Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier, Inc. Apr 2008Businesses have plenty of options to choose from when it comes to strengthening the skills and capabilities of their supply chain managers. But simply picking from the current cornucopia of traditional executive education opportunities may not necessarily be the best next step. Online, customized, and hybrid programs today are also part of the educational mix that global companies must consider.
In 2002, Penn State University offered 10 executive education programs for supply chain leaders. By 2006, the university was hosting 33 such programs.
Penn State's surge of activity has not been unusual in the least. Observes Jake Barr, director of manufacturing, planning and logistics for Procter & Gamble: "There's been a significant increase in the availability of exec ed programs over the last 10 years, and specifically over the last five years."
The surge comprises increased activity in online learning, certification and in customized as well as open enrollment programs. Topics covered range from management of global supply chains and Lean principles to risk management and socially responsible supply chains. It reaches out around the world-participants traveling from their native countries to attend programs and more and more partnerships among learning institutions worldwide. It includes many more women than in years gone by. And as a rule, program participants come much more highly educated than before.
There's no mystery to the surge. "I think we are all recognizing the importance of supply chain management as part of the way that companies compete and create an advantage," says Hau Lee, the Thoma Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. "The cost of not managing your supply chain well can be huge, and executives are more and more aware of this."
However, lengthening lists of available education programs don't mean that the needs of all supply chain leaders are now being met. Listen carefully to both executive educators and to supply chain chiefs themselves and you'll hear hints of disquiet-of something missing already or something that soon will fall short of the needs of the profession.
One prominent executive describes typical executive sessions this way: "In many cases we still have the little discussions: How did you improve your manufacturing or how did you organize your logistics routes? That's all great stuff, but we're all working these things. I'm more intrigued by what really changes the paradigm. That's what I look for."
Confirms Joseph Cavinato, ISM Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Thunderbird School of Global Management: "The thought leaders today are just talking about what the next increment is. Most executive education is about tactical activities. It tends to be about how to get your 3PL processes right." But Cavinato points out that there's a demand-side part to the problem: The supply chain leaders he often interviews are thinking only in terms of 12 to 20 financial quarters. "To them, 'strategic' means I have to get this supply chain module implemented by the second quarter of 2009," he says.
At the same time, there are growing worries that the supply chain profession doesn't have the "talent pipeline" needed to match tomorrow's demands. In February this year, a corporate consortium-The Global Supply Chain Professional Development Committee comprising companies such as P&G, Intel, Boeing and IBM - announced an initiative to gather information on the state of supply chain management education and supply chain talent in the field. Teaming with AMR Research, the consortium is now fielding a detailed online poll to identify what sorts of supply chain-related skills are most useful to employers right now.
This article will explore some of the factors shaping executive education today. We will take a closer look at new moves in certification, trends in online education and the nature of increasingly popular customized programs. Finally, we will set out a few markers for where we expect exec ed to go next.
The State of the Classroom
A decade ago, executive education in supply chain and logistics was effectively a niche market-the province of talented specialists at schools such as Georgia Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, University of Tennessee, Michigan State University, and Penn State. "Today, managers can learn from web sites, from customer user groups, and from programs that companies offer, often for free," says Harvey Donaldson, director of the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech. And that doesn't take account of the comprehensive professional development initiatives offered internally at many companies.
At the same time, the leading groups for the profession have stepped up their education roles. In May 2008, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) launches its new Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSM) program, described more fully below. And the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) offers a rich array of workshops, roundtables, conferences, and online courses.
While figures are hard to come by, there are clearly still plenty of managers attending those events, travel budget clamp-downs or no. "I encourage my managers to go to a couple of conferences and other events each year," says Shelley Stewart, Jr., senior vice president, operational excellence, and chief procurement officer at Tyco International (US). "Getting out of the office and sitting in the classroom, you get to meet good people and share experiences." Welch Foods, makers of grape jelly and juices, regularly sends its senior managers and its high-potential middle managers to programs at the University of Tennessee (UT) as well as to the grocery sector's GMA/FMI Logistics Conference, says Dee Biggs, director of sales logistics. Other Welch supply chain managers will go to CSCMP workshops.
