by Jennifer Hart Yim | Apr 25, 2019 | Blog, Supply Chain, Talent
New research backs up what we already know: the supply chain economy is a hotbed of innovation, and that opens up immense professional opportunities.
Highlights:
- New research assigns some numbers to two facts that every Supply Chain professional knows: the sector is full of opportunity for professionals and it is a hotbed for innovation.
- Supply Chain industry innovations have a tendency to reverberate and cascade throughout the wider economy as they filter from suppliers, to the companies they supply, and finally to the consumer.
- People who are able to harness and drive supply chain innovation have some of the brightest job prospects in tomorrow’s economy.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
A new Harvard Business Review article lays out some striking research out of MIT about the role of Supply Chain Management within the broader economy. Written by Mercedes Delgado and Karen Mills, the study seeks to better define what constitutes the “Supply Chain” part of the economy, and what doesn’t. The goal? To better define Supply Chain Management’s place in the broader economy, and the role it plays in terms of innovation.
The researchers define “Supply Chain” industries as any industries that sell upstream to businesses and government entities. It excludes industries selling direct to consumer (B2C). It’s a bit of a curious definition – what about the B2C companies with strong supply chain and distribution networks? – but we’ll roll with it.
In short, the research assigns some numbers to two facts that every Supply Chain professional knows: the sector is full of opportunity for professionals. It’s also a hotbed for innovation which has a tendency to filter into other sectors of the economy.
The MIT researchers studied the historical role that these Supply Chain companies have played in American innovation. For example, Intel’s semiconductors and Microsoft’s enterprise software are innovations with their roots in the supply chain – supplying to companies – that are almost unparalleled in terms of their downstream effect on the overall economy, as well as the daily experience of the average person.
The researchers make an interesting point: compared to “B2C” industries, Supply Chain industry innovations have a tendency to reverberate and cascade throughout the wider economy as they filter from suppliers, to the companies they supply, and finally to the consumer. Technologies like cloud computing –which is now sold to 90% of industries – have their roots in the Supply Chain, which helps them diffuse across industries as they spread downstream and become integral to the economy. In Delgado and Mills’ estimation, this “trickling down” gives these innovations a multiplying effect that isn’t found in more consumer-facing industries.
Put aside the fact that the most successful consumer-facing companies of the past several decades have been tremendously innovative (Apple and Amazon, for example) – in part because of their Supply Chain practices – and it’s an intriguing idea. The fact is, Supply Chain management drives innovation, and the people who drive that innovation have some of the brightest job prospects out of anyone in the economy.
People in Supply Chain are more likely to be in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) than the wider economy. They’re also better compensated – perhaps as an indirect result of their contributions to innovation.
Here are a few of the most interesting – and exciting – top-level stats from the research:
- In the U.S. – which the study examined – 44 million jobs are in Supply Chain, or 37% of the overall economy.
- The average wage of Supply Chain-related jobs was much higher than average, at $61,700 – compared to $39,200 for non-Supply Chain jobs.
- 4% of Supply Chain jobs were STEM-related jobs – considered a predictor of innovation – compared to only 2.1% of non-Supply Chain jobs.
- 6% of new patents in the U.S. evolve from the Supply Chain sector.
The researchers chart another interesting distinction and trend, towards the importance of Supply Chain Services from traditional manufacturing. Supply Chain services jobs – including logistics, engineering, cloud computing, and others – have grown massively to encompass 80% of jobs in the sector, but most still consider Supply Chain to mean traditional manufacturing jobs such as metal stamping or injection molding operators.
Supply Chain Services workers have the highest STEM intensity out of everyone in the economy (19%), which also coincides with the highest wages ($80,800 a year, on average). This tracks with a trend in the wider economy towards services and away from traditional manufacturing, and shows what we know to be the case: despite panic about automation, Supply Chain professionals who can innovate are in very high demand.
