How To Improve Your Supply Chain

It's one thing to say you'll streamline your supply chain. It's another thing to succeed. In this special three-day discussion forum, you can talk with Ryder System Inc.'s Gene Tyndall, who has spent two decades evangelizing an IT-driven, lean-inventory model.

Tyndall's IT savvy and his unwillingness to back away from the idea that lean inventory will work even in troubled times recently earned him inclusion as an InformationWeek "Innovator and Influencer" (See He's Fixed On Keeping The Supply Chain Strong).

Tyndall is Ryder's executive VP of global markets and E-commerce, responsible for supply-chain business strategies, information technologies, and process-improvement methods for global industry sectors like aerospace, automotive, electronics, high tech, industrial, and telecommunications. Putting it simply, Tyndall wants his company to manage your inbound and outbound supply chain end-to-end. Tyndall and his organization generate more than $1.5 billion in transportation, distribution, and supply-chain operating revenue, and control in excess of $2 billion in freight movement.

According to Tyndall, trading partners should find ways to share information about every aspect of their own business that touches any aspect of their partners' businesses. Don't stockpile inventory. Don't back away from global sourcing strategies.

We're especially happy to have Gene Tyndall as our forum guest, from Jan. 8 to 10, discussing what makes a global supply chain work. (Senior writer Steve Konicki will serve as moderator.)

Now's your chance to bend his ear. Tell Tyndall about the supply-chain challenges your company is facing, and ask him about the tricky business of maintaining a lean inventory in a time when any hiccup in the supply chain can slow down or stop an assembly line. Discuss whether manufacturers' lean inventory models too often mean suppliers must warehouse even more inventory. Talk about the difficulties you have "creating trust" with your suppliers or the manufacturers you supply. Pick Tyndall's brain about how deep trust must go between trading partners, and whether there's a dark side to extending trust. Share your own struggles to make it all work. Or just get Gene talking about how he likes Miami, his newly adopted home.

Join the discussion!