World Trade - December 2008 - (Page 7)

® INSIDE WORLD TRADE Group Publisher Tom Esposito Publisher Sarah Harding Editorial Director Neil Shister shistern@bnpmedia.com Managing Editor Lara L. Sowinski Art Director Michael T. Powell Contributing Writers Mark Bernstein, Richard Barovick, Gail Dutton, Winn Hardin, Joshua Kurlantzick, Andrea MacDonald, Clay Risen, Jeremy Smith, April Terreri, Amy Zuckerman WORLD TRADE MAGAZINE EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Grant Belanger Ford Motor Company Director South America Operations Steve Palagyi Director, Paciﬁc Region PRTM Consulting Erik Autor Vice President and International Counsel National Retail Federation Susan G. Esserman Chair, International Department Steptoe & Johnson Beth Enslow Global Supply Chain Resiliency Marsh, Inc. Kurt Cavano, Chairman and CEO, TradeCard Frank Vogl, Vogl Communications, Washington D.C. Thomas E. Crocker Co-Chair International Trade and Regulatory Group, Alston & Bird LLP The Promise of Peril ere’s a shot of unconventional wisdom: good times lay ahead! This is a column about what I want to believe: namely, that the ominous economic headwinds against which the global economic order is currently flailing will be folNEIL SHISTER lowed by a blissful era of expanding business activity, productivity and returns on capital. Now I want to stress at the outset that nobody would ever call me a congenital optimist. No ‘glass half-full’ Pollyanna am I! Indeed, as I write this month’s column, the news is filled with note of 240,000 luckless folks who lost their jobs last month (experts were expecting a ‘mere’ 200,000). The 6.5 percent rate of unemployment is the highest in well over a decade. The IMF is forecasting an across-theboard contraction of the industrial economies, something that hasn’t occurred since the 1940s! “Financial stress is likely to be deeper and more protracted than envisaged even a month ago,” says its Director of Research. Lest there be any doubt that the U.S. is dead-center in the eye of the storm, a measure from the Association of American Railroads notes that volume of both carloads and intermodal units (“trailers and containers on ﬂat cars”) in October were down nearly 3 percent from a year earlier. The manufacturing might of the economy is expectedly getting hit—biggest decreases were in motor vehicles (22 percent less) and metal products (16 percent). An unwelcome surprise, however, was grain (down 13 percent)—only a few months ago agriculture was a prospering sector and American farmers were aggressively exporting. So what’s the deal, where’s this good news going to come from? The supply chain! Pressures to maximize efficiency and optimize assets inescapably lead back to considerations of inventory. And funda- H SALES Publisher /Midwest Sales National Sales Director-East Sarah Harding 216.991.4861 hardings@worldtrademag.com Randi Giambruno 516.377.3906 giambrunor@worldtrademag.com Ed Lohmann 925.648.2562 lohmanne@worldtrademag.com Vito Laudati 630.694.4018 Fax: 248.283.6618 laudativ@bnpmedia.com Hong Kong Ofﬁce Publicitas Wendy Lin Tel: 852.2527.3525, Fax: 852.2528.3260 Steve Beyer Tel: 847.516.1977, Cell: 630.699.7625 beyers@bnpmedia.com National Sales Director-West Inside Sales Manager/Print Asia Director Custom Media OPERATIONS STAFF Production Manager Marketing Coordinator Web Seminar Project Manager Reprint Manager & Trade Show Coordinator Group Audience Development Manager Multimedia Manager Corp. Audience Audit Manager Research Editor Postal List Rental E-mail List Rental Single Copy & Back Issue Sales John Talan, 248.244.8253 Amanda Podina Bryan Cairns, 248.786.1613 Cindy Williams 610.436.4220 ext. 8516 williamsc@bnpmedia.com Christopher Sheehy Katie Jabour Catherine Ronan Amy Mills Robert Liska, 800.223.2194 robert.liska@edithroman.com Shawn Kingston, 800.409.4443 shawn.kingston@epostdirect.com Ann Kalb, 248.244.6499 kalba@bnpmedia.com WORLD TRADE HEADQUARTERS 600 Willowbrook Lane Ste. 610 West Chester, Pa. 19382 www.worldtrademag.com CORPORATE CORPORATE DIRECTORS Publishing Timothy A. Fausch Publishing David M. Lurie Publishing John R. Schrei Audience Development Christine A. Baloga Custom Media Steve M. Beyer Human Resources Rita M. Foumia Information Technology Scott Kesler Production Vincent M. Miconi Finance Lisa L. Paulus Creative Michael T. Powell Marketing Douglas B. Siwek Directories Nikki Smith Conferences & Events Scott A. Wolters Clear Seas Research John E. Thomas BNP Media Helps People Succeed in Business with Superior Information BNP Media Corporate Telephone: 248. 244.6400 mental to inventory spend is supply chain management. Now, I’m not so myopic as to suggest that optimization algorithms and re-conﬁgured logistics processes are the ‘key to the kingdom’ that will lead us out of our economic hole. But I do believe that one of the fundamental ways companies will respond to the stress of prolonged contraction is by being forced to conserve and redeploy scarce assets. This will accelerate outsourced transportation and distribution, lend momentum to the growth of 4PLs, provide incentive to invest in demand management tools, and give real urgency to the notion of ‘win-win’ collaboration throughout the value chain. These thoughts were prompted by a recent conversation with Bill Harrison, CEO of Demand Solutions (providers of forecast management and S&OP tools for SMSEs) and his observation that the tech sector is bringing to market a new wave of modestly priced tools that offer smaller companies the same kind of full-range functionality once available only to corporate giants. Necessity will create imperatives to eliminate less than fully productive expenditures. To accelerate inventory turnover. And, most importantly, to conceive new approaches to conventional thinking. Many of these moves will occur within the supply chain space, which, I predict, is destined to become a key center of enterprise innovation. And as it does, businesses will correspondingly act differently, smarter, and better. So that, on the other side of this “raging forest ﬁre” (as one observer describes the current havoc), global trade will be poised for an era of more productivity extracted from fewer resources—which is the deﬁnition of sustainable prosperity. Or at least so I hope! Neil Shister, Editorial Director shistern@worldtrademag.com WWW.WORLDTRADEMAG.COM For subscription information or service, please contact Customer Service at: Tel: 847.763.9534 or Fax: 847.763.9538 or e-mail WTR@halldata.com PRINTED IN THE USA 7 http://www.worldtrademag.com http://WWW.WORLDTRADEMAG.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Trade - December 2008

World Trade - December 2008 Contents The Promise of Peril The Current Reality with IP in China Supply Chain Watch Tradewinds Performance Partners: Awards of Excellence Managing With Mobility What 2009 Bodes for the Supply Chain Small Business Takes to Export Green is Here for Good Fast Fashion

World Trade - December 2008

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