Leverkusen | October 27, 2011: Expert forum LOG.lev is dedicated to sustainability
Sustainability – an entrepreneurial challenge! Chemion Logistik put its expert forum LOG.lev (Logistics live in Leverkusen) under this banner on 12th and 13th October 2011. At the invitation of the logistics service provider, around ninety participants from the chemical and logistics sectors, from science and industry attended the sixth event in the series in Leverkusen. The interdisciplinary concept from the past years has proven itself and thus Chemion was once again able to attract experts from the economy and science for lectures and as an exhibition partner this year. It is this good mixture, which is in the opinion of Elmar Ockenfels, Business Analyst at Chemion Logistik, one of the success factors of LOG.lev. „The event links ideas and specialists and offers a platform for information and exchange. It is particularly on the topic of sustainability that it becomes evident: Together we can achieve more if we are willing to see the big picture.“
The event kicked off with the participants visiting the highly modern plant of nkt cables, which among others has been producing the world’s largest sea cables for the transmission of alternating currents in CHEMPARK Leverkusen since 2010. During the inspection the focus was on activities in the customer centre of the company along with the production lines, which are geared towards quality, future-oriented product design, optimum order processing and also the aspect of environmental friendliness.
The day of the event on 13th October was opened with a welcome speech given by the State Secretary of North Rhine-Westphalia, Dr. Günther Horzetzky. Susanne Bergius from Handelsblatt directed a clear appeal to the audience: sustainability is part of the core business! She demonstrated the risks of non-sustainable economizing for companies, emphasized the challenge for global procurement chains and logistics and showed indicators of a credible reorientation of companies towards sustainability. Ursula Mathar from Bayer AG E&S underlined in her lecture that sustainability contributes towards added value for Bayer. She gave examples illustrating acting responsibly from the fields of ecology, economy and society and explained how Bayer is making a contribution towards solving global challenges with its sustainability program.
In his interactive lecture Prof. Dr. Carsten Suntrop (CMC² GmbH) invited the LOG.lev participants to experience changes themselves and to learn through this how important the topic of sustainability is, especially in change processes. Since companies are living systems, it is important, particularly in phases of change, to actively integrate employees in the organization of change. Only then, concluded Suntrop, can the desired target status of change projects be achieved, only then can companies successfully manage the change.
Dr. Christian Busse from Supply Chain Management Institute (SMI) dedicated himself in his presentation to sustainability in procurement. As an example he portrayed the numerous challenges for a sustainable supply chain management and various tools with which companies can organize their procurements in a more sustainable way: this includes the codes of conduct, which regulate the interaction between companies and their suppliers as codes of conduct, CO2 avoidance strategies and also a sustainability-oriented supply chain risk management.
In his lecture Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Bretzke (Barkawi Management Consultants) concentrated on the necessity of a paradigm change in order to achieve sustainable logistics. His belief: logistics must be raised to the strategy level of companies and leave behind the many current logistical principles in order to be able to be oriented in sustainable way. To this end needs must become more predictable again in future, for example speed should no longer be automatically considered the most important value. Rather consistent simplification, bundling needs, slowing down and a multi-dimensional and longer-term conservation attitude for the sustainable organization of logistics are necessary.
To conclude the LOG.lev Dr. Stefan Rommerskirchen from ProgTrans AG offered the participants a view of the development of the demand for freight traffic and presented the prospects and the ecological consequences of the developments. In Germany and in the European Union domestic traffic retains the most important role, whereby on the road the freight traffic capacity will increase, particularly by 2030. Outside of Europe, such as, for example, in Russia, India and China, the freight traffic capacity will increase enormously in the next two decades due to the rapidly growing economy. The consequence: the competition for scarce fossil energies will be heated up and this will increase the pressure to find alternatives for the current drive energies for road traffic.