Several external forces are keeping supply chain professors at the blackboard. "This profession is changing so rapidly that you've constantly got to absorb new ideas," says Tyco's Stewart. He cites his 30,000-vehicle fleet category as an area ripe with new opportunities and techniques for saving money as energy costs soar and environmental regulations tighten. "Having specific training around green issues is invaluable," says Stewart. "Ten years ago we wouldn't even have been having a conversation about emissions."
But the big propulsive factor is the rising recognition of the leverage that the supply chain has-or can have-not only on the next year's results but also on long-term shareholder value. The widely publicized supply chain successes of leaders such as Wal-Mart, P&G, Toyota, and Zara have put supply chain excellence high on the list of critical-path factors at many businesses. "The competitive nature of many industries has ratcheted to a new level-more intense than just two years ago," says P&G's Barr. "Much of this is driven by the continuing compression of product lifecycles, making it crucial that businesses achieve maximum performance in the short window between product launch and its removal from the market."
The consequence is that supply chain professionals as a whole must have far stronger analytical skills, a wider understanding of other national cultures, better tools for evaluating business options, and greater ability to communicate and to formally present the business relevance of required supply system changes. Add the need for broader yet more flexible spans of control-staff dispersed worldwide and more outsourcing relationships, for a start-and it's easy to see the size of the education challenge.
However, it's not clear that the challenge is always clearly understood, much less acted upon. "Learning and human resource development still don't have senior management's attention," contends Robert Rudzki, president of Greybeard Advisors, a consultancy specializing in operations excellence. "In all candor, what I continue to see is not enough commitment and resources to training. Do you have a minimum expectation of hours of training? Everybody should have a minimum level." When Rudzki headed procurement at Bethlehem Steel, the specific training objective was 40 hours a year minimum-or just 2 percent of the working year.
Rudzki advocates a heavy emphasis on education to enrich functional process expertise. He adds that it has to happen early in a career. "I've seen career professionals fall on their faces during training," he says. "It was just too late-they were in their 40s and they were so regimented in their thinking that they were fish out of water." He also urges structured rotations among departments, which is all the more critical as supply chain becomes more cross-functional. "Finance is a great area for candidates to come from and great area for people in procurement to get some experience," says Rudzki, himself a former finance professional.
Part of the overall education challenge, Rudzki believes, is that business leaders are unclear on the skills needed at different levels of supply chain management, particularly at middle management levels and among high-potentials. There is a clear bias toward so-called "soft-side skills" as seniority climbs in functions such as procurement. Exhibit 1 is a graphic developed by Rudzki that shows the relative distribution of skills applicable as an individual progresses up the management ladder.
Tim Carroll, for one, gets it. The vice president of global operations in IBM integrated supply chain activities is quite clear about the shift for senior supply chain professionals away from the manufacturing-specific skills of a decade ago to a broader portfolio of attributes. "As we've become more global, it's becoming more and more imperative to have an understanding beyond your capability and function, whether it's experience in a brand or how to manage in a matrix," he says. "You've also got to have very deep fact-based problem-solving skills."
That helps explain why, like Rudzki, Carroll is a big proponent of rotations. "We select who we think is our best top talent five years out, and then we put them in six-month rotating engagements-with the intention that they're IBM's supply chain leaders of the future," he says.
Academia Under Pressure to Deliver
Overall, supply chain leaders have few worries about the suitability or availability of current executive education offerings for sharpening functional skills. "CSCMP does a great job of educating a lot of people about supply chain management," concurs Welch Foods' Dee Biggs. But there is less certainty about the effectiveness of programs for the most senior supply chain officers.
One big challenge, says P&G's Jake Barr, is that programs offered by the academic institutions tend to be based on only part of the total "end to end" supply chain experience. IBM's Carroll agrees with that. "Academia provides very much a textbook education," he says. "But it doesn't help you with how to deal in a multicultural business that's global. You need to have more cultural awareness when you're dealing with partners overseas; you're often starting at a baseline of being bilingual."
