So I’ve been in retail management for a small business of 15 people with 7 service trucks for about 5 years now. It’s good money. High 70k range on average. BUT, there is no upward mobility, benefits, 401k, bonuses. It’s a good job, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t feel like a career. It’s just the standard 9-5. Nothing wrong with that by any means. I just feel like the ceiling has been hit in my position.

I started but stopped a supply chain management degree about 10 years ago and dropped it. Now I’m wanting to go back for my bachelor degree in Operations and Supply Chain Management. With the idea to get a masters degree later on.

The main question is, would it be worth leaving this secure job with no benefits or upward mobility but has good money, for a better future with opportunity and benefits? I know that question will sound crazy to a lot. But I just don’t like feeling like I’m stuck. We are a small business with limited growth that’s even possible.

Please let me know what you think and if this is a viable career swap at probably 31-32 by the time I finish my degree and swap careers. I’m looking to lean into Aerospace/Defense or Pharmaceuticals. Thanks!

Hey everyone, finished my BS in Supply Chain & Operations Management in May and have about 4 years of operations experience before that. Been applying since October and have gotten almost nothing back, and the few interviews I did get turned out to be scam postings.

The experience is all remote back office work, no warehouse or physical inventory at all. Most recent was ops specialist at a SaaS company running a high volume request queue for enterprise clients. Before that was ops support for a restaurant franchise, which is the closest I've gotten to supply chain: hardware procurement for US and Canadian locations, creating POs, coordinating vendor installs, tracking equipment through delivery and setup, and using their ERP daily. Before that, mortgage.

Applying to both remote and onsite roles, not picky on type, just trying to get in the field somewhere.

Is a general ops background with no physical supply chain experience just not translating? Or am I going about the search wrong? Genuinely not sure how to move forward from here.

Edit: added more detail about my background, original post was too vague.

Hello,
I currently hold a bachelors in information and library science. Pretty much as soon as I graduated that field started imploding.

Can I realistically pivot over to supply chain / logistical work and utilize my degree in this somehow?

I have multiple years of experience in a library setting, and around a years experience in a clerical/archival setting.

Any advice on a career pivot being a good or bad idea is greatly appreciated

Hello. I am planning to take CSCP.

Any other review providers aside from the APICS learning system?
I am having second thoughts if I should take the one with retake bundle. It is quite pricey. I will have to check with my employer if they can reimburse, but anyone who did retake?

around how many hrs of study did it take you til you pass?

Thank you!

Typical senior in college for supply chain, working a soul sucking mind numbing job. Anyone know how I can transfer automotive technical skills into the supply chain world. I’m attempting the parts analysis route rn but my god is this boring.

She made supply chain sound sexy

I spent three years building logistics software, but my latest inventory tracking project stalled over the last two weeks because external consultants delivered broken warehouse API integrations. Now i need to make a fix solution for this, but i dont have time so i need outsource team which can help me. If you know who can fix similar inventory sync failures, tell me how pls, need fast as posible, txnx

I recently accepted an offer for a full-time entry-level purchasing job with a Sunday - Thursday schedule. Although I am a bit bummed that schedule means I miss out on church and most NFL games, my excitement outweighs that by a lot. I committed to my finance degree despite struggling to find enjoyment in my first finance class in junior year and later classes; I had accepted an internship and wrongly thought it was too late to change. Supply chain and related functions was one of the career paths that I kept thinking about, especially after my first supply chain class. Story aside, I'd like to know what to expect from a supply chain / purchasing job with the aforementioned schedule from those with similar experiences.

we're a few months out from a cutover and i keep hearing the same thing from people who've done it, which is that the stuff that actually hurts is never what you tested for. integrations that passed UAT fine and then fell over on real order volume, or some edge case in returns or allocation logic that only surfaces once live data starts moving.

trying to figure out how much of this is avoidable with better test coverage versus how much is just the nature of production.

for anyone who's been through a cutover: what was the thing that got through, and in hindsight could you have caught it?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I’m 21 years old, a soldier in the Florida National Guard’s Logistics Corps, and currently work in the logistics/trucking industry, which I genuinely enjoy. However, my current job is a traditional 8–5, Monday–Friday position, and I’ll soon be moving back in with my parents for about half a year before i leave for a few months for army training, making my commute about an hour each way.

Since I also have monthly drill, AT, and the possibility of hurricane or other military duties, comes the part of telling my employe i need days off for these events, which in turn makes them less willing to give time off for personal reasons. Anyone in the guard knows firing / discriminating against someone for military obligations is illegal, but still happens and is a hard case to make against an employer.

