Leaders Meet to Create Updated Roadmap

Strategic thinkers, including material handling and logistics practitioners, equipment and software suppliers, academia, associations and government, are invited to contribute their insights on the future of the U.S. supply chain at one of four roundtable summit events to be held throughout the second half of 2016.

Collected input will form the foundation of the second edition of the U.S. Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics, a 70-page report originally released in January 2014 on www.MHLroadmap.org.

“The first Roadmap was called by some ‘the most important document to be published by the industry in more than 20 years,’” said Gary Forger, who spearheaded the original effort to develop the document.

“It established a baseline of key disruptors faced by supply chain practitioners today and in the approaching decade. While it was comprehensive for the time, the staggering rate of change in the field during the recent past has prompted us to begin work on the second edition,” he added.

As with the first Roadmap, content for the second edition will be gleaned from input gathered during four roundtable summits at four locations across the country. Attendees will engage in a full day of face-to-face, full group and breakout sessions hosted by local industry thought leaders.

“The intent of this new series of summits is to capture the most recent developments in the field,” Forger continued. “For example, physical and cyber security weren’t addressed in the first edition of the Roadmap; today they’ve become critical factors to ensure business success.”

Participants will also further explore the core competencies companies will have to develop over the next decade to grow jobs, increase America’s global competitiveness and advance our country’s standard of living, he adds.

Collected input will form the foundation of the second edition of the U.S. Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics.

The summit dates and locations are:

• August 30, 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia
• September 13, 2016 in Trenton, New Jersey
• October 5, 2016 in Ontario, California
• November 9, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois

Participation in the roundtable summits is by invitation only, with approximately 40 different contributors expected to participate at each summit. Persons who are interested in receiving an invitation to attend one of the sessions may contact Gary Forger at [email protected].

Upon completion of the four summits, the gathered information will be used as the basis for the writing of the second edition of the Roadmap. The report will be released during MHI’s ProMat trade show and exposition, held April 3-6, 2017 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.

MHI is providing administrative and financial support for the development of the Roadmap. For more information, visit www.MHLroadmap.org or email Gary Forger, [email protected].