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Picasa. Retrieved from University of Arkansas.
Education Dive
How the pandemic is changing supply chain education
Professors say students will need skills in supply chain mapping,
manufacturing and risk management to meet the needs of a post-pandemic
workforce.
Matt Leonard
Sept. 22, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has left many workers wondering how their jobs
will change going forward. More remote work? More personal protective
equipment? And supply chain managers have been flung into the thick of
the pandemic, tasked with keeping goods flowing through the disruption
of demand swings and capacity shifts in the freight market.
As a result, supply chain professors are planning their lessons
differently this school year to prepare students to enter a
post-pandemic workforce.
The University of Illinois stood up an online class alongside Coursera,
an online learning platform for higher education, and the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, titled, "Managing Supply Chain
Disruption During COVID-19."
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of supply chain management
to the everyday consumer, according to Nehemiah Scott, director of the
supply chain management program at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
"When they tried to buy toilet paper, it wasn't there," Scott said. "If
they wanted to go buy a mask to protect themselves and their families,
it was tough to find masks, at first."
Scott developed the curriculum in 3.5 weeks. It focuses on supply chain
disruption generally, but specifically looks at how the COVID-19
pandemic has disrupted global and domestic supply chains. The
curriculum from the online class will also make its way into the
material for the undergraduate classes that Scott teaches, he said.
"This is now a new skill and a new knowledge set that's going to be
required, regardless of where they decide to go work in [the] supply
chain management space," he said of handling supply chain disruption.
Scott's class will include a case study on the PPE supply chain,
strategies companies have used to manage disruption — including
stockpiling and changes to supplier relationships — and disruption
theory, like the bullwhip effect. It is meant to highlight what has
happened during the pandemic but be applicable to disruption generally,
he said.
Beyond the one-off pandemic class
Going forward, changes to supply chain education will involve more than
a single spin-off class. Supply chain educators told Supply Chain Dive
they are planning to place greater emphasis on a number of issues
moving forward.
For Scott, one of those issues will be communication.
Supply chain leaders need to know how to communicate with their team
members, as well as different levels of the supply chain. This is the
kind of skill that students will pick up at the mandatory internship
they need to graduate, Scott said, or through participation in case
competitions.
"How do you communicate those emergency response plans to your
employees?" he said. "We want students now to start to learn about
that." The Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of
Arkansas
Picasa. Retrieved from University of Arkansas.
But what students are doing during their internships has shifted a bit,
according to Brian S. Fugate, the supply chain management department
chair at the University of Arkansas.
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