Transportation and logistics expert and Chair of the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Chelsea C. White III, was one of four keynote speakers invited to participate in the 2nd International Conference on Transportation Logistics (T-LOG 2007) held in Shenzhen, P.R. China in July. T-LOG 2007 provided a technical forum for the 100 participations from 27 countries to gather to exchange knowledge and experience concerning current problems, solutions, and the future development of transportation logistics.

In his keynote presentation, Dr. White focused on issues of globalization, complexity, cost, lead-time mean and variance, transportation congestion, major disruptions, and real-time supply chain control.

"Supply chains are becoming more and more global because shippers perceive that the total cost of manufacturing, and in some cases designing, off shore and then transporting the manufactured good to the U.S. market is lower than if the manufacturing is done domestically* said White. "However, as experience with these global supply chains grows, costs thus far hidden are slowly being revealed. The length of time it takes to move a product from, say, China to the U.S. is turning out to be more variable than expected, producing more unexpected stockouts or inventory oversupply. This variability is at least partially due to port, canal, road, and rail congestion. Add to this the increasing cost of fuel and that major disruptions are more likely to occur for long and complex supply chains, and sourcing closer to the U.S. market * in, say, Mexico or the Caribbean rather than in China - is starting to take on greater appeal.*

Other keynote speakers at this year's conference included: Professor Teodor Gabriel Crainic, Director, ITS Laboratory, Centre for Research on Transportation at the University of Montreal in Canada; Mr. Takeshi Muraoka, from the Port and Harborf Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in Japan; and Mr. Liming He, President, China Society of Logistics in China.

T-LOG 2007 was hosted by the Research Center for Modern Logistics in the Graduate School at Shenshen of Tsinghua University and jointly coordinated by the Center for Transportation Research at the National University of Singapore, and by The University of Tokyo. The 3rd T-LOG Conference will be hosted by the University of Tokyo in Japan.