(enterprise resource planning) performance, collaboration IT for product
development, RFID (radio-frequency
identification), and retailer systems.
After years of teaching my “IT for
SCM” course, I realized that key topics were not being addressed. I wrote
cases on CPFR (Collaborative Planning,
Forecasting, and Replenishment), cloud
services, “big data” analytics, warehouse
management software, transportation
management systems, electronic logging
devices (ELDs) for trucks, and others.
Today, I am a department editor for
technology management at the Journal
of Operations Management. We encourage researchers to study manufacturing
and logistics technologies such as 3-D
printing, drones, driverless vehicles,
and multimodal tracking.
QTechnology’s impact on supply chains has been pro- found. In some cases, the technology has sprinted ahead
of the users’ ability to fully utilize it. What
are the main challenges for companies in
getting their arms around technology?
AAn irony of technology management is that once managers resolve one set
of process problems, an even more fine-grained level of precision and technological
detail might need to be considered. I try to
ensure that students recognize these issues
are part of a non-ending cycle, so they will
appreciate the difficulty of the task.
I hope students realize that technology
choice and implementation activities are
extremely challenging and human-impact-ing decisions. I cannot provide students
with answers for all future IT project challenges. Yet if my
students gain an appreciation of, and respect for, the many
managerial challenges, they can be responsible managers
who will reasonably address such challenges.
QWhat is the most important effect that e-commerce is having on facility design and operations management?
AModern e-commerce customer expectations and deliv- ery requirements appear to enhance the pain of existing
facility pain points. During my Ph.D. research in the late
1990s, I studied e-retailers in the food industry. The facil-
ities we toured had simple layouts. The startup operations
were not huge. E-commerce operations were designed to
be separate from regular operations. Executives envisioned
e-commerce division IPOs (initial public offerings). The
scale of e-commerce often didn’t match the rest of a firm’s
operations.
Early retailers that built well-integrated omnichannel systems have become difficult to catch up to. The e-commerce
operations having troubles today suffered from design
problems that have led to classic IT silo challenges. When
touring traditional retailer DCs, I have seen such issues
manifested as piles of packages hand-picked from the racks,
waiting for carriers to pick them up for delivery to e-retail
customers. The pile of e-commerce packages is a signal to
me that the assumptions surrounding facility design and
operations management should be reconsidered.
QThere has been much discussion about the dearth of talent entering the warehouse/DC world for system design and maintenance. Has there been progress in
increasing the supply of talent to meet the demand? If not,
what needs to be done?
AUniversities have seen a huge increase in student inter- est in supply chain management jobs of all sorts. A
decade ago, our program had 15 students.
After the Great Recession, industry wanted
more SCM hires. Students started to check
out the field. Now, we have 350 to 400
students. Probably half take jobs in SCM
system design and maintenance. The SCM
major has the second-highest average salary at our school. We joke that it happened
because we are great professors. However,
this phenomenon has occurred at many
universities.
Despite all that, we still face challenges
with regard to staffing warehouse and DC
managerial positions. Federal rules limit
our ability to share student names and data
with hiring managers. Companies hiring for DC positions
offer below-market salaries, don’t provide much training or
a career development path, want guarantees that students
will stay a long time, and want hires to immediately manage
huge numbers of forklift drivers or pickers/packers.
QWhat is the blowback, and how can it be prevented?
AEmployers scare away potential hires. New hires are overwhelmed by lack of training or mismatched expectations about job responsibilities. It is a very competitive
marketplace for warehouse/DC and SCM talent, even
