Fleming Gulf's fourth edition of the Supply Chain Middle East Strategy Summit kicked off yesterday, 10th February, at Dusit Thani in Dubai. Delivering the key note on the opening day was Shahid Osmani of the Dubai Customs. Osmani's session focused on building a strong relationship between customs and businesses and to strike a a balance in ensuring compliance and facilitating trade.

Highlighting the importance on export trade, Dr. Ashraf Ali Mahate, Head of Export Market Intelligence from Dubai Exports addressed the attendees on the inclusion of SMEs and their potential in the global value chain. Kurt Warren of the New York University Abu Dhabi tackled another aspect of export trade by addressing the export control legislation and product lifecycle accountability.

Attention was also drawn on capatilising on the EXPO 2020 by developing market places. Yusuf Tambawala from the Economic Zones World (EZW) spoke of the opportunities and the role of the EZW leading to the Expo 2020. Zahi Bitar of the Span Group, a leading provider of integrated supply chain solutions, spoke on the ways to streamline potential bottle necks in distribution operations. Span Group lends its support as the Gold Sponsor to the event.

Focusing on the complexities in constantly changing supply chain system, was conference Chairman Dr. Igor Egorov, Director of Supply Chain Management for Chrysler Group Middle East. Experts Tamer Nabil from Al-Haddad Telecom Group and Riyan Qirbi of BP focused on the response vs effective nature of supply chain in the telecom sector and supply chain resilience in the aviation fuel industry respectively.

The second day of the forum today witnessed sessions from experts across industry sectors ranging from government and trade to telecom, electronics, transport and retail. Where Youssef Beydoun from the Dubai Airports Cargo & Logistics spoke on the multi-modal and the creation of the Dubai Logistics Corridor, Jonathan James from the Department of Transport – Abu Dhabi spoke on identifying challenges and opportunities in delivering a fairer competition in freight transport.

The event also sees support from the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) – MENA. Representing CIPS-MENA was Mansoor Mallik the Head of Customer Relations who spoke on the idea of licensing procurement. Other experts at the event included Magnus Lien (Ooredoo), Ravi Kumar (Dubai Trade FZE), Shailen Shukla (Jumbo Electronics) and Akshay Srivastava (MumzWorld.com).

The two day event will conclude with a closing panel at the end where attendees will be seen discussing Inventory optimisation and handling unpredictable changes. The summit also sees support from Global Logistics – a privately owned company specialising in logistics services in the GCC & Middle East region and Stellium a management consulting firm specializing in Supply Chain Management with presence in the USA, Middle East and Asia Pacific regions.