about our warehouse projects:

• Gdansk (PL) 25.000 m²
• Tongeren (BE) 30.000 m²
• Wanssum (NL) 50.000 m² - for more details and an impressive video click here.

Afterwards, Lucas Freitas (Business Data Analyst) guided us through the Supply Chain KPIs he created in Power BI to make data analyses possible from a global perspective.

To - almost - end the day with some fun, we relocated to the warehouse where Smurfit Kappa sent some paper-based pallets for us. These could potentially be part of a new sustainable packaging concept. After Smurfit Kappa presented their concept, we had the chance to test the new packaging solutions on our own.

To close a successful summit, we started collecting and prioritising initiatives which we will work on together as one big Logistics & Supply Chain Team. We are already excited for next year's summit, hearing the success stories of effectively implemented projects.

Last but not least, thank you for having us in Kraków, it was a pleasure experiencing your hospitality!