Supply Chain Frontiers Issue #24. Read all articles in this issue
Supply chain education has come a long way over the last 10 years, and its development path promises to be even steeper over the next decade. Jim Kellso, Senior Supply Chain Master at Intel, is one of the originators of an innovative program to establish a new type of career path for supply chain professionals. He will talk about the program at the Crossroads 2008: The Next Ten Years conference, Cambridge, MA, March 27, 2008.
At the forthcoming Crossroads event organized by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT-CTL), experts will consider supply chain developments over the next ten years in education and training, energy & environment, IT, globalization and emerging markets, and modeling the future. In addition to Kellso’s talk, the segment on education and professional development will also mark the 10-year anniversary of MIT-CTL’s groundbreaking Master of Engineering in Logistics (MLOG) program.
Kellso’s job title derives from a new career ladder at Intel that is allied to a program he helped create for the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). The CSCMP Recognition Program for Supply Chain Management and Senior Supply Chain Management Professionals specifies what skills and experience qualify an individual as a bona fide professional within supply chain. Companies can adopt the program and implement it internally, thereby building the credibility of supply chain within the organization.
Intel has well-established career paths for engineers and managers. “You can climb an engineering job ladder and a management job ladder as high as your skills will take you,” Kellso said. Up until recently there was no similar route for supply chain managers, even though the company employs some 7,000 people in supply chain related functions. “So we created a third ladder that gives a business person whose expertise is in supply chain management a place to go,” he explained.
Intel’s supply chain ladder is open to a surprisingly wide range of specialists within the company, reflecting the profession’s broad reach. For example, there are nearly 3000 people in the logistics, planning and customer service organization who are candidates for this job ladder. There are about the same number of people in the materials acquisition organization, and the company recently added about a thousand IT people who deal with enterprise systems related to supply chain and planning to the program.
The new career path leads to a designation as a supply chain master and senior supply chain master. These are equivalent to the designations at the top of the engineering and management ladders, which are on par with senior managers and directors.
The supply chain career program gives Intel the ability to attract and retain the best supply chain people because they are respected professionals, Kellso said. Second, it provides improved supply chain skills that will help the company to better align supply and demand and execute well on this alignment – a potentially huge commercial payoff.
Kellso currently is mentoring over a dozen people who are working to become supply chain masters. In a company that is built on its engineering expertise, these individuals will champion supply chain as a key center of excellence within the organization. “We are trying to make supply chain as worthy, as valid and as honored as senior technologists,” Kellso said.
For more information or to register online, please visit the Crossroads 2008: The Next Ten Years event site. The above article is based on a longer piece published in the February 08 issue of Supply Chain Strategy.