Second term updates from the LSCM MSc students

Hello there, how have you been doing? It’s been ages since I last got to talk to you! Hope you guys enjoyed your Christmas and New Year 🙂 Alright, let’s get started with this year’s Cranfield experience.

I know it’s only just the end of January. But for us MSc LSCM students, we’ve already advanced to the fourth week of term two. We can’t believe how fast it’s gone! This term we have 8 subjects to study; four of them are core courses while the other four are elective. My electives are Logistics Outsourcing, Master Data, Planning & Resourcing Road Freight, and Retail Logistics.

Logistics Outsourcing is about processes, criteria, and key point indicators (KPI) regarding outsourcing outbound logistics activities to 3^rd party logistics (3PLs). Master Data is about barcoding and information systems, about tracking and traceability throughout the whole supply chain. In Planning & Resourcing Road Freight, we got to use Paragon again (the road freight planning system I discussed in my previous blog). But this time we used it more thoroughly as each team was assigned specific scenarios which we had to build freight modeling upon. Well, since I’ve only studied these three electives, this is all I know of. However, all of them are very interesting. I enjoyed them all and am glad I made the right decision.

Paragon screen shot: we worked on plotting road freight routes up to 7 depots in total. It was more challenging and complicated than you would think!

Also, this term is one of many guest speakers. We’ve had quite a few since the beginning of the term. For example, Prof. Martin Christopher who is an expert in the supply chain and logistics field. He wrote many books and quite a few of them are used as our course books and materials. Prof Dr Alan C McKinnon, currently a faculty member of Kühne Logistics University, came to give a session on the importance and impacts of the logistics sector to green house gas emissions. Mr Chris Tyas, Nestle Group’s Head of Global Supply Chain, also shared his experience on resilient supply chains. We’ve enjoyed the guest speakers a lot and learnt so many things from them. But you know what? There’re still more to come! I’m so looking forward to them.

Professor Martin Christopher on Supply Chain 2.0: Managing Supply Chain Complexity in an Age of Uncertainty.

Prof Dr Alan C McKinnon’s session on logistics and green house gas emissions.

Mr Chrys Tyas of Nestle Group on resilient supply chains.

View from the back of Mr Chrys Tyas’s session.

Well, there’re still more coming – the Project Management course is coming up next week. It’s an intensive one week course about managing a project. We’ll get hands-on experience on planning, budgeting and managing changes in a project. There’re going to be lots of ad-hoc and unplanned activities too. So we have to prepare for it now. Wish me luck and I’ll see you next time!

Cranfield had a little snow piled up on the Sunday a couple of weeks ago. Such an awesome view for everyone. We went out and had lots of fun.

Snowman saying ‘See you next time!’