How to develop the next generation of supply chain planning professionals

From the July-August 2025 edition of Supply Chain Management Review.

July-August 2025

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By Marisa Brown, APQC and Dan Pellathy, University of Tennessee

Supply chain planning is in need of a reboot. Planners are increasingly expected to take a leading role in managing complex cross-functional processes, driving automation, and building more agile supply chains. As a result, the competencies that today’s planning professionals need are very different than what was needed just a few years ago.

Invest in your talent to thrive during disruption. In addition to hiring new employees with the skills needed, provide training to upskill/reskill current employees to keep pace with today’s dynamic environment. Effective supply chain planning enables companies to adjust operations to avoid disruptions while capitalizing on opportunities. It is precisely during times of uncertainty that companies need to invest in planning capabilities.

Related infographic: Developing next-gen supply chain planning experts

Many supply chain leaders recognize the need to develop a new type of professional equipped with both strong soft skills (e.g., critical thinking) and technical skills (e.g., demand planning/forecasting) to contribute strategically to the organization.

To identify these critical skills, assess how well organizations are helping employees develop them, and evaluate the current state of investment in planning talent, APQC and Dan Pellathy from the University of Tennessee collected data and insights from 462 global supply chain planning professionals. Our findings suggest that the evolution of supply chain planning demands a set of competencies that extend beyond traditional technical skills to include a broad array of deep work and social skills. The results also indicate that while most organizations rely on traditional talent development approaches, the most effective organizations use an innovative mix of approaches to develop the planning skills of tomorrow.

Talent development is a strategic imperative

Organizations participating in APQC’s research shared that many senior leaders are on board to invest in the next generation of supply chain planning talent. For 49% of organizations APQC surveyed, senior supply chain leadership sees training as a priority for supply chain planning at least to some extent (Figure 1).

 

While good news, there is room here for improvement. One technique for supply chain planners to get executives to support talent development is to change the conversation from the costs and time required for training to value generation and risk mitigation. Many leaders are conflicted; they want to invest in training and education, but they fall into the trap of taking short-term and tactical actions focused on cutting costs and reacting to the news of the day. It’s important to keep an eye on long-term survival versus only short-term gains or there will be no long-term.

APQC also found that most organizations have talent management programs available for supply chain planning professionals. Leading organizations (19%) have talent development programs in supply chain planning specifically. An additional 23% have a program at the level of supply chain management. Most organizations (58%) have a program at the enterprise level (Figure 2). This represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Our research suggests that broad-based corporate training programs are not enough to fill or meet the competency needs of planners. Supply chain planners have unique demands placed on them and therefore need unique development programs. Planning leaders need to actively engage in shaping these programs.

 

Experiential learning is critical to competency attainment. One way to create a more responsive talent development program that better meets the needs of planning professionals is to locate tailored experiences within the supply chain or supply chain planning function. Locating the program closer to the front lines can enable faster, more responsive adjustments based on the changing reality on the ground. Classroom experiences that send participants back into their organizations to assess planning processes are also critical. Our research found that some components of a talent development program are larger in scope and more commonly located at the enterprise level versus at the level of supply chain or supply chain planning.

Common location of talent development components

Enterprise Level

• Learning paths
• High-potential leadership development program
• Workforce planning
• Learning profiles/resumes
• Formal knowledge capture/transfer program

Supply Chain/Supply Chain Planning

• Career paths
• Succession planning
• Talent reviews
• Formal skills assessment program
• Internal hiring/talent mobility strategy
• Learning portal

Align critical skills and focus of talent development

One purpose of this research was to identify the key skills needed for future roles in supply chain planning and evaluate how well organizations were helping employees develop those skills. First, respondents identified the most important skills needed in supply chain planning across three categories:

1. Deep work skills: indicative of being able to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks.
2. Social skills: help us collaborate, set strategic direction, and manage change.
3. Technical/job specific skills: relevant specifically to supply chain planning as well as some general business skills relevant in and beyond supply chain planning.

Respondents then rated their organization’s effectiveness in training and development for each critical skill along a five-point scale from not at all effective to extremely effective. For each of the top skills, there is a sizable gap between the importance of the skill and effectiveness in development, and some gaps are particularly notable. For example, 66% say critical thinking is important, but only 28% of organizations are very or extremely effective at helping employees develop this skill (Figure 3).

 

The values for “Importance of skill” do not add up to 100% because it was a “please select the top three” question. The values for “Development is very/extremely effective” do not add up to 100% because only the top two options are displayed for each skill.

This gap shows a distinct disconnect between the skills identified among the top 10 and the organization’s effectiveness in developing those skills. These gaps may reflect the distance between corporate-level training programs and the evolving needs of planners. Accordingly, many organizations will need to realign—or even completely overhaul—their supply chain planning talent development approaches to focus on a mix of high-priority deep work, social, and technical skills.

