Supply chain management concerned about skills shortage

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Even at operational level where candidates need either a matric qualification, a diploma or a certificate, companies experienced a 27% shortage in 2013. In South Africa today, the skills shortage is the fourth highest supply chain constraint.

This is according to the CSIR's 10th Annual State of Logistics Survey for South Africa which reports that the lack of skilled personnel at all levels continues to be a major concern to the performance of supply chain management. It is a challenge that affects virtually every one of South Africa's key economic drivers. Industries such as mining, manufacturing, retail and farming, for example, would be incapacitated without these skills and services.

Every year investment in the road, rail, port and airport infrastructures continues to be a high priority with billions of rands invested in various projects in these areas. In 2013 logistics costs were estimated at R423bn and, as a percentage of transportable GDP, have grown significantly over the last four years, primarily due to fuel increases.

Vital contributor

Developing efficiencies within end-to-end supply chain integration is now critical for strong financial performance and mitigating the effect of volatile fuel costs. Thus strategically, investment in logistics and supply chain management skills would be a vital contributor to a profitable bottom line.

In such a rapidly developing and changing industry, skilled practitioners need not only the required hard skills (traditionally taught academically) and soft skills, but also the work experience, especially if they want to progress in the industry and use the benefits of such change to their organisation's advantage.

Soft skills are of such importance to the industry that in surveys conducted by the University of Johannesburg, it was found that practitioners place softer skills, particularly customer-focused management, well ahead of the required hard skills. Students, however, prioritise such skills much further down their lists. This discrepancy could be accounted for by the lack of real-world experience in the industry on the student's part; however, it does create a gap between the needs of employers and the skills pool available.

Strategic roles

Such a gap results in many candidates, despite having degrees, not being fully qualified for a position, particularly as they look to move into more tactical and strategic roles of supply chain management. It is at this juncture that the industry runs the risk of losing skilled candidates to other courses and even careers.

While many industry practitioners do recognise the need for more skills and believe further qualifications like a National Diploma or Bachelor of Business Administration degree could help them, very few are able to take these traditional routes through academia due to the financial constraints and those of their working environment. For instance, attending regularly scheduled classes can be difficult for a practitioner with the type of work schedule common in the logistics industry. The traditional distance learning alternative is also not viable, as this often does not offer suitable support.

It is this gap that needs to be filled by more responsive professional certifications, graduate training programmes and vocational associations. While APICS' Operations Management Body of Knowledge Framework (OMBOK) found that the quality of tertiary degrees in the field were on par with other BRIC countries and adequately taught the hard skills, professional certifications and membership of professional associations lagged behind and it is through these institutions that a better understanding of the soft skills could be developed.