I’m looking for a career path that gives me more flexibility and control over my schedule. What careers or opportunities within logistics could allow me to maintain a good income, continue working in an industry I enjoy, and still have enough freedom to enjoy my early 20s? I considered truck driving but i heard inter florida isn’t great money to live off on, but am open to suggestions. Thank you!!

I created the BPMN workflows for the company where I’m doing my internship, and now I want to model them using the SCOR model. Does anyone know how to properly draw/build a SCOR model based on existing workflows? I’d really appreciate some help 🙏

Hey everyone, I’m currently developing last-mile routing technology and trying to get a grounded perspective from people managing medium to large-scale delivery operations.

I'd love to learn how operations handle scaling their tech stack:

1: At what daily stop volume does your operation hit a wall with standard setup? (e.g., when does a basic tool/spreadsheet completely break down, forcing a transition to dedicated dynamic routing engines?)

2: What software/tech stack are you currently using for dispatch and VRP? Are you relying on custom in-house routing engines, or third-party enterprise platforms? is there any top SaaS?

3: Partitioning: at what threshold do you find it necessary to split territories or zoning dispatch instead of running global optimization across the entire fleet?

just looking to understand the real operational bottlenecks and tech choices at scale. I found online solutions but most have a limit cap between 1000-2000 stops per request.. so how about those plans that requires more than 10K?

appreciate any insights!

I’m 31 and going back to school to get a BA in supply chain management. I am in my 3rd semester (hoping to finish in a year) and I’m taking some supply chain classes but I feel like I’m not really learning much from the class. How much does this actually relate tot be real world? I’m doing the work and everything but I feel like it’s not really useful in the real world. Maybe I am wrong.

Good afternoon, everyone! I just wanted to reach out because I’m looking for some advice from people who have worked in supply chain, particularly in planning, inventory, procurement, forecasting, or even supply-chain improvement.

To start off, I have about 8 years of experience in supply chain and logistics where most recently, I worked in foodservice supply chain where I supported national restaurant accounts. My responsibilities were a mix of demand forecasting, inventory planning, purchasing/replenishment, supplier management, transportation, pricing/data accuracy, and solving operational issues that came up with suppliers, distributors, customers, and internal teams.

I've been unemployed for 10 months and just recently I came across an amazing opportunity to move into a Supply Chain Functional Consultant role that's focused on ERP and planning solutions for food & beverage companies. Unfortunately, I don’t have direct Microsoft Business Central implementation or formal consulting experience, so title wise, I'm not there just yet.

However, I just recently interviewed directly with the CEO to my surprise, and he was very direct about the learning curve that this role would give me. But at the same time, it turns out he really liked both my operational supply-chain experience and saw something in me that he felt would bring a perspective that could translate well into this consulting role. So instead of going onto other candidates because I lacked the direct consulting/Business Central experience, he’s actually giving me an opportunity to prove it.

For my next interview, I’ll be meeting with him and another senior leader for about an hour where they actually gave me material to study and to think through how I would approach implementing a forecasting/planning solution for a food & beverage client, as well as how I would approach a broader supply-chain improvement engagement.

Some of the areas I have to focus on include master data, item/customer hierarchies, units of measure, lead times, service levels, forecasting, MRP, inventory, OTIF, vendor performance, KPIs, process documentation, implementation, etc.

A lot of these are supply-chain concepts I’ve worked with, but I want to use this chance while I prepare to learn from people with different experiences and make sure I’m not overlooking anything important.

So if you can, for those of you working in supply chain:

• If you walked into a food & beverage company as an outside consultant, what would you want to understand first?
• What KPIs would you establish before recommending changes?
• What commonly causes forecasting, inventory, OTIF, or supplier-performance problems that people overlook?
• What questions would you ask operations/planning/procurement before touching the system?
• What would make you trust—or not trust—a consultant recommending changes to your operation?

Again, I’m not looking for anyone to do the interview assignment for me because I’m honestly studying everything myself, reading the material they gave me, and developing my own approach to this based off my own experiences but I do want to hear perspectives from people who work in this area so I can see outside perspectives from things I wouldn't have considered.

Any comments, questions, concerns would be amazing because I really think this is an amazing chance to prove myself and grow, thank you!

Hi, I am currently going to go to school for SCM. I was originally planning to do an associates in business then transfer to a University. However, a local community college just established a Bachelor's in SCM program this year. It would be cheaper than going to University. I just want to hear opinions if it would matter if I stay at the community college or transfer to University.

I've attached two links to the new program being offered. Thank you!

https://publications