The consequences of not addressing these gaps are considerable. If organizations cannot develop these skills in-house, they will be forced to secure them through external hires and/or consultants. In an increasingly competitive labor market, over-reliance on external hires will likely prove costly and slow critical planning transformation. But the only other option is to simply not develop these skills—and that’s even more dangerous. Organizations may be able to rely on a handful of experienced supply chain planning professionals for now. But when those people retire (and they will), the function will be in the hands of people who lack experience with thinking critically in planning, communicating effectively, and demand planning and forecasting.

Additionally, leading organizations are interested in adopting new technologies and recognize the importance of having staff develop or enhance skills due to AI and other automation (Figure 4). We find that AI is still not widely adopted in supply chain planning. Only about one-third of organizations (31%) are currently implementing, operating, or optimizing AI for supply chain planning. Instead, the majority of organizations (61%) are in the piloting, consideration, or evaluation phases. As a result of AI, most respondents see the value of having planning team members with technical skills in data science, machine learning, and modeling (72%); analytical skills with business acumen (68%); and strategic thinking (65%). However, not everyone on the team needs to be an AI expert. For synergy to occur, it is important to have team members with complementary skills. Some planners likely will need deep data science and analytical skills to drive AI-based processes, but others will need to be highly capable users that can leverage AI for strategic thinking and project management.

 

Consider the components and approaches used

As part of this research, APQC asked organizations to describe the components of their talent development programs. Figure 5 shows the adoption rates of the most commonly used components. Performance management, a traditional approach, is most widely used by 81% of organizations in the research.

Many of the components on this list have one thing in common: they’re designed to benefit both the organization and the employee. While a career path focuses on job progression and the roles to achieve an employee’s long-term career goals, a learning path emphasizes attaining specific skills and knowledge through structured learning. It is important to remember that developmental approaches tailored to the specific needs of employees typically lead to greater performance outcomes.

 

In addition to asking organizations which components they include in their talent development programs, APQC asked which approaches organizations use for talent development. As shown in Figure 6, we identified which approaches have the highest levels of effectiveness (“very/extremely effective”) for the top five skills. Interestingly, this is not one-size-fits all, and a mix of approaches is necessary for developing the top skills, driving the need for a multi-faceted talent development program.

Many of the approaches needed for the top skills are internally focused (e.g., job shadowing, job rotations within supply chain), while other approaches extend beyond the planning or supply chain function—or even the organization altogether (e.g., collaboration with universities and other organizations).

 

Effectiveness of development efforts

Our research also examined how organizations rate the effectiveness of their supply chain planning talent development efforts as a whole. Across 19 talent-related goals, respondents indicated that their supply chain planning organizations are most effective at providing employees with time to learn (35%) and least effective at transferring knowledge (16%).    

These findings suggest that many organizations see the value in training their supply chain planning employees but are less successful in implementing a formal program to capture the full value that planners create. For instance, knowledge sharing and organizational learning are critical for the adoption of new technologies. More broadly, knowledge sharing enables individuals and teams to tap collective insights to solve pressing issues. Other goals with higher levels of effectiveness include maintaining a pipeline of supply chain talent (31%) and manager development (30%). Figure 7 shows the percentage of respondents who rated their organizations very or extremely effective for the top five goals.

 

Effective organizations use a mix of approaches, such as job shadowing, formal mentoring, and participation in communities of practice or other collaborative working groups. Many effective organizations also use job rotations outside of planning and even outside of supply chain as a way
of developing more well-rounded talent.

Moving forward

APQC recommends that organizations identify the skills and training that are most beneficial to the business and its future and then make an honest comparison against the skills and training that benefit their current supply chain planning professionals. By allowing focus on employee needs, organizations can create an environment that both attracts and retains top talent. At the same time, organizations must be aware that more talent development opportunities can lead to less time spent on the job. They must therefore plan accordingly to ensure that employees are not forced to choose between developing skills needed for the future and achieving today’s productivity goals.

Data in this content was accurate at the time of publication. For the most current data, visit apqc.org.

About APQC

APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center) is the world’s foremost authority in benchmarking, best practices, process and performance improvement, and knowledge management (KM). With more than 1,000 member organizations worldwide, APQC provides the information, data, and insights organizations need to support decision-making and develop internal skills. 

About the authors

Marisa Brown is the senior principal research lead for Supply Chain Management at APQC. She leads APQC’s supply chain team that conducts research to provide insights into benchmarks, best practices, and process improvements in supply chain planning, procurement, logistics, manufacturing, product development, and innovation. Marisa is a leader in supply chain with almost 30 years’ experience in business, research, writing, speaking and consulting.

Dan Pellathy is faculty of practice leading graduate courses and executive education with a focus on Supply Chain Planning and Supply Chain & Finance at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. He is also director of operations for UT’s Global Supply Chain Institute’s Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative, a collaborative think tank that connects industry leaders with faculty to explore advanced concepts in supply chain management.

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