Building a Sustainable Supply Chain Workforce
By Gary Forger, MHI Managing Director of Education and Professional Development
Supply chain is the ‘it’ degree of the moment.”
That’s according to Dana Stiffler, Gartner’s vice president of supply chain research.
She spends her time looking at how supply professionals are being developed and, just as importantly, how the field is evolving even as you read this. And while supply chains have been in place just short of forever, the formal profession is only 25 to 30-years-old. So how does Stiffler know that supply chain is the “it” degree of today? She has a couple of metrics.
On the supply side, Stiffler says the student population continues to grow. Rapidly. Her research shows that the number of full-time undergraduates in supply chain is up 56% since 2011. At the graduate level, there’s a 34% increase in students during the same period for both part- and full-time students.
On the demand side, Stiffler notes that today there is 100% placement for graduates of supply chain programs.
Stiffler made these comments and the ones that follow at the Fourth Annual Chicago Supply Chain and Sustainability Summit. It was sponsored by the Supply and Value Chain Center at Loyola’s Quinlan School of Business.
