The Biennial Supply Chain Management Conference jointly organized by EADS-SMI Chair for Sourcing and Supply Management, IIMB and the Supply Chain Management Centre, IIMB, was held on January 7-8, 2011 in Bangalore, India. Proceedings of the conference are now available.

The theme of the conference was "Opportunities and Challenges in Services Supply Chain".The conference participants included academic delegates and students across the country and from countries like Australia, China, France, Iran, Pakistan, UK and USA. The papers presented included 15 industrial papers from organizations like Akzonoble, BPCL, Genpact, IBM, IGSA Consulting, Mind Tree, Wipro etc.

The Inaugural Session commenced with Professor Devanath Tirupati welcoming the Keynote Speakers, Director IIMB, Delegates and the Invitees for the conference. Professor Pankaj Chandra, Director, IIMB delivered the inaugural address at the conference. The Keynote addresses were delivered by Dr. Raghuram Krishnapuram, Associate Director, IBM Research India and Mr. T R Parasuraman, VP, Toyota Kirloskar Auto Parts Pvt. Ltd. This was followed by technical sessions where authors presented their papers. The technical sessions covered topics on Distribution and Logistics; Strategy Services Supply Chain, SCM Strategy, Modeling & Optimization, Industry / Sector Studies, and Supply Management and SC Coordination were scheduled for the day and conducted parellelly in three time slots for. Dinner presented the perfect opportunity for participants to network.

The second day featured an invited talk by Professor B Mahadevan on "Services Supply Chain" who stressed on how services supply chain could draw ideas from product supply chain. The panel discussion was on "Opportunities and Challenges in Services Supply Chains" and consisted of panelists like Mr. S Ravichandran, Exective Director, TVS Logistics Services Ltd.; Mr. Harvansh Batra, Director- Sourcing, EADS India; Mr. K S Ganesh, Manager Procurement, IBM India Pvt. Ltd.; Mr. P R Naik, Executive Director Marketing, BEML and Dr. C N Manjunath, Director, Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, Bangalore. The panel discussion was moderated by Professor Janat Shah, IIMB. The panelists gave brief presentations about the organisation's services for their respective organizations and later had brief discussion about the nuances of the services supply chain. There were two technical sessions scheduled for the day covering areas