Whether you agree or disagree with Mills and Delgado’s definitions and findings, it’s clear to anyone paying attention that the Supply Chain is a force-multiplier for innovation to the economy. It’s truer now than it’s ever been, and people who are able to harness and drive that innovation have some of the brightest job prospects in tomorrow’s economy.
Do you agree with the authors’ definition of Supply Chain? Is it too broad, not broad enough, or is it right on the money? We’re curious to hear anything else you might have to add about the importance of Supply Chain for innovation in the wider economy!
In the meantime, we encourage everyone to check out the HBR article as well as the authors’ original study, which has some fascinating insights about the role Supply Chains play in innovation.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Jul 30, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain, Talent
A new article discusses the way that automation, AI and big data are transforming the industry. It raises the alarm that supply chain management will soon cease to exist, only to assert that it will still exist, just in a very different form.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
A new article in Harvard Business Review has been generating some automation-related controversy in the Supply Chain Community, as well as lots of buzz and interesting conversation. Naturally, we at Argentus want to weigh in. Titled, “The Death of Supply Chain Management,” the article discusses the way that automation, AI and big data are transforming the industry. It raises the alarm that the function will soon cease to exist, only to – as these “X is dead“ articles often end up doing – assert that it will still exist, just in a very different form.
Beyond the obviously clickbait headline – which we couldn’t help but indulge in ourselves – the article makes some fascinating predictions about the future of supply chains. But even more relevant to us at Argentus, it has some interesting forecasts about the future of supply chain talent in particular, in the coming world where automation is king.
Automation is one of the hotter topics in the supply chain community – as it is across the entire economy. As a major feature in McKinsey discusses, automation has already made a number of jobs in the field way less relevant, threatening to eliminate those jobs entirely. Many companies have already automated their front-line transactional purchasing activities. Automation has eliminated a number of blue-collar supply chain jobs in warehouses and distribution centres, and driverless trucks stand to transform the logistics field, eliminating the need for millions of truck drivers.
But many are alarmed that automation will replace white-collar workers as well. The HBR article talks about how more companies are automating functions like demand forecasting, which has long been seen as more of an “art” than an exact science. No longer.
In the authors’ words, “within 5-10 years, the supply chain function may be obsolete, replaced by a smoothly running, self-regulating utility that optimally manages end-to-end workflows and requires very little human intervention.”
[bctt tweet=”Automation through digital technology isn’t really just about lowering labour costs, it’s about creating huge opportunities for companies to dive deep into data and create end-to-end visibility into their own supply chains.” username=”Fronetics”]
Automation through digital technology isn’t really just about lowering labour costs, it’s about creating huge opportunities for companies to dive deep into data and create end-to-end visibility into their own supply chains. This kind of visibility opens up huge opportunities, not only by lowering risk but also by letting companies become more strategic.
The HBR article outlines an interesting development: more retail and manufacturing companies are adopting “digital control towers” for their supply chains. These companies have physical rooms staffed with dozens of data analysts working in real-time to identify and squash challenges.
Picture an airport control tower, but for supply chain management: staffed 24/7, full of large screens full of 3d graphical representations of potential bottlenecks and inventory shortfalls all the way from order to delivery. These control towers are full of systems that can automatically correct for various issues, and they’re increasingly considered to be core aspects of company operations.
The authors outline how mining company Rio Tinto is using robotic train operators, cameras, lasers, and tracking sensors to monitor and fully automate its supply chain from train to port.
But do these developments hearld the end of the need for skilled Supply Chain professionals? Of course not.
A highly-automated “digital control tower” needs responsive individuals with deep understanding of how to solve Supply Chain challenges. An automated mining supply chain deep in the jungle, monitored in another country still needs people to monitor it and respond to issues.
