On September 10th more than 200 international and Chinese sourcing and supply chain professionals and experts met at the 7th BME China Sourcing Conference in Shanghai. This year’s conference under the topic “adjust to new circumstances, manage long distances, discover new strategies” offered the ideal framework for discussions and workshops to expand knowledge about the current trends and challenges in Greater China and network with suppliers, professionals and advisers. Staufen, as one of the leading consulting and training companies with focus on sourcing and lean, was delighted of being a main partner and active contributor to this high-class event. Main themes of the conference were lean and supply chain efficiency, lessons-learned and trends. In the current environment, with costs rising steeply during the last years, the question of how to boost the performance of an existing supply chain becomes an increasingly important topic. With his speech on “Improving the Supply Chain by Lean Management” Dr. Christof Rau from Bosch and other industry experts , e.g. from Bayer Material Science, ZF Friedrichshafen, as well as from the Staufen customers AGCO and SEW-EURODRIVE gave interesting insights .Zoltán Németh, Director Business Unit Lean at Staufen China contributed from our long-standing experience in lean & sourcing consulting on the topic of “Lean Supply Chain Strategies”. By focusing on lean principles like the reduction of “waste”, suppliers and OEMs can significantly reduce costs and increase quality and reliability. To demonstrate these principles and their results Tomas Herman of Brose – a system supplier for the international automotive industry and customer & partner of Staufen – went on to demonstrate a real-life example of this philosophy. The whole event was well rounded-up with speeches about current developments and trends and the interesting off-topic presentation of the author of “The China Code” Frank Sieren. The intensive workshops on the 2nd day of the BME conference offered a unique possibility to experience sourcing and Best Practice in China first hand. During the workshop “Lean Logistics & Just-in-Time Production”, which was conducted by Staufen, the participants had the chance to experience solutions that will increase their supply chain`s and internal logistics efficiency and learn methods to guarantee that these changes will “stick”. In conclusion the event offered a great insight into the current situation of sourcing in China and the realization that constant analysis of the supply chain and close cooperation with suppliers are key success factors.
