assessment of logistics and supply chain

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ASSESSMENT OF LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN TURKISH UNIVERSITIES AND COMPARISON WITH UNITED STATE UNIVERSITIES Seda HOCAOĞLU1, Samet GÜNER2, Erman COŞKUN3, Abstract – Logistics is a source of competitive advantage for most of firms which operate in markets where product variety and quantity are high and where suppliers and customers spread throughout wide geographic regions. So, logistics education and skilled labor force has become important for logistics sector. In this paper, researchers aim to assess the status of logistics education in Turkey. To do this, websites of universities and vocational schools had investigated in terms of number of their academic staff and content of their course structures. Preliminary results show that logistics programs in Turkey is mainly in vocational degree and logistics education in bachelor and master’s degree is quite inadequate. Logistics and supply chain management education has not reached the sufficient maturity yet. Also there are big differences among course structures from one university to other. As the second goal the study compares findings in Turkish universities with United States universities and findings from the comparison are discussed at the end of the paper. Comparison results revealed significant differences between course syllabuses. Transportation, operations management, international logistics, law and legislation courses get importance in Turkish universities while supply chain design, supply and purchasing and information technologies courses become more of an issue in USA universities. Nevertheless, numbers of average academic personnel do not differ between two countries. The details of these findings will be discussed during the presentation. Keywords: comparison, Logistics education, supply chain management education, Turkey, USA

1

Sakarya University, School of Business, [email protected] Sakarya University, School of Business, Department of Marketing and Production, [email protected] 3 Sakarya University, School of Business, Department of Management Information Systems, [email protected] 2

©International Logistics and Supply Chain Congress’ 2013 November 07-09, 2013, Cappadocia & Kayseri, TURKEY

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1. INTRODUCTION Logistics is one of the rapidly developing sectors in our country as in the world. Whilst the total capital of 1820 logistics companies, which were incorporated in our country in 1999, was 43.468.112 TL, total capital of 3826 logistics enterprises, which were founded in 2008 reached at 1.306.846.150 TL (TÜİK, 2010). 200% increase at the number of enterprises, which have been opened in 9 years and 3000% increase of the total capital give important clues about the development of the sector. Parallel to this increase at the number and the capital, total work power employed in the logistics sector is rapidly increasing. As a matter of fact, according to the data of Social Security Department in 2010, total 710.113 workers are being employed at various fields of logistics in our country. This figure will further be increased when informal employees are added. These developments in the field of logistics have created a need for qualified manpower. Academic programs at vocational degree, bachelor and master degree levels were started in the universities in various regions of our country in order to meet this need and senior lecturers were appointed. Purpose of the logistics education is to train qualified students who will satisfy the needs of the sector. This study aims to put under microscope the logistics education in our country and to analyze the current situation. The academic programs, which give logistic education in the universities in our country, have been examined in terms of their qualities, courses covered and academic staff. Then the education programs, which are offered at bachelor’s degree and master’s degree levels in Turkish Universities were compared with the universities of the USA in terms of the courses covered and academic staff. The results obtained were interpreted and various opinions were suggested.

2. LOGISTICS EDUCATION IN TURKEY 2.1. Logistics Programs Logistics education is being given in total 66 universities in Turkey. 40 of those universities are state universities whereas 26 are private foundations. There are total 72 programs in those 66 universities giving logistics education. Though this figure seems sufficient only 3 of the programs (4%) are at bachelors level. 58 of the remaining programs (81%) are vocational degree and 11 (15%) is at master’s degree level. Figure 1 Percentage of State and Private Universities

Figure 2 Percentage of Logistics Education Degree


577 Table 1. Logistics Programs in Turkish Universities Abant İzzet Baysal∆ Adnan Menderes∆ Anadolu∆ Ardahan∆ Artvin∆ Atatürk∆ Balıkesir∆ Bitlis Eren∆ Celal Bayar∆ Çanakkale On Sekiz Mart∆ Dokuz Eylül∆ ◊ Dumlupınar∆ Düzce∆ Erciyes∆ Erzincan∆ Gazi∆ Gaziantep∆ ◊ ∆ Ön Lisans

