Supply Chain Diploma

Logistics and Supply Chain Strategic Management:

The first module focuses on identifying the organization’s strength and industry position and in understanding the external factors that may influence that position. It concerns strategic decisions about choice of products and technologies to meet the needs and wants of customers gaining competitive advantage and exploiting or creating new opportunities. It entails building a logistics strategy with guiding principles, attitudes and driving forces that help one coordinate plans, goals and policies between different partners across any supply chain. It helps one increase the supply chain performance while improving supply chain management, as a whole.

Participants will perform a strategy review: Are the objectives of the logistics organization in line with company objectives and strategies?

Resilience & Supply Chain Security Management:

This module focuses on the constellation of Supply Chain Resiliency and Risks arising from emerging technologies, financial inter-dependence, resource depletion, climate change and disasters which exposes the weak and brittle nature of existing safeguards – the policies, norms, regulations or organizations which manage the supply chain. The safeguards may no longer be fit to manage vital resources and ensure the consistent performance of the global supply chain. The module further covers interdependence of supply chain functions to develop resilience strategy, development of strategies to minimise exposure and complexity inherent in globalization, strategic management of the supply chain, establishment of more adaptable safeguards , timely responses to emerging risks, and global and regulatory changes.

E-Commerce and E-Fulfillment:

This module explains current e-commerce and e-fulfillment strategies. It covers these key areas: development of a proper order fulfillment system – storing inventory, picking and packing products, and shipping online orders to customers; third party logistics (3PL) as an important stakeholder; implementation of the business-to-business (B2B) orders — where large quantities of product are shipped to big-box retailers — as well as business-to-consumer (B2C) orders that are shipped directly to a single shopper’s home; and understanding the requirements of the end consumer who places the order on the merchant’s website or through an online marketplace.

The course will provide inputs to the e-fulfillment process: processing of routing and managing inventory to choosing the correct packaging for the lowest practical dimensional weight; nuances of the fulfillment workflow, including receiving inventory, warehousing products, picking and packing items, and shipping orders; inventory storage system in e-fulfillment; order processing in e-commerce; shipping management technology in e-commerce; and returns processing in e-commerce.

Procurement, Warehouse and Distribution Management:

This module emphasizes procurement strategies, such as cost reduction, risk management supplier relationship, global sourcing strategies, vendor management inventory analysis, and sustainable purchasing. It mentions the internationalization process, covering the drivers and challenges of internationalization as well as the strategies and implications of operations management.

Distribution effectiveness is discussed, comprising end-to-end warehouse processes productivity improvements, internal warehouse KPIs monitoring and evaluation, extraction of reports from Enterprise Reporting Systems, techniques of data conversion to business intelligence and analytics, stopwatch time study method in warehouse management process, and lead time reduction in warehouses.

Design Thinking:

This course introduces Design Thinking as the overarching framework in developing human-centered solutions. Design Thinking is a Human-centered approach to problem solving that gives the learner opportunities to create empathy-based solutions for their target customers. The lessons the students will learn from this course encourages an innovative, empathetic mindset that will help them identify market opportunities and help them understand the principles behind rapid prototyping, and methods of implementation.

Business Innovation:

The unprecedented pace of innovation and entrepreneurial activity offers exceptional opportunities for students to design or redesign their own enterprises. The Business Innovation course covers the innovative business model development that is human-centered and industry-context aligned. Students will be introduced to the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas as strategic management templates for developing new or documenting existing business models.

Management Project:

Conduct of applied research leading to a project report, involving the application of knowledge, skills and perspectives gained from the course. Deployment of various analytical tools, matrices, and templates to develop relevant business strategies for the companies of their choice by taking advantage of opportunities and protecting itself against risks.