pursuing opportunities of
other sorts.Just as front-line skilled
labour has become harder
to find, trained supply chain
and logistics managers
are becoming scarcer, too.
With a full 65 per cent of
all management-level job
openings in Australia now
requiring some training in
these fields, it has become
clear that a definite skills gap
is hampering the effectiveness
of these crucial contributors
to the country’s economic
wellbeing.Part of the problem is the
work of supply chain and
logistics managers is changing
quickly. Technological
advancement is now the
rule in these traditionally
conservative fields, with
companies that fail to keep
up dealing with decaying
competitiveness as a result.
Skills that would put a supply
chain manager on the top
of the heap even a decade
ago are frequently no longer
enough. With some estimates
putting the nationwide value
of a 1 per cent improvement
in logistics efficiency at $2
billion, standing still is not an
option however.This is happening as new
economic developments
threaten to stress Australian
supply chains and logistics
networks even more heavily.
With business leaders and
politicians alike promising to
make the country the “food
bowl” of rapidly growing Asia,
for example, demand for these
services is growing quickly,
even as historically intense
mining activity begins to flag.Education Scrambles
to Train New Experts
Whether for blue-collar work
or management, entry into
these fields requires plenty
of specialised training. The
Australian government and
industry leaders alike have
long sought to encourage
more workers to acquire
the necessary education,
with their pleas becoming
increasingly desperate in
recent years.At the University of Sydney’s
Institute of Transport
and Logistics Studies, a
fundamental rethinking of
existing programs is now
underway. Recognising that
the traditional techniques
hammered home over the
course of its masters-level
supply chain managementWith the country’s freight
networks at capacity and
demand expected to triple
in the next few decades,
Australian business leaders are
confronting a pronounced lack
of skilled logistics and supply
chain specialists.Longstanding difficulties with
recruiting trained workers
of these kinds have become
even more pointed in recent
years, and the gap looks
set to grow even larger.
Determined to provide help,
educational institutions of all
sorts—from top universities
to driver training schools—are
overhauling their offerings to
better reflect the changing
landscape and new levels of
demand.Factors Deepening an
Enduring Worker Deficit
With population centers often
separated by vast distances,
Australia has suffered a
decades-long need for more
skilled labour in the logistics
sector, even as over a million
residents toil in the field. That
problem has only become
worse in recent years with
the age of the average driver
climbing from 35 to 50 over
the past two decades, a
clear sign of younger people50 | VENTURE Collaboration | June 2018
COLLABORATION