Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur organized the Supply Chain Excursus on 18^th January 2014, the third in the Excursus series in a span of two months.

The theme of this event was ‘Supply Chain 2020’. The Excursus provided a platform for students to discuss about the future of Supply Chain with the experts from leading corporations and how tomorrow’s supply chain leaders need to think differently in order to cater to increasing customer needs.

The event was flagged off by Prof. Janat Shah, Director, IIM Udaipur, where he highlighted that despite being one of the youngest IIMs, IIMU is leveraging the opportunity to establish itself as a completely different institute, focusing more on industry interactions, live projects and research.

The first panel, represented by the senior supply chain management team from Wipro, Ranbaxy and Microsoft discussed on the topic ‘Collaboration in future supply chains’. It was a very enriching discussion, where the esteemed panelists mentioned that team-work is an extremely crucial element in ensuring the success of supply chains.

The panelist from Wipro emphasized that mutual trust forms the backbone of collaboration and companies should increasingly focus on collaboration to manage their complex supply chains.

Poster Competition witnessed students battling it out in the final round by giving a 2-minute elevator pitch on various burning issues in today’s supply chain – containerization, impact of social media, use of hi-tech weather forecasting technologies, etc.

The second panel discussion on ‘Supply Chain Innovations and their impact’ was represented by the supply chain heads from Bharti Airtel, Ernst & Young and a leading pharmaceutical company.

All the panelists stressed on the need to build the culture of innovation in organizations. The panelist from Bharti Airtel mentioned how innovations in the service industry have transformed the business models and made it more and more customer-centric.

The day concluded with the declaration of the Poster Competition results, followed by a vote of thanks.