For their part, many academics are feeling the pressure to deliver more. "My belief is that the whole landscape of professional development is changing," says John Langley, professor of supply chain management and director of Georgia Tech's Supply Chain Executive Program.
"Companies are pushing us for a combination of things that can be challenging for us to deliver.
They want to identify and solve real-world supply chain problems. They also want to get a little bit blue-sky. There's a time and a place for that, but to try to do both of those at the same time is difficult."
Later in this article, we will look at some of the ways in which academic institutions are working to accommodate industry's increasingly specific requirements for executive education. First, though, let's take a look at developments in supply chain certification.
Certification Gets Renewed Attention
Professional certification can be helpful in competing for a new job-but it doesn't grant automatic promotions. Indeed, in some cases it is used essentially as a performance incentive for employees. "It's a way to recognize key performers" remarks one long-time supply chain expert. "I don't think that management expects people to be able to come back and really do anything differently."
As a rule, certification is valued for more function-specific roles such as project management or for individuals whose career trajectory sees them staying within one technical area, such as service parts optimization or risk management. Schools such as the University of Wisconsin's School of Business offer valuable programs such as the Supply Chain Leadership Certificate-a three-course program that can be completed in three months and that helps attendees better control everything from excessive expediting to inventory variability.
One twist is that more companies are taking the lead in seeking certification rather than leaving it up to their employees. Says Harvey Donaldson of Georgia Tech: "Increasingly, it's the company coming to me wanting to train a group of people. They want to do this not just by sending them to Georgia Tech but at other places, or through the Internet, perhaps with streaming video to other places in the world."
Donaldson describes a rise in interest in such hybrid education models in general, where the location of the learning interactions and of faculty members is secondary to what is learned. For instance, The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute that he runs now has a formal partnership with United Technologies that sees a range of learning delivery modules bundled together and managed centrally by the company's HR and logistics leaders. "Some of the courses are on campus, with Internet courses as supplement to that, and with some of our faculty going to their facilities," says Donaldson.
The leaning toward the company's needs is evident in, for example, the three-day collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) certification program offered by the industry group known as the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions, or VICS. The program, endorsed by CSCMP, offers a "buy three, get one free" package to companies registering at least three employees.
But there are assertive moves to weave supply chain certification more tightly into the fabric of the profession-as integral as a CPA designation is to the profession of accounting. In May 2008, the ISM launches its Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSM) program with the objective of making it "the essential qualification required to succeed as a supply management professional." Indeed, the CPSM program is now one of ISM's six strategic imperatives as it works to expand the profession's sphere of influence.
A big step up from technical and function-specific certification programs, the three-exam CPSM is designed to recognize that a strategic level qualification is needed for professionals to effectively implement innovative supply strategies throughout their organizations. "Never before have these professionals been asked to do so much and take on as much responsibility as they do now," declares ISM's site. The CPSM doesn't supplant ISM's Certified Purchasing Manager (CPM) designation.
Online Education Finds Its Place
In 1999 and 2000, it might have been easy to imagine that the Internet would by now be the default education channel for time-pressed supply chain leaders. "Online is good for some basics, but I'm a big believer in face-to-face interactions," says IBM's Tim Carroll. "You need to be removed from the workplace, with the professor in the room."
That said, there's still plenty of appetite for those basics, with the attraction that they can be absorbed at the individual's own pace and on his or her timetable. CSCMP, for example, offers 40 courses covering topics such as evaluating potential suppliers and measuring forecast error and variability; courses last from one to four hours and can be completed any time within a four-month span.
At ISM's Knowledge Center, online class offerings have been expanded to include coursework crafted with input from more than 30 organizations-such as Accenture's Supply Chain Academy-and from professional associations, industry consortia and educational institutions. "We've seen more adoption of online education," says Terri Tracey, ISM's vice president of technology and head of its Center for Strategic Supply Leadership. "People are looking at it as a supplement to face-to-face and also as a self-paced skills refresher." Tracey notes that more companies are interested in purchasing blocks of online courses with the idea of making those courses prerequisites for employees' performance reviews.
