Supply Chain Professionals For The 21st Century

Economic distress, drought, floods, COVID-19 and, more recently, civil unrest and disruption to economic activity – South Africa has experienced all these recently. And, many other countries are grappling with severe events as well: floods, excessive temperatures, wildfires, and on a global scale, the looming spectre of successive waves of the pandemic.

These events sound an alarm for managers in supply chains worldwide because they cause disruptions to the flow of goods and services that make up the global economy. Global economic activity is a network of complex and intricate value chains that enable countries to trade with each other and businesses to harness their supply chains to participate.

There is general agreement on the characteristics that enable a supply chain to remain effective in the face of such disruptions. Agility is necessary to satisfy the savvy consumer’s escalating demands and retain a competitive advantage. Resilience is essential to enable the supply chain to flex, but not break in response to these shocks.

Supply chain managers learn to develop skills such as forecasting, scenario planning, negotiation, scheduling, and the analysis that is paramount to understanding the problem and its implications. These help them to swiftly find a short-term solution, as well as one that will, ultimately, strengthen the supply chain in the longer term. These are the technical skills the business needs to survive the immediate disruption and then flourish once the risk has been mitigated.

Core skills are a strategic imperative 

What is often overlooked, however, is the battery of so-called core skills that managers must demonstrate to ensure sustainability. During these turbulent, challenging times, they must be prepared to stand steady, yet be flexible and adaptable. They must demonstrate innovative leadership by confidently guiding their teams towards a common goal, show evidence of social and emotional intelligence in unfamiliar work environments and solve tough problems with conviction and confidence.

The unpredictability of the pandemic has acutely focused attention on the graduate’s ability to adapt, communicate effectively and apply extraordinary problem-solving skills. In managing supply chains, problem-solving is a daily necessity because disruptions are more frequent and complex. The ability to communicate, using a range of core skills to ensure the effective implementation of a solution, is a core competency and, for businesses, is fast becoming a strategic imperative.

Core Skills Training

These skills, often not considered by students during their studies, are incorporated in the design of every course in the form of critical cross-field outcomes. These aim to provide students with the core skills of leadership, social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, work ethic, flexibility and adaptability, creative and critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

A high-performance supply chain is a network of partners that communicates effectively through the intricate mesh of professional relationships. To deliver this performance, both technical and core skills must be well-developed.

The objective of training – apart from imparting knowledge and skills within the discipline – is to shape the student holistically to deal with the unpredictable demands of the 21^st workplace, as well as the challenges of the uncharted workplace territory created by the ongoing pandemic. It is the responsibility of the institution of higher learning to ensure that graduates enter the workplace fully capable of applying knowledge and skills innovatively and confidently, with good grace and flexibility.

Producing a well-rounded and grounded graduate is dependent on addressing the critical cross-field outcomes during their studies. This is done by providing students with opportunities to work collaboratively on projects, debate and solve problems, negotiate and evaluate ideas with students and lecturers, challenge the status quo and demonstrate critical thinking ability.

All of this is done in the context of addressing the challenges they are likely to encounter in the supply chain industry. In this way, graduates emerge with the requisite range of soft and technical skills in their professional supply chain toolkit.