The teams will present their case studies in The 2012 Supply Chain Innovations of the Year educational track at CSCMP's annual conference, September 30-October 3, 2012, in Atlanta.

Each team will discuss the creative and nontraditional approaches, operations, and cost-saving initiatives that resulted in their unique supply chain achievements. Finalist teams and their innovations include:

• Sony of Canada Ltd. and RedPrairie Collaborative Flowcasting Group LLC created an end-to-end retail business model that simplified the challenges of demand and supply planning.

• Office Depot developed an office supply delivery system that reduced the company's environmental impact and its supply chain costs.

• Pfizer Inc. deployed a cloud-based information strategy that added virtualized information and process layers between a company and its various control towers, service providers, and trading partners, resulting in exceptional value chain visibility and control.

• Cardinal Health and ThermoSafe launched a new environmentally-friendly, reusable, nontoxic, food product packaging solution for refrigerated pharmaceuticals that was an industry first.

• The Dow Chemical Company implemented a logistics enterprise sales and operations planning project designed to proactively balance logistics supply and demand for improved customer service.

• The Dow Chemical Company and Haesaerts Intermodal NV leveraged collaboration to yield improvements in operational stability, productivity, costs, and greenhouse gas emission in a complex European supply chain.

• Werner Company, Transplace, Convermex, Mohawk Industries/Dal-Tile, and Whirlpool Corporation initiated collaborative efforts that consolidated low- and high-density freight onto the same vehicle to reduce demand for transportation resources and costs.

• The Partnership for Supply Chain Management, John Snow, Inc., RTT Health Sciences, and the US Agency for International Development applied multiple innovations to deliver reliable and cost-effective AIDS treatment medicine to some of the hardest to reach areas in the world.

The presentations will be judged by a panel comprised of members of CSCMP's Research Strategies Committee and editors from SupplyChainBrain. The team judged to have achieved the most outstanding supply chain innovation will receive the Supply Chain Innovation Award at Wednesday's Closing Session. A second-place award will also be presented. The winning case studies will be published on CSCMP's web site and featured in the December issue of SupplyChainBrain.

CSCMP's Annual Global Conference is the largest of its kind for the supply chain management profession, hosting more than 3,000 practitioners, educators, and thought leaders from around the world. More than 100 educational sessions are planned. The Supply Chain of the Future exhibition and its innovative real-time, hands-on supply chain will be featured once again this year.

Source: CSCMP