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One Consultant's View on Supply Chain Education
April 2, 2008
As I indicated in a prior post, I met recently with David Sievers, a principal at Archstone Consulting, a firm that co-wrote this piece we ran back in January.One topic that came up was an online survey conducted by a committee of corporations and AMR Research that is attempting to determine, among other things, where the college graduates with the best supply chain management skills were coming from.
One executive I spoke to at the time said he and his company were interested in the study because they were tired of hiring people who didn't seem to have the requisite supply chain skills.
Sievers was careful not to say the survey was a bad idea, but he stressed that supply chain management is by its very nature a very amorphous beast, this despite well-meaning and helpful efforts by the Supply Chain Council to define it through the SCOR model.
The concept of supply chain management, by many definitions, varies widely from industry to industry, and even from company to company, making it tough to come up with a good general-purpose education program for any educational institution. In other words, Sievers told me, you'll never be able to have a college program that will churn out a tailor-made supply chain manager who will be able to seamlessly integrate into your business model. It's never a bad idea for corporations and universities to work together to seek out a better college program, he said, but no company should ever kid itself into thinking that no in-house training will be necessary, or that new graduates still won't have some sort of learning curve when they first arrive.
An interesting perspective, one which makes some degree of sense to me. What do you think? Post your comments and join the discussion!
Posted by Sean Murphy on April 2, 2008 | Comments (4)
In response to: One Consultant's View on Supply Chain Education
Dale Schrimshaw commented:
As an instructor at a major regional university that has just started offering a degree program in supply chain management, I can certainly relate to this article. As our mix of business, finance, marketing, and technical faculty struggled, and continue to struggle, with course and program development, I have been struck with the different perspectives of what must be included. We wrestled with questions like: should we require materials management or marketing logistics, where does quality fit in the program, is the full business core required or should the technical hands-on skills be emphasized. The programs, we decided on a two-track program, a track leading to a BBA in Supply Chain Management and a track leading to a Bachelor of Technology in Supply Chain Management, are now on the books and student interest is building. I suspect we will make some curriculum adjustments over the next few years. To help us evaluate the program content and “tweak” it to industry needs we have established an advisory council of diverse industry representatives. One of the early comments from a member of the council gently called us to task on the program’s name. To that person, the field was not about supply chain management but about distribution management. Obviously, the “general-purpose program” and “tailor-made manager” will be difficult to achieve. Dale Schrimshaw Instructor, Program Coordinator for Supply Chain Management College of Business and Technology Northeastern State University Tahlequah, OK
In response to: One Consultant's View on Supply Chain Education
Dave Snyder commented:
Although higher education can prepare people to enter the workforce, it cannot be relied upon to prepare them for each and every company. Most of us have portions of our supply chain that are unique, and it will always be necessary for the organization to train new employees to operate in that system.
In response to: One Consultant's View on Supply Chain Education
lavasqueza@upch.edu.pe commented:
Let me propose a macro approach to a supply chain management degree program: Module 1. The management of Supply Chain Management I. Strategic supply chain management II. Tactical supply chain management II. Operational supply chain management Module 2. Applied Supply Chain Managemen I. SCM for extractive industries II. SCM for manufacturing industries II. SCM for retail and commercial business IV SCM for the service industries ¿What do you think? LUIS
In response to: One Consultant's View on Supply Chain Education
barr.cj@pg.com commented:
Sean: The comments offered regarding the industry study are valid. Luckily, this is not the focus of the research. It will be published broadly this month and contains several significant insights that can be in fact provide the opportunity for significant progress between the business and academic communities. Great discussion! We will invite Supply Chain Management Review to be front and center in the ongoing work.