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Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Sri Lanka conducted the first Logistics Leaders Evening Talk for the year on 11th July at the auditorium of National Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka. The topic for the evening was “Decision making for Logistics Professionals”. The talk was conducted by Dr. Errol Wirasinghe of San Francisco, USA which was attended by a large number of industry professionals and academics.

The seminar provided an insight into the tools and techniques available to make decisions that are timely, consistent, optimal, and defensible. He demonstrated that problem solving and decision making were not the same; problem solving being the process of coming up with a range of potential solutions for the problem at hand, and decision making being the process of identifying the optimal one, for implementation. He further said that today, in the face of information and choice overload, our decision-making tends to become overly influenced by personal biases, intuition, prior experience, illusions, and perception.

Some of the highlights of his talk were,
• Recognize human irrationality and illusions that creep into decision making
• Understand key factors that impact decision making
• Bid evaluation and vendor selection
• Present and defend decisions with ease
• Define and utilize appropriate criteria in the decision-making process
• Implement an analytic hierarchal methodology when making decisions
• Minimize risk by validating decisions

Dr. Errol Wirasinghe, developer of the XpertUS Decision Support System (software), is the author of two books on decision-making. He has trained several Fortune 500 companies, and is also an adjunct professor at the University of Houston’s MBA program. Dr. Wirasinghe has published papers on topics relating to management, and has carved out a niche as a “decision-maker” using analytics, to shatter traditional myths of decision-making. His professional career spans across many disciplines.

The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) is the leading global professional body associated with the Logistics and Transport industry, established in UK in 1919 and having received the Royal Charter in 1926. The Institute’s Patron is HRH Princess Anne, the Princess Royal. With a global membership of over 33,000 from 32 countries across the Globe, CILT provides a professional identity to those in the ever expanding Logistics and Transport sector. CILT Sri Lanka was established in 1984 and incorporated by the Parliamentary Act no. 08 of 2000. In 2012 the Council of Trustees upgraded the status of CILT Sri Lanka from a Branch to a Territory. Presently CILT Sri Lanka has over 1000 members who are highly qualified in the Transport and Logistics fields. CILT Sri Lanka is governed by a Council consisting of professionals representing all segments of the Transport and Logistics industry and also consists of two fora namely Women in Logistics and Transport (WiLAT) and Young Professionals’ Forum (YPF) dedicated to promote women and young professionals in the Logistics and Transport industry respectively. For more details on CILT, visit their web page – http://www.ciltsl.com