Gazi Osman Paşa∆ Gümüşhane∆ Iğdır∆ Kafkas∆ Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam∆ Kocaeli∆ Mehmet Akif Ersoy∆ Mersin∆ Muğla Sıtkı Koçman∆

Trakya∆ Uludağ∆ Bülent Ecevit∆ Bahçeşehir∆ ◊

İstanbul Ticaret∆ İzmir Ekonomi∆◊ □ Kadir Has∆ Nişantaşı∆

Başkent∆ Beykent∆ Beykoz∆ Çağ∆

Okan∆ Toros∆ Yaşar∆ Yeni Yüzyıl∆

Gediz∆

Lefke Avrupa□

Mustafa Kemal∆ Namık Kemal∆ Nevşehir∆ Ondokuz Mayıs∆ Pamukkale∆ Sakarya∆ Selçuk∆ Süleyman Demirel∆

Haliç∆ İstanbul Arel∆ İstanbul Aydın∆ İstanbul Bilgi∆ İstanbul Gelişim∆ İstanbul Kavram∆ İstanbul Kültür∆

İstanbul◊ □ Doğuş◊ Maltepe◊ Ege◊ Galatasaray◊ Karaharp◊ Yeditepe◊

□ Lisans

◊ Lisansüstü

That majority of the programs are vocational programs (81%) in Turkey shows that logistics education mostly aims to meet the need of intermediate staff of the sector. Also there is a disconnection between bachelors and master’s degree programs. Because bachelors programs are 4% and master’s degree programs are 15%, it seems that most of the students attending to master programs in the field of logistics graduate from another department beyond logistics. The provinces where logistics and supply chain management courses are given and the regional distribution of education is shown in the map below.


578 Figure 3. Logistics Programs in Turkey

2.2. Content of Courses It is possible to compile under eleven headings the courses, which are given in logistics programs in our country under different titles. The headings are as follows: introduction to logistics and supply chain management, supporting courses, transportation, purchasing and supply, strategic SCM and logistics, SCM design, information systems, operations management, international SCM and logistics, legislation and law and finally warehousing. Supportive courses cover a lot of fields like energy logistics, urban logistics, disaster logistics, project management at SCM, quality at logistics, cost and process management and have a significant role among all courses. Purchase and supply courses cover such topics like supplier relations management and supply strategies. The transport group, which has the biggest share among all courses, is comprised of such topics like combined transport, railway and land transport, port and terminal operation, transport economy and management. Strategic management group contains strategic logistics and SCM courses. SCM design group is made of such courses as supply chain design and planning, network analysis and logistic planning. Information systems courses contain information technologies used in logistics and supply chain. Operational research group has a significant role in the curriculum of logistics programs and fundamentally covers courses that relate to numerical methods and modeling. International logistics and SCM courses are composed of customs clearance, insuring, global logistics and foreign trade. Legislation and law group cover such courses as transport law, logistics law, legal frames, logistics legislation and policies. Warehousing group is comprised of such courses as distribution center management, material and inventory management, store design and management. Finally there are courses under other disciplines. This group covers a lot of different courses from marketing ©International Logistics and Supply Chain Congress’ 2013 November 07-09, 2013, Cappadocia & Kayseri, TURKEY

579 to strategic management, from finance to data mining and from management accounting to quality and performance management. Among these groups, transportation group has the biggest share (15%). Supportive courses (13%) and operations management group (13%) have the same ratio, followed by SCM design (11%), international SCM and logistics (11%), law and legislation (10%) and introduction (8%). Purchasing and supply (5%), strategic SCM and logistics (5%) and warehousing (5%) have the same ratio. The lowest share belongs to information systems (4%). 2.3. Academic Personnel Review of the academic personnel of the universities giving logistics programs in Turkey shows that totally 330 academic personals are working in 66 universities and in 72 programs. 50 of these personnel are professors, 29 are associate professors, 105 are assistant professors, 132 are senior lecturers, 6 are research assistants and 8 are lecturers. Table 2 Quantity of Academic Personnel in Turkish Universities

41 7 2

Associate Professor 20 5 4

Assistant Professor 55 19 31

Senior Lecturer 3 19 110

Research Assistant 2 4 -

50

29

105

132

6

Professor Masters Bachelor Vocational Total

Lecturer

Total

5 3 8

121 59 150 330

At master level there are 41 professors, 20 associate professors, 55 assistant professors, 3 senior lecturers and 2 research assistants. At bachelor level there are 7 professors, 5 associate professors, 19 assistant professors, 4 senior lecturers and 5 research assistants. At vocational schools there are 2 professors, 4 associate professors, 31 assistant professors, 110 senior lecturers and 3 research assistants.

