Education: A Call to Action

I’m talking to you seasoned gray hairs. While enjoying retirement, can you find some time to transfer your decades of practice and experience to the next generation of logisticians and business leaders?

The need for this skills dump has never been greater, considering the impact of the pandemic, the great resignation, and the economic circumstances that we are currently using all our supply chain smarts to resolve. Many of you are at or past retirement age. You’ve weathered the pain and the challenges, and earned your supply chain stripes, right?

We need to transfer the solutions and perspectives that you have crafted through years of facing and solving supply chain friction points to the up-and-comers facing the tough (tougher?) business challenges of today. They will be the next generation of business leaders, too.

Inbound Logistics has profiled many enterprise leaders who started out as truck or forklift drivers, or warehouse workers. Over years of learning and trial and error, they now lead multi-million-dollar companies. That early experience served them well.

I was speaking with a colleague recently who moved south from Chicago and took his years of supply chain experience and practical knowledge with him. That got me to thinking. It’s not just him; many others past retirement age are doing the same.

He is not letting his hard-earned knowledge go to waste. He is retasking it by conducting virtual logistics courses, teaching at a local college, leading labs in a warehouse, and mentoring those interested in matching demand to supply as a career.

Inbound Logistics regularly devotes time and content to recognizing logistics educators and the crucial work they do in honing the skills of current professionals who need new tools to face new challenges. Supply chain educators are also instrumental in arming a new generation of business leaders with the practical and technological skills to succeed in this new environment.

But they cannot do it alone.