World Bank Study: Global Shortage of Logistics Skills (Guest Post by Kai Hoberg, KLU)

My guest post today comes from Kai Hoberg from the Kühne Logistics University (KLU) in Hamburg. Together with his co-authors, Alan McKinnon and Christoph Flöthmann, he has just published a new report, which is commissioned by the World Bank and analyzes the shortage of qualified logistics personnel.

Qualified logistics personnel is in short supply worldwide. This is the conclusion of our new report, titled Logistics Competencies, Skills, and Training: A Global Overview. While there are too few well-trained executives in the logistics sector in emerging countries, there is an acute shortage of qualified staff at the operational level in developed economies. We argue that this skills shortage is likely to worsen in the absence of new initiatives. There are two aspects that deserve further elaboration: First, physically, there are too few people available to cover vacant position in the logistics sector. Second, the currently employed workforce is partially lacking the skills demanded for their job. Based on an empirical analysis, we derive multiple recommendations for relevant stakeholders, i.e. companies, governmental institutions and logistics associations. The proposed measures include innovative training methods like logistics-related business games that can be employed without requiring high upfront investments or long implementation lead-times.

Kai Hoberg is Associate Professor of Supply Chain & Operations Strategy at KLU. In his academic career he was a visiting scholar at Cornell University, Israel Institute of Technology, University of Oxford and National University of Singapore. He is on the scientific advisory board of the German Logistics Association (BVL) and has been working with companies like Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Company, Jungheinrich and Zalando on supply chain innovation projects.