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* UK Report: Back to the Future?
UK -TNN -20 Dec 2006: -- Smart radio frequency (RFID) credit cards that monitor our personal journeys and enable us to trade individual carbon emissions, door-to-door driverless trains, ships under modern sail and distribution centres and channels running underground, are some of the back to the future thoughts contained in the 80th anniversary report of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport as it looks forward to the next eight decades... Some of the reports observations:
* Overground or underground, our distribution centres are likely to be closer to us to enable click of the mouse sustainable delivery, which too could be over or underground.
* We will cease our obsession with manufacturing in low cost countries and focus upon developing the value chain. The stretching of supply-chains across the globe to deliver value to the customer has negative environmental implications as demonstrated by the story of shellfish from Scotland being flown to Thailand to be washed shelled before returning for consumption in the UK because it was cheaper to do so.
* Consumers are going to become greater drivers and value in the future will not necessarily be defined solely by low cost ethical and environmental production is already a buzzword with the explosion in organic produce and the advent of fair trade products, trends that are set to accelerate.
* Production and purchase could become closer together to reduce food miles and provide greater protection from global terrorism the food chain is already recognised as a possible hostage to fortune.
* Carbon trading, so far the preserve of the heavy industries across the EU, is likely to cascade down into everyday living during the next 80 years. We may indeed see RFID smart cards that act as everything from passports, retail on-line loyalty cards, travel cards, but moreover allow us to trade our own carbon output with each other and the National Grid, making the swapping C02 credits as easy as any other credit card transaction.
* However, we may park our obsession with IT hardware as the panacea for all transport and logistics needs and get back to the software the training and development of people to help think us out of global meltdown. However, to get to this point, we need to give the logistics and transport industries an image makeover to attract the right calibre of candidate those who can harness economic, ethical and environmental needs in their development of transport systems and supply-chains of the future.
* These same people will be expert in the flip side of supply and value - demand. Transport and logistics experts will hone their talents in the worlds killing fields dealing with environmental and man made disasters - a trend that is already in evidence within CILT(UK) which has just developed the worlds first qualification in humanitarian logistics.
* E-commerce may now mean electronic trading, but in the brave new world, e will equally stand for environmental and ethical trading as people and the planet take centre stage.
posted by Unknown @ 5:19 PM
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