MARITIME WATCHKEEPER

Four weeks ago, I wrote that the PCCI had made a 180 degree turn-around in its stand on North Harbor privatization. The PCCI had extended support to the PPA’s new move to award Terminals 1 and 2 of the North Harbor to a single operator (monopoly).

I also wrote that over the last two years, and up to the first four months of 2006, DMAP was very disappointed because it was excluded from all activities of the PCCI Transport Committee, as the Transport Committee had been converted from a venue for discussing transport issues from a wide perspective involving all sectors, particularly users, into a venue for service providers to push their agenda, to the detriment of users.

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Today we pay tribute to a Filipino logistician, more correctly Filipina logistician. Mary-Lou Quinto has reached the top of the world in the logistics profession. Mary-Lou Quinto is the Chair of the Board of Directors for 2005-2006 of the CSCMP, or the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. The Council is the largest supply chain management association in the world. I’m not quite sure now, but the membership must be in the 10,000 to 15,000 range.

Mary-Lou was featured in the CSCMP publication Comment, and this is where we got the information below.

Mary-Lou was born and raised in the Philippines. She grew up in Baguio and traveled to the US in the 1970s. She earned a Master of Science degree at North Carolina State University. Her first job after that was not in logistics, but in a lab at North Carolina’s Dept. of Public Health.

She sought a change of atmosphere to where she could interact and collaborate with others. In San Francisco she landed a job at a food processing plant, working in the second shift of the spinach operation. She impressed the VP of sales and marketing and got promoted to a distribution job, managing the company’s 20 or so public warehouses all over the US. According to her, “This job launched my logistics career”.

Mary-Lou moved on to director level positions at Nestle and SmithKline Beecham, and also earned an MBA at Pepperdine University. At present she is director of global logistics for Genentech, Inc.

Mary-Lou is referred to in Comment as “a leader with a global perspective”. She has worked in the Pacific Rim region, the US and London. Of her London experience, she says “This experience truly broadened my global logistics knowledge and perspective”.

Of her field of work, she says “Supply chain management is the most exciting profession to be in now”.

• Gov’t puts on ‘roro’ investment road show
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DMAP continues with its training activities. The next ones are:

Â¥ Shipping Immersion Course scheduled for May 18-22
Â¥ Forum on Measuring Supply Chain Performance scheduled for June 2
Â¥ Warehousing Seminar I, to be scheduled
Â¥ DMAP-DLSU SCM Program, Modules 2 and 3, starts May 27
Shipping Immersion Course
DMAP’s Shipping Immersion Course, will push through on May 18-22, 2006. Joiners will actually miss only one day of work, Friday May 19, with the ship leaving late at 830 pm on Thursday May 18 and arriving at 630 am on Monday May 22.

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THE PCCI made a courageous stand in 1999 to 2000 and led a large group of prganizations, including the Federation of Philippine In-dustries, Export Development Council, Foreign Chambers of Commerce, Philexport, ECOP, APPOOP, Mindanao Business Council, Filipino Shipowners Association, Federation of Free Farmers, DMAP, and others, in fighting a monopoly being set up in the North Harbor, and possibly in the whole country. The monopolists were armed with the infamous EO 59 which was quietly approved by Erap during the holiday season of 1999. Amb. Donald Dee led the PCCI and the group to success at end-October 2000, when Erap addressed the nation, “There is a perception that EO 59 will create a monopoly in port services. This EO 59 which involves the further rationalization of port services and facilities in government ports is hereby revoked. ”

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