Lou Smyrlis

How do you make supply chain a sexy enough topic that the average teenager heading off to college or university would want to learn about it and, possibly, consider a career in it?

While preparing for our first Future Leaders Roundtable (look for highlights on our award winning show Transportation Matters at ctl.ca) several participants and I shared our mutual concerns that despite the valiant recent efforts of groups such as the Canadian Supply Chain Sector Council (CSCSC), many teenagers (and likely their guidance counselors too) remain unaware of what supply chain management or logistics management really means and the kind of career opportunities available.

There are about 745,000 Canadians working in supply chain management jobs in Canada, according to figures provided by the CSCSC (excluding professional drivers) with an annual growth rate of 2.1% from 2001 to 2009. Prior to the recession the sector was growing fast enough that it needed to add about 14,500 jobs a year from 2001 to 2009. But it faces a serious problem as a large proportion of the current workforce approaches retirement age. The CSCSC estimates that the sector could face a vacancy rate of more than 80,000 jobs a year in the future due to retirements and turnover.

That’s not good news when you consider that many demographers forecast a shortage of workers will hit every business sector in Canada over the next 10-15 years. That will leave our sector battling with every other sector for the best and brightest. Yet how many shows do you see on television about logisticians compared to shows about medics, lawyers, enforcement officials, journalists, bankers and traders. Heck, even the repo guys get more attention than logisticians.

So how do we first get inside the head of the typical teenager considering a career path and then how do we capture the passion in his or her heart?

Sitting in on the recent CITT annual conference, it hit me that one way to do so is to go big, larger than life. We need to show logistics in the limelight and on the international stage. And this year we were afforded just the right opportunity to do so with the Winter Olympic Games in British Columbia. Tony Beck , director of logistical operations for the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) along with Jeff White, general manager of Pacific Overseas Forwarding and Jonathan Lutz from CP Rail were on hand at the CITT event to provide a behind-the-scenes look at what is involved in hosting the Olympics and their story was a compelling one.

Think of the magnitude of this event – all the countries involved, all the athletes and trainers and judges, and media and volunteers and all the equipment and materials they need to do what they need to do exactly when and where they need to do it. As Beck pointed out, if you were to pick up any Olympic facility and shake it, everything that would fall out was brought there by logistics. And then think of the pressure involved in having the entire globe focusing in on the Games and media only too happy to report on any screw-ups. The television audience hit 3 billion.

And yet the about 650 logistics staff who worked on the Olympics (about 150 of them from VANOC and the rest from other supply chain partners such as Pacific Overseas Forwarding and CP Rail) pulled it off. I would say they were the unsung heroes of the Olympics. Just how involved were they in every facet of the Olympics? Beck told an inside story I’ll always treasure. We all remember that glorious moment when Team Canada took gold in the hockey final. Many of us have seen that historic picture of the players smiling in triumph while posing around a sign that read Vancouver Olympics 2010. If you look closely enough, the “r” in Vancouver looks a bit funny, it’s a bit down and to the right. That’s because it fell off just moments before the historic photograph and it’s held up chewing gun, provided, of course, by one of Beck’s logisticians. Making sure things work right to the final moment.

Folks, our logistics triumph during the Winter Olympics is a story worth telling, over and over again, across this country. It’s a strong way to awaken the minds of future workers to just how interesting and rewarding and just downright fun a career in logistics can be.