But some institutions have had considerable success in using online channels as more than the components of hybrid education programs for function-specific coursework. Kelley Direct, a graduate management program offered entirely on the Web by Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, has been in place since 1999, piloted with 15 students including Fortune 500 managers. Today, the program's public and corporate enrollment tops 800 students. Many are MBA programs, but Kelley Direct also offers a master of science in global supply chain management as well as certification in that topic. Online tools range from streaming video and online quizzes and exams to narrated PowerPoint presentations, simulations and podcasts.
Although the efforts are not specific to supply chain, two schools are experimenting with another dimension of the Web: virtual worlds such as Second Life. In these game-like environments, a user's "avatar" - an animation character that can be as realistic or as fanciful as the user wishes-interacts with other users' avatars for everything from lectures to one-on-one knowledge exchanges. Duke University's Fuqua School of Business recently announced a partnership with ProtonMedia, a company that "integrates Web 2.0 technologies in a business-friendly three-dimensional virtual world." And European management school INSEAD last year launched its own "virtual campus" on Second Life. These virtual world initiatives are in the earliest stages, but their proponents believe that they will one day offer richer levels of interaction than, say, a video conference or webinar.
More Interest in Customized Programs
More companies are calling the shots with regard to executive education. While open enrollment programs are helpful with specific functional skills building, today there are many more demands for customized programs that span continents, delivery channels, and academic partners. For example, two-thirds of the exec ed programs offered at Penn State nowadays are tailored to the client's needs, according to Professor W. L. (Skip) Grenoble, executive director of the Center for Supply Chain Research at Penn State's Smeal College of Business.
These days, companies that are attuned to their long-term needs for leadership talent will earmark top-notch executive education programs for their best and brightest. "We're always trying to develop more and better leaders, regardless of their functional orientation," says Welch Foods' Dee Biggs. "As individuals are identified as high potential employees we spend more money on them with executive education." Those companies are most likely to prefer to have multiple points of contact with a university-marketing with marketing, operations with operations, and so on. They will look for academic alliances to support their needs more broadly than any one institution might be able to provide, either globally or simply in terms of available faculty members. So when IBM brought 30 or so of its high potentials together last year in Shanghai, the custom program was delivered by a group of universities that included Michigan State and Penn State.
Stanford's Hau Lee gives his view: "Increasing collaboration is the trend, and the collaboration is with both industrial partners and with other academic institutions. To jointly explore global supply chain issues we partner with the European Supply Chain Forum at Eindhoven University of the Netherlands, and the Hong Kong Logistics and Supply Chain Forum at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. We also partner with MIT and Wharton to conduct joint seminars."
Leading companies typically want plenty of control of the curriculum-networking sessions and break-outs included. Increasingly, their education goals mesh with their business objectives. When Thunderbird worked recently with Cisco Systems on broad programs to tie specific disciplines to the company's overall strategy, Cisco's supply chain vice president brought along a crowd. About 70 people came to Thunderbird for four days of morning-to-night sessions that emphasized the past, current, and future contributions of the company's various supply chain teams to Cisco's big objectives. "They had it all broken out into regional groups," recalls Thunderbird's Joe Cavinato. "They came out of it with a strategic plan and also tactical plans."
There will almost certainly be more emphasis on using executive education to tackle a company's specific business challenges-what Stanford's Lee calls "action learning." Real-life case studies have long been a staple, albeit an interesting one, of most exec ed programs for senior supply chain managers. And computer-based simulations of supply-chain scenarios, such as those now used at Michigan State, are a favorite. But when companies can get a "two-fer" - new skills acquired as well as real-world problems addressed-then the education programs have deep and abiding value. "In the future, I think executive education is going to be more experiential," says David Closs, professor of marketing and supply chain management at Michigan State. "It could be through cases or action learning-project kinds of things. It will also be more cross-functional."
As part of the evolving multi-disciplinary approach to supply chain executive education, more schools will offer and expand on social responsibility and sustainability themes. For their parts, companies will look to include participants from functions such as sales-functions with which supply chain managers generally have little interaction, but whose demand-side perspective can be tremendously illuminating.
