Professor David Grant

David B. Grant is Professor in Logistics and Director of the University of Hull Logistics Institute. Previously he was Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Logistics Research Centre at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and Lecturer at the Universities of Calgary, Lethbridge and Edinburgh. David is also an adjunct faculty member at Mannheim Business School, Germany and visiting professor at University of the Mediterranean-Aix-Marseille II, France and Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria.  David's doctoral thesis investigated customer service, satisfaction and service quality in UK food processing logistics and received the James Cooper Memorial Cup PhD Award from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK) in 2003. His research interests include customer service and satisfaction, service quality, retail logistics, logistics and supply chain relationships, reverse, closed-loop and sustainable logistics, logistics in SMEs, integration of logistics and marketing, services marketing, and research methodologies and techniques.
David has published over 85 papers in various refereed journals, books and conference proceedings, regularly referees articles for many academic journals and conferences, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, International Journal of Business Science and Applied Management and Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal.

David is a member of the US Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), the UK Logistics Research Network (LRN), and the NOFOMA Nordic logistics research group. Healso holds a Professional Certificate in University Teaching from the University of Edinburgh and is a Fellow of the UK's Higher Education Academy.

David will deliver a presentation that provides an overview of the role of logistics and SCM in addressing the challenges presented by the current economic climate. His presentation will focus specifically on the importance of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in leading the way back to economic prosperity.

Declan Kearney

Declan Kearney, Chief Executive Officer, founded Supplierforce, a leading Supply Management solution provider, in February 2004. The company's unique combination of web-based Supply Management solutions and procurement domain expertise reduces procurement costs and risks while leaving customers with the tools, processes and skills to realise sustained benefits. He has presented his vision for collaborative Supplier Management in the UK and Ireland.

Declan is a member of the executive council of the Irish Software Association and chairs the Public Procurement Working Group. Passionate about supplier relationships, Declan advocates truly unique perspectives on focusing on activities "beyond the transaction" and on Software solutions delivered "as a service" ("SAAS").

Presentation Outline

Declan's presentation, entitled "Achieving cost efficiencies and reducing risk exposure through total Supply Management", will highlight the critical role of Supply Management within SCM and the importance of dynamic Risk Management. He will also discuss the evolution of Cloud Computing within the Supply Chain.

Liam Cassidy

Liam Cassidy is an experienced Operations Director with over 30 years experience, 15 of them at Plant Manager Level. He is a Lean Manufacturing Specialist with a verifiable track record of turning poor performing factories into benchmark sites. Liam has managed plants in Ireland, USA, India and China. Additionally, he has extensive operational experience heading Production, Engineering, Quality, and Materials Depts in other European countries.  Liam has lectured extensively on Operations Management and spoken at Operations/Supply Chain conferences in many parts of the world.  As the founding member and head of the Institute of Logistics in Ireland, Liam established a membership in excess of 300 prior to integration with Chartered Institute of Transport.  Liam was awarded a European Union scholarship in 1986 to study Japanese Manufacturing Practices. (Just one candidate selected from each country).  He has also received awards from the Institute of Logistics, a UK based institute, for his work at the Newbridge, Ireland site, and acknowledged by the Lean Enterprise Institute, a web based organisation based in Massachusetts, for leading the turnaround at the Oral B plant in Iowa City. This plant was facing closure, but became the benchmark site within Gillette in just over a 2 year period.
He recently retired from Proctor and Gamble and now works with organisations to turnaround poor performing sites. He has bases in Ireland and China.

Presentation Outline

Turning a Poor Performing Factory into a Benchmark site - A Case History
Many factories struggle to be successful for reasons that are quite easily fixable. Be they in high or low cost areas, I know of no reason, once a factory has a reasonable product, with reasonable demand, why it should not succeed.  In a long life of managing factories and supply chains, I have encountered pretty much every problem that exists, and learned to overcome them all. How did I do this? By a combination of strong leadership, providing a vision that the workforce can march towards, allowing no obstacle to obstruct us on the way to that vision. And by the application of Lean Manufacturing Practices, that still remain the most effective and fastest way in which to cut costs and accelerate improvements.
This session tells the story of the Oral B Iowa City Plant. A plant I was sent to prepare for closure in 2000. Then one of the highest cost factories within the world of Gillette, it was transformed within 2 years to become a “Benchmark” site and had reduced its costs to the point where low cost countries like Mexico and China were eliminated as serious threats to its business. Nine years later, it is thriving and attracting new investments each year.

Ingrid Miley

Ingrid Miley is the Industry and Employment Correspondent for RTE. In that capacity she is responsible for television and radio coverage of news stories on various aspects of employment in Ireland - including industrial relations, social partnership, employment law, migration, exploitation of workers and the economy.

She previously worked for RTE in a number of different roles including investigative reporting with Today Tonight, Prime Time and the business programme Marketplace.

She holds an Honours BA degree in French and German from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Translation and Linguistics from the University of New Brunswick in Canada.

She qualified as a barrister in 2003.

Ingrid will host a Q and A Session featuring an expert panel made up our Keynote Speakers which will be opened to the floor to give delegates a chance to ask any questions that they may have relating to SCM.



Pearce Flannery

The founder of the Pragmatica organisation (http://www.pragmatica.ie) Pearce Flannery is widely regarded as Irelands leading business advisor and training facilitator. Nominated one of Irelands Top 100 entrepreneurs 2009 by the Irish Times he was winner of the JCI ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ (2006) and of the Marketing Institutes ‘Marketing Person of the Year’ (2005).

He is also a board member of the Autopolis Group (http://www.autopolis.com) a premier international automotive consultancy with offices spanning the globe. Pearce enjoys a high profile in the broadcast media for his views on socio-political and business matters and has an international reputation as a business and motivational speaker. Established in 2003 Pragmatica have become recognised as the foremost provider of strategic and business advice and training services to the SME sector in Ireland today.

Presentation Outline: Attitude Defines Altitude

Pearce will examine the external economic environment and discuss how we can only influence the external macro-economic environment through effective micro and personal management. He will explore how we need to readjust our mindsets in order to affect the national approach to doing business in order to overcome the international pressures facing all functions in business today. Effective Supply Chain Management, logistics and quality can only be achieved if each individual in the service process develops an attitude of achievement through empowerment. As drivers of our immediate environment each of us as an individual holds responsibility for changing the paradigm, economic or otherwise. We hold the key to the door of economic recovery. His presentation promises to be both insightful and topical and will no doubt be delivered in his trademark energetic motivational style.

Professor Martin Christopher

Martin Christopher is Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield School of Management. He has gained an international reputation for his work in logistics and SCM and is the author of one of the leading texts in the field, Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Creating Value-Adding Networks (Prentice Hall, 2005). He is a frequent presenter at conferences and workshops around the world and is the recipient of many
awards, including the Distinguished Service Award of the USA Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).

Presentation Outline

Managing Complexity in the Supply Chain

Supply chain managers must become complexity managers if they are to cope with the significant challenges that now face most organisations.  With the globalization of supply chains, the proliferation of the product portfolio and increasing demands for customised solutions the degree of complexity that has to be managed across the network has
increased dramatically. Complexity is one of the majors drivers of cost in any business and also one of the biggest inhibitors to improved agility.

In this presentation Martin Christopher will explore the sources of supply chain complexity and will suggest ways in which it may be contained and managed.