ASCI News
Wed, Apr 20 2011
Alliance Takes Flight - Supply Chain Review April 2011
The Alliance for Supply Chain Innovation (ASCI)will launch at the Chartered Institute of Logistics
and Transport (CILT) International Convention onMay 2 in Sydney.
Participating researchers, who represent academicand non-academic institutions across Australia, say
the alliance will “address national issues to improveand build a sustainable logistics position for Australia
and its states”.ASCI will also develop the knowledge base in logistics and supply chain management andcollaboratively assist in testing new business concepts.Victoria University Senior Strategy Advisor in Logistics and Supply Chain Management Dr PieterNagel is Interim Executive Director of the Alliance.
He has been instrumental in developing themodel, with support from Victoria University from inception. Nagel says until now the Australian supply chain sector has lacked a formal collaborative structurethat can facilitate the synergies that exist to enable the full spectrum of industry research in the supplychain domain. “Given funding and resources limitations it isdifficult for any one institution to build expertise and critical mass across a significantly wide enoughspectrum of the supply chain,” he says.
“Therefore, we find individual institutionsspecialise in relevant technology, business processes, international trade, transport,procurement, optimisation, and so on. “Often, private consulting firms undertakethis type of research on an ‘as-needs’ basis for government or industry sector organisations, tomeet their requirements.
“The inherent logic in this Alliance lies inintegrating and sharing resources rather the current fragmented approach that leads to huge overheadsfor each group and often duplicates efforts nationally rather than consolidating and sharing theseresources.
“By setting up a collaborative alliance, researchinstitutions will be able to address the larger problems and challenges of national interest.”Nagel says there are currently several alliances in Australia where researchers collaborate with industry in various professional domains. These includemining, energy, child welfare, health, desalination, and cancer research.“Such alliances all work on a basis of partnership between the research community, industry, and government,” Nagel says.