Customized programs are not only covering the topic of global supply chains but also going where those supply chains reach. Stanford is just one example, offering a Strategic Management of Supply Chains in China program for executives in emerging economies. Georgia Tech's Executive Masters in International Logistics program, already held as far afield as Latin America, is now looking to bring more Chinese executives into the program. At other institutions that already have plenty of global outreach and partnerships, the pressure is on to do more. "Right now, we're being challenged to offer programs in Brazil, and we're really being pushed by our president to offer them in Dubai," says Michigan State's Closs.
Continuing Challenges for Exec Ed
It's worth pausing to ponder the big question: Does executive education really work? The answer is a qualified "yes." If there was unconditional approval for the outputs of talent development initiatives- from the earliest undergraduate levels through internal professional development programs and executive education-it would not have been necessary for P&G, IBM, Intel and others to come together to investigate the issue, starting with the survey launched recently.
Among the survey's aims are to clarify what standards best define "supply chain" educational programs and identify which schools are providing the most supply chain management graduates. (The survey does not plan to "rank" schools.) According to P&G's Jake Barr, the shortage of highly-skilled supply chain managers prompting companies like his to conduct their own private research to find out why. "We weren't getting the quality of graduates that we needed," he said.
Yet executive education is clearly succeeding overall. Continuing demand for everything from certification programs and online courses to highly customized programs for senior supply chain leaders speaks to its effectiveness on many levels. In fact, demand is enough that some institutions are hard-pressed to field sufficient faculty members to meet the needs-or at least enough experienced "A-list" faculty. And that points to a talent crunch of another kind.
Exacerbating demand is the need for faculty members themselves to demonstrate a good grounding in global supply chain dynamics-at a strategic level as well as in grounded tactical operations areas. That's one reason for the recent appointments of seasoned practitioners as top academicians. Prominent among those transplants are Corey Billington, professor of procurement and operations management at IMD, after leading supply chain transformations at Hewlett-Packard, and Paul Dittmann, former supply chain chief at Whirlpool and now director of the Office of Corporate Partnership at the University of Tennessee's College of Business Administration.
Customized programs will also continue to dilute the pool of teaching talent. For instance, Thunderbird has dedicated two faculty members-they've stepped out of teaching-to drive 20 one-week programs for a leading European pharmaceuticals company.
Executive education will continue to follow informal paths. IBM's Tim Carroll reports that he is regularly in front of Big Blue's clients, not in a business development capacity but to answer their questions to help them learn about and absorb IBM's best practices. And Carroll himself is using a personal coach to help him keep his leadership skills polished.
But where and how do senior leaders of his caliber learn more? And what do they need to learn now? Carroll and others at his level have many opportunities to exchange ideas at exclusive gatherings such as Georgia Tech's Supply Chain Executive Forum and Stanford's Global Supply Chain Management Forum. But even there, the topics typically center around issues well-known to many of the participants.
"I'm always hungry for what the next new idea is," says Carroll. "What's the wow statement? That's what I look for out of these forums. I'm not convinced we're there yet."
Neither Carroll nor other supply chain leaders have the answers. Nor do the teachers that we spoke with not yet, anyway. The picture becomes more complex the more cross-functional the supply chain discipline becomes: Already it may as easily be led by a former corporate lawyer or a finance person as a longtime logistics or supply management expert.
SCMR 's editors would like to invite readers to contribute their best ideas of how top-tier executive education can and must change now. In the meantime, though, the exploration might benefit from an inward look, especially if in the future supply chain leadership roles are going to be more transitional than in the past. Greybeard Advisors' Rudzki contends that too few organizations yet have a comprehensive view of their supply chain "leadership inventory." He offers one path forward: "As a CPO, I viewed the HR office as one of my two top most important organizational allies. The other was finance. HR has to be a significant partner to make all of this happen."
| [Author Affiliation] |
| John Kerr is special projects editor at Supply Chain Management Review . |
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