Maybe unsurprisingly, the HBR article ends up saying that Supply Chain people will always be in demand, but that skill needs are changing, and we agree. People need to re-skill, up-skill, and educational institutions need to make sure that they’re training people with skills for the future and not the past. In the short term, executives who can manage people doing repetitive tasks (like transactional purchasing) need to learn how to manage information flows for more highly-specialized workers. Further down the ladder, the highest-demand analysts will be those who can draw insights from an ever-expanding pool of data and communicate them to senior leadership. Companies will need specialists with deep understanding of both technology and operations to design and implement automated supply chains – even more than they already do.
But beyond the trends that the HBR article outlines, we think they’re missing a key element: even if automation progresses to affect white-collar workers, even if data automates functions like supply planning, logistics, and sourcing, the human element will always matter. Companies will always need people who can build relationships with vendors when conducting large-scale Procurement. They’ll always need people who can negotiate contracts and rates, people who have the emotional intelligence to understand the psychology of the person sitting on the other end of the table, and arrive at a deal that drives value.
Machines will get better at the tactics, but the strategy will always be human, at least until the robots take over the world completely. (Which we don’t think will happen, by the way).
In the 19th century, luddites protested the adoption of machines in the British textile industry, fearing that they’d be out of a job. And they were. But while opportunities for weaving by hand disappeared, employment didn’t: the industrial revolution pushed new skillsets to the fore, creating a demand for people to manage production – leading to today’s supply chain function, by the way – while raising overall wealth and standard of living in the process.
While the rise of AI, big data and workplace automation has some important differences, we think it’s a worthwhile analogy: as with then, these new technologies will shift the employment landscape and put the squeeze on individuals with transactional or blue-collar skillsets. But supply chain professionals who can up-skill themselves, and become masters of the interpersonal skills that will never go away, will have more opportunities than ever before.
Take it from a company that’s on the front-lines of hiring in Supply Chain: while automation eliminates jobs at the lower-skilled end of the spectrum, demand for high-skilled candidates is higher than ever before, and only rising. So is Supply Chain Management on death’s door?
Not so fast.
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by Fronetics | May 21, 2018 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
Millennial talent seeks employment opportunities with companies that promote transparency, technology, excellence, and social change.
We write often about the supply chain talent gap and how supply chain companies should be proactively recruiting millennials to join their companies. So a recent Harvard Business Review article, which talks about how companies that “young people find dull” (like electrical distributors and manufacturers) can make their businesses seem “cool,” seemed particularly relevant.
While we adamantly disagree that the supply chain isn’t cool, we do think it’s important that logistics and supply chain companies think strategically about recruiting millennial talent.
Millennial talent and the vision thing
According to a new study by strategy firm Department26, “Transparency is the millennial standard operating procedure in the workplace.” Honesty and security are top of mind for this generation that came of age just as the country plunged into The Great Recession.
[bctt tweet=”Beer kegs and ping pong are nice, but millennials are more impressed with leadership that sets goals and delivers on them. ” username=”Fronetics”]
Beer kegs and ping pong are nice, but millennials are more impressed with leadership that sets goals and delivers on them. They want to know how their role contributes to the organization’s success, and they want to know the effort they’re putting into a job is worth it.
“Setting them up for success means regular check-ins, both positive and constructive feedback as a rule, and structured mentorship,” write the authors of the Department26 study.
People say millennial talent doesn’t work for money, and it’s true that they’re not motivated by salary alone. Younger employees want meaningful work that enhances their personal growth.
They also want flexible work rules that show an employer respects and trusts them. Sharing details of your strategic plan or examples of how your HR policies reward personal initiative can help millennial talent see your “boring” business in a new way.
“The thought of not being granted flexibility in exchange for hitting performance metrics is absurd to millennials, and it’s a concept that’s diametrically opposed to the freedom they crave,” the study concludes.
Talk tech
Logistics or trucking can sound dull to the iPhone generation — until you paint a picture of forward momentum and innovation that might surprise them.
Automation, robotics, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, drones and the Internet of Things (IoT) are reshaping the industry. Companies like Amazon, Pfizer and Wal-Mart are experimenting with new technologies to reduce costs, boost productivity, and improve handling performance.
