Supply Chain Management 1 & 2

A National Senior Certificate or its equivalent, preferably including mathematics, accounting and statistics. People with previous logistics and/or management experience or education however may, subject to certain criteria (assessed for recognition of previous learning), also qualify to attend the course.

The students who should attend this course are employees who are working in a supply chain environment (operations, warehousing, transportation, procurement and so on), or those who want a deeper understanding of the subject. The programme will also assist employees who wish to aspire to become a manager in a SCM environment and current managers who wish to improve their supply chain management skills. Professionals working in an auditing or business consultancy environment may also benefit from the course. It must be noted that SCM is considered to be a scarce skill by the Department of Labour in South Africa and a critical skills shortage in many countries throughout the world.

There is a worldwide need for supply chain management (SCM) practitioners because as organizations become larger and more complex; they need their primary and support activities to be incorporated in such a way that the varying wants of stakeholders may be appeased. In essence, an effective supply chain manager is a specialist in logistics, quality assurance and a generalist in management and particularly general management. He or she therefore needs to fully understand the various logistics activities, be well conversant in the four management tasks (planning, organizing, leading and controlling) and fully understand the management functional areas such as marketing, HR, operations, finance andso on. The secret of effective and efficient SCM lies in the supply chain manager’s ability to integrate all of the aforementioned logistics activities, the four management tasks and various management functional areas,so that the requirements of up and down-stream customers may be satisfied as effectively and cost efficiently as possible. As an organization can use SCM to differentiate itself against its competitors and use such unique attributes to obtain a competitive advantage, effective SCM can lead to reduced costs, improved sales, increased product and service quality, higher profits and as importantly enhanced stakeholder Relationships. No wonder SCM has become one of the most sought after careers worldwide!

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