News
13.11.2019

BME: “Innovative Companies Need Pacesetters” - 54th Symposium Purchasing and Logistics Opened

Recognising opportunities, courageous implementation, taking the lead in purchasing: Procurement managers, supply chain managers and logistics experts will be discussing how best to organise purchasing at the Buyers Summit in Berlin until Friday.

The future role of Germany as pacesetter, economy and ecology as a concept for success as well as future-oriented innovations in purchasing and supply chain management were the central topics of the opening plenary session at the 54th BME Symposium Purchasing and Logistics in Berlin on Wednesday. Europe's largest congress for purchasing, supply chain management and logistics offers around 1,800 participants a communicative platform for the discussion of current and future procurement strategies under the motto "#pacesetter" until Friday. Horst Wiedmann, Chairman of the Board of the German Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement and Logistics (Bundesverband Materialwirtschaft, Einkauf und Logistik e.V., BME), appealed in his opening speech to the participants in the plenum to “recognize the opportunities of the changes arising from globalization and digitization and to be courageous enough to actively address and implement them”. In his opinion, purchasers, logistics experts and supply chain managers should “not be the wait-and-see victims of change, but active agents of change, i.e. pacesetters”. Pacesetters are the pacemakers and clocks of change, and often the creative and courageous lateral thinkers and rebels. Innovative companies in particular need not only lateral thinkers or rebels, but also decision-makers who recognize their added value. This year again, the approximately 1,800 participants at the BME Symposium will have the opportunity to inform themselves about the current megatrends in purchasing and supply chain management in numerous plenums, solution forums, specialist conferences and workshops over a period of three days.
These include, among other things, the topics:

  • Strategy 2025: Exploiting digitization potential
  • Implementing risk management and digitization correctly
  • Optimization of purchasing processes in medium-sized companies
  • BME Logistics Survey “Digitalization in Supply Chains”
  • Trade Wars! Who determines the commodity markets? The highlight of the first day of the congress will be the presentation of the BME Innovation Prize on Wednesday morning. The final point in the plenary session on Friday will be set by Christian Lindner, Federal Chairman of the Free Democrats, with his speech “Zukunftsoffensive Wirtschaft” (Future-oriented Economy) after a CPO panel with top-class speakers. Lindner says: “Digitization and political upheaval are changing everything - including our economy. How fit, how connected, how smart are we today? And what about tomorrow?” Impressions from the 54. Symposium Purchasing and Logistics