Model of Skills and Capabilities of the Logistics Administrator

Introduction

As business environments continue changing rapidly, the logistics and supply chain sectors have faced several challenges. As a result, there is a necessity to have specialized professionals in logistics (Thai, 2012) that will allow the development of processes, minimizing costs, and increasing the efficiency of the workforce, providing an increment in productivity, which has generated that different innovations in the organizational systems greatly affect their performance. Consequently, they must be updated in order to deal with the possible challenges that the global market may present for the company. These specialized professionals in logistics must have knowledge and skills that allow them to work in an integrated and effective supply chain.

In 1991, Murphy and Poist carried out the first studies related to logistic skills identification. They focused on the skills of high-level logistics managers, concluding that the manager of contemporary top-level logistics needs to be efficient in three categories: business skills, logistics and management. Management skills emerged as the most important of them, followed by logistics and business skills.

According to Santamaría (2012), there are some skills and competencies that logistics personnel must possess according to the growth trends of the supply chain. These are: capacity to plan and execute strategies with a different focus to the tactical knowledge of processes; strategic vision based on an understanding of the business environment, including markets, industry trends and awareness of particular local conditions and the ability to demonstrate the value of supply chain management through financial results.

Similarly Yen-Chun, Huang, Goh, and Hsieh (2013) raise that a professional in logistics must be able to integrate, communicate and analyze from an international perspective, know how to perform a financial analysis, maintain good relations with both, the industry and with customers, and finally to understand the laws and regulations. In other countries, such as Ireland, studies have shown that, in addition to technical knowledge, the human aspects and the development of interpersonal and social skills should have more emphasis, such as a guidance to work as a team and inter-functional relationships (Farrell and Wagner, 2014).

In addition to the new skills needed in the industry, Randstad Holding presented on its website (Randstad.es, nd) a study that states that they not only refer to technological issues, but also to those in the current working world which are profiled as critical. These are called: “People Skills” (communication skills, ease of teamwork, interpersonal skills ...) and leadership skills (problem solving, rapid and effective decision-making, etc.), and until now they had been little contemplated.

In general, as business environments continue changing rapidly, the logistics and supply chain sectors face many challenges and that is why there is a need to have specialized professionals in logistics (Thai, 2012). Also, in recent years, a greater awareness has been taken of the fundamental role played by human resources, for the success of the supply chain based on their knowledge and talent (Shou, Li, Park, & Kang, 2017).

On the other hand, although these skills have been defined, there are differences between the theoretical and what the industry professionals say. The first ones consider the logistic management capacity as the forecast of the demand, supply, planning and integration of systems like key priorities. The others believe that the skills are focused on the general development of logistics, such as skills with a global perspective, especially in the improvement of business competitiveness and the formulation of strategies (Yen-Chun et al., 2013). These differences affect both, the professional development of logistics workforce and the industry in general.