Figure 4 Percentage of Academic Personnel in Vocational Schools

Figure 5 Percentage of Academic Personnel in Bachelor Degree

Figure 6 Percentage of Academic Personnel in Bachelor Degree


580 Academic staff per program in Turkey is as follows: 0.68 professors, 0.40 associate professors, 1.44 assistant professors, 1.81 instructors, 0.08 research assistants and 0.11 lecturers. These figures vary significantly between master, bachelor or vocational levels. At master level there are 3.73 professors, 1.82 associate professors, 5.00 assistant professors, 0.27 senior lecturers and 0.18 research assistant per program. At bachelor level there are 2.33 professors, 1.67 associate professors, 6.33 assistant professors, 6.33 senior lecturers, and 1.33 research assistant and 1.67 lecturer per program. At vocational level there are 0.03 professors, 0.07 associate professors, 0.53 assistant professors, 1.90 senior lecturers, and 0.05 lecturers per program.

3. REVIEW OF THE USA UNIVERSITIES The best nine universities in the USA, which give bachelor and master programs in logistics and supply chain management, have been located from US news. These universities are listed below.

Table 3 Best Logistics Programs in USA Universities 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Michigan State University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Arizona State University Pennsylvania State University Ohio State University University of Maryland University of Michigan Purdue University University of Tennessee

3.1. Content of Courses The courses given in the USA universities in logistics and supply chain management can be grouped under nine headings. First of these groups is the introduction to logistics and supply chain management. In the second group there are courses about transport. Such courses include such topics as carriage, distribution and railway operations. Third group has the courses about purchasing and supply. Within this group, which has an important place in all groups, are such courses like production and supply strategies, analysis of supply markets and suppliers, strategic sourcing and procurement, purchasing and inbound logistics and supply management. Fourth group is comprised of the courses for the analysis of the logistics and supply systems by analytical methods like analytical methods for supply chain management, supply chain analysis, strategies and network design, planning and control systems at supply chain, logistic systems and their analysis.


581 Courses in the fifth group relate to information and technology systems used in logistics and supply chain management. This group, which is of high importance among all groups, contains such courses like communication at supply chain management, technological applications, information technologies, logistic and system integration technologies. The sixth group incorporates international supply chain and logistics; in the seventh group are such courses that relate to supply chain strategies and applications. Operations research related courses are mostly noted in the eighth group, like operational research, operational research for management decisions, logistic operation methods and systems. In the ninth and the last group are various supportive courses that relate to logistics and supply chain management, like supply chain finance, project management, supply chain leadership and innovation, supply chain management training and seminar. 3.2. Academic Personnel Review of the academic personnel of the universities giving logistics programs in USA shows that there are totally 39 professors, 36 associate professors, 20 assistant professors, 6 senior lecturers, 8 lecturers and 2 are postdoctoral associate in 9 universities. Table 4 Quantity of Academic Personnel in USA Universities Academic Personnel Professor Associate Professor Assistant Professor Senior Lecturer Lecturer Postdoctoral Associate

Quantity 39 36 20 6 8 2

4. COMPARISION In this section, the bachelor and master programs in the field of logistics of Turkish and the USA universities will be compared in terms of course contents and academic personnel. 4.1. Comparison of Course Contents In comparing the courses in bachelor and master programs given in Turkish and the USA universities, first of all, the courses given in the universities were defined and grouped under various headings. Accordingly the courses, which are common for both countries, are as follows: courses at introductory level, supportive courses, purchasing, supply, transport, strategic management, SCM design, information systems and technology, operational research, international SCM and logistics. In addition to the courses in the USA, there are two additional courses in our country, namely, warehousing and legislation and law. Share of each course group in total courses is shown in the following graphics.