“Wearable technology could soon become a standard must-have in the logistics industry,” according to a recent story in The Business Journals. “As these technologies continue to carve out their role in the global logistics industry, we’re likely to see previously unimagined levels of optimization — from manufacturing to warehousing to delivery.”
Find ways to change hearts and minds by exposing young people to the realities of today’s supply chain. If they think it’s boring, it’s because they really don’t know what it is.
Be the best damn supply chain company anywhere
People want to work for “the best” — the most innovative, the most profitable, or the most admired brand — in every industry. Workers are proud to say they work for a company recognized as being the best at what it does because it says they’re the best, too.
Even millennial talent that has never thought about a career in logistics might reconsider if they’re being recruited by an industry leader.
Celebrate excellence at your company. Promote the awards you’ve won. Share customer testimonials, positive media coverage, and community recognition with prospective recruits.
It also helps to do well by doing good. This is a generation that trusts business, not government, to create positive social change. “Millennials are hungry for a work culture that inspires them. At a macro level, companies should communicate clear plans that reflect their core values,” says Department26.
HBR author Bill Taylor summarizes these sentiments well: “What [millennials] value is the chance to join companies that make a difference and where the work brings out the best in them.”
How is your company recruiting millennial talent?
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by Fronetics | Feb 9, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
Identifying content spokespeople outside of executive management can improve the product and alleviate C-suite stress.
Often people think they’re the only ones who can do their job or, at the very least, that they’re the ones who have been doing it and know it best. And some C-suite executives forget the people working around them — when, in fact, those are the very employees who could help them do their jobs better.
Joe Fuld, president of political and advocacy advertising agency The Campaign Workshop in Washington, D.C., has wise words on the subject: “As a business owner, I like to think that the business has a lot to do with me, but I have realized it has just as much to do with the people who work with me.”
Months ago I asked an account manager to be on a call with me to discuss an editorial calendar with a client. She was new to the account, so I thought it would be beneficial for her to listen in. A half-hour into the call, I saw her notepad with at least 20 new ideas for articles, white papers, and blog posts. By the end of the meeting, the list had grown to 40, and they weren’t just simple ideas — they were complex, thoughtful, and fresh. This wasn’t her role, but she dove in and helped to create the strongest editorial calendar to date. The client was pleased; I was thrilled.
The same experience can be true for a management team Strategically identified content spokespeople assisting senior management could help alleviate some of the stress C-suite executives face — and add new ideas to the pot.
Senior management are often extremely busy and may not be hearing the breadth of information and news that some of the lower-level professionals are exposed to. It’s true that too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil the meal, but, if chosen strategically, employees acting as content spokespeople could make your life easier and make the product better. Their investment and loyalty could also grow immensely.
John Hall, CEO of Influence & Co, writes about the subject in the Harvard Business Review. Here are his two suggestions on how to find the right people to fill the role of content spokespeople.
Identify content spokespeople
Identify employees who are comfortable teaching and demonstrate natural leadership qualities. The account manager mentioned earlier is the perfect example: engaging, patient, knowledgeable, curious, professional, trustworthy, and tactful. Her efforts always appear to be helpful, instead of boastful or misplaced.
Assess knowledge base
Hall suggests gathering and documenting information from content spokespeople. He does this by a Q&A process and brain dump exercises. He suggests keeping this information in a central location — a knowledge bank — for future use. From the knowledge bank content can be gathered and synthesized into an article or blog.
Hall says that the risk is minimal, since the C-suite can always have final editing power, so even if a content spokesperson says something off-color, the information won’t get out to the customers.
The involvement and collaboration in this process is incredibly valuable for everyone involved. Hall claims, “By embracing the unique experiences of your employees outside the C-suite and showcasing their diversity through thought leadership content, you’re strengthening your brand’s authentic, human connection to your audience.”
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