Seminary about Human Capital in the Supply Chain

The 17 March, the Shair Supply Chain of the Future organized a full day seminary about human capital in the supply chain at the school of Ponts Paristech. Therefore, the seminary gathered an ecosystem composed of professor from the 4 partners of the Chair (Cdiscount, Louis Vuitton, Michelin and Renault), representatives of the school (teaching, research, relationship with companies….) and a second year student group. Planned, thinking and experience sharing about different subjects : actractivity of supply chain jobs, hiring and retention of talents, formation to new skills needed for this jobs (data science, AI, sustainable development, soft skills…), as well as typical ways, managing of knowledge on time route and the needs for lasting formation.

An ad hoc study for the seminary

In that occasion, a study-mirror done by PEP (Ponts Etudes Projets) highlights students’ perceptions and waitings about jobs of the supply chain, with the experience of the professor. The study-mirror allowed to get the opinion of 200 students (mostly Ponts’ students, in second and third year or gap year, from different department study of the school), as well as more than 420 supply chain workers (mostly from the Chair’s 4 partners, as well as alumni from Ponts Industry’s group and the specialized mastere Supply Chain Design & Management of Ponts/IML – International Institut of Management for Logistic).

Among the learning points of that study:

• Students’ perceptions which join the professional background of the workers on the role of the supply chain is green transition and sustainable development….
• …. Meanwhile, there are differences about the precise view of supply chain’s jobs in terms of characteristics, skills and missions: the students don’t see the diversity of the jobs as widely as the professionals; neither the increasing importance of innovation, client service or data science in the perimeter of supply chain.
• The students, particularly the ones from the industrial engineering department, assert to have a good knowledge of the issues of industry 4.0 or the ones of the supply chain, stating being informed mostly through the curses at the school, their formation, their internships, and their research online.
• More than half the students who answered assert being interested in the jobs of supply chain, it is more than 80% for the ones following the industrial engineering courses.
• Among the advantages linked to these jobs, the students insist on the intellectual stimulation, the contribution to the green transition and the job’s meaning (“a job with meanings”), while the workers also pointed out the advantages linked to the missions’ diversity, which seems to b less associated with th supply chain by the students….
• Finally, in terms of waiting about their work environment, the equilibrium between professional and private life stands out more in the student’s answers, meanwhile the workers insist on the team working, the transversality and the diversity of functions and posts.

The return of the results and the study-mirror with the exchanges that followed, confirmed the importance and the necessity of keeping up the efforts of sensibilization and upgrading of the jobs of supply chain of the future, with all students what ever are their specialization, to support the evolution of these jobs toward new competences on innovation, data science, sustainable development, etc.