582 Figure 7 Percentage of Courses in Turkish Universities

Figure 8 Percentage of Courses in USA Universities

In comparing the courses in bachelor and master programs given in Turkish and the USA universities, first of all, the courses given in the universities were defined and grouped under various headings. Accordingly the courses, which are common for both countries, are as follows: courses at introductory level, supportive courses, purchasing, supply, transport, strategic management, SCM design, information systems and technology, operational research, international SCM and logistics. In addition to the courses in the USA, there are two additional courses in our country, namely, warehousing and legislation and law. Share of each course group in total courses is shown in the following graphics. As would be seen from the graphics, legislation and law courses are given in Turkey unlike the USA. The courses given in this field constitute 10% of all courses. In this course group are such courses like transport law, logistics law, legal frames, logistics and transport legislation, commerce and insurance law, logistic agreement management and transport policies. Another important difference originates from the courses, which are given in the field of warehousing and warehouse management. Whilst this group, which covers such courses like warehousing, warehouse management, distribution center management, distribution systems management, material and inventory management, has a share of 5% in the curriculum of Turkish Universities, this group does not exist in the curriculum of the USA Universities. In addition to the courses of warehousing and legislation and law, we observe that operations management courses are more frequent in the programs in our country (8% to 13%)


583 Another apparent difference is in the group of supply and purchasing. Whilst share of these courses is 14% in the USA universities, it is only 5% in Turkish universities. This picture shows that the USA universities give more importance to such courses like purchasing, supplier relation management and supply management. We also observe that the courses in the field of information systems and technology are given more importance by the USA universities. Whilst such courses as communication at supply chain, information systems and technologies have the least share in the curriculum of the academic programs in our country (4%), their share in the curriculum of the academic programs in the USA is 12%. However, it was revealed that share of the courses like international commerce, customs clearance, international SCM and logistics in our country is more than the USA (6% to 11%). 4.2. Comparison of Academic Personnel In Turkey, in 11 master and 3 bachelor programs, there are 3.43 professors, 1.79 associate professors, 5.29 assistant professors, 1.57 instructors, 0.43 research assistants and 0.36 lecturers per program. Whereas, in the USA there are 4.33 professors, 4.00 associate professors, 2.22 assistant professors, 0.67 instructors, 0.22 research assistants and 0.89 lecturers per program

Table 5 Comparison of Academic Personnel

TURKEY

3,43

Associate Professor 1,79

USA

4,33

4

Professor

Assistant Professor 5,29

Senior Lecturer 1,57

Research Assistant 0,43

2,22

0,67

0,22

Lecturer

Total

0,36

12,87

0,89

12,33

In total, we observe that number of academic personnel per program in Turkey (12.87) is more than the USA (12.33). But here two points must be considered. One of these is the number of academic personnel per student. Higher this ratio will quality of education be higher. For this purpose number of students in the programs, which are compared, will be determined and divided by the number of academic personnel. Another point relates to the qualifications of academic personnel. Although quantity of academic personnel is one of the important determinants of quality of education, qualification of academic personnel is as important as quantity. In order to get informed about the qualifications of academic personnel, the elements defining qualification must be determined; the academic backgrounds of academic personnel must be investigated and compared with each other. For this purpose, publications (articles, books, etc.), projects, academic experience in the field of logistics and supply chain may be taken into account.


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CONCLUSION In this study, total fourteen universities, which give education at bachelor and master level in our country and nine universities in the USA ranking at top were compared in terms of course contents and academic personnel. In terms of course contents, the most apparent difference in the curriculum in two countries is that though there are a lot of courses in our country’s universities in legislation and law, such courses do not exist in the USA universities. On the other hand, warehousing and warehouse management courses are given in our country; these courses do not exist in the USA universities. Instead of these courses mostly such courses like information systems and technologies and purchasing and supply management are in the curriculum in the USA universities. In terms of academic personnel, there is not a significant difference between two countries. It was found that average numbers of academic personnel per program are very close to each other. But, in order to make a more detailed analysis, number of academic personnel per student and the qualifications of existing academic personnel must identified. Such a study shall be more indicative for determining the quality of education.

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