For the fifth time Quantum and Eurologistics were honored to lead a major event in the industry, namely,  the Forum of Logistic Practitioners.  This year, we congregated in Włocławek, where for two days more than 150 representatives of the logistics management staff from Poland’s biggest companies had the opportunity to discuss the “Managers’ strategies for creating new and innovative supply chains”.

Several following speeches, developed specially for the Forum, were dominated by the topic of innovative solutions and the tight cooperation of the interested parties in the creation of new supply chains. We also heard some conclusions drawn from the crisis, suggestions for specific solutions, and a series of uneasy industry questions, as well as the recollection of the latest trends of world logistics. Examples of specific successful practices complemented the expectations of the participants. The Forum showed that the contemporary good practices are not only a solution offered by specific suppliers, but a result of the close cooperation between the supplier and the recipient.

Traditionally, we have completed our meeting with a paper by Professor Piotr Płoszajski, full of vivid evidence and accurate thoughts, which recapitulated the last several years of our civilization and set them against the comparable period of the forthcoming 6,000 days, suggesting the trends which will most probably define the business behaviors. In the over-optimized reality and the era of global access to information, our competitive edge shall consist in innovative concepts and the art of open cooperation with all the participants of our business environment.

For many of us, this can mean replacing the current, extensive business models with adaptive thinking, unconditionally subjected to the expectations of the global markets. Therefore, it seems inevitable, that we require open and extremely engaged thinking, such as shown by most “garage” organizations, which recorded a global success in the previous years and now set the directions for new changes in our environment.

This year we also set the goal of establishing cooperation with the participants through a prosumer model.  During the meeting, some mini-polls were conducted among the attendees, allowing several very current industry questions, e.g. related to the evaluation of the crisis to be answered. We were able to share the results of the analysis during the meeting itself. After the event, the attendees filled out a more detailed survey, enabling them to evaluate specific speeches and the entire Forum, but most of all, allowing the description of  the limitations seen by managers as the most crucial in the modernization of supply chains in Polish reality.

The results of the survey will be provided to all participants, who requested so. All further suggestions related to the form and functioning of the Forum of Logistics Practitioners will be collected by means of the newly created Web forum dedicated to our industry, which was also presented to all participants during the Włocławek meeting.

We would like to thank all those who devoted their time to be with us in Włocławek.