Tertiary institutions and industry must unite

South African tertiary institutions need to create meaningful partnerships with the logistics, transport and supply chain industries. SANDILE KHOZA explains why

Challenges that are faced by industries within logistics, transport and supply chain are emerging almost every day, hence industries are continuously trying innovative and disruptive strategies to mitigate them.

These “innovative and disruptive strategies” require far more than what one gets taught in class when doing either a diploma or degree in logistics, transport and supply chain. I have been privileged to supervise learners from different institutions who are needing practical or workplace experience training to complete their qualifications. I have also been privileged to lecture on a few programmes in some institutions of higher learning (particularly logistics, transport and supply chain). As both an industry captain who needs to fast-track and implement innovative strategies and someone who is teaching and supervising learners produced by institutions, it does appear to me that institutions are not in touch or partnering with industry captains to understand what the industry’s requirements are.

Ideally, tertiary institutions should be pipelines or feeders to the industry, meaning the industry should be consulting those institutions for solutions to address problems, but unfortunately that this is not the case. Industries have instead adopted different strategies to address real-time problems.

Institutes of higher learning, on the one hand, could be celebrating that they are producing great numbers of graduates. But, on the other hand, the industry is seeking real-time solutions to address problems. Unfortunately, merely absorbing graduates does not necessarily address problems, because graduates are book-smart but are not industry-ready.

This is why South African tertiary institutions need to create meaningful partnerships with the logistics, transport and supply chain industries. However, this requires a mutual understanding that both parties (industry and institutions of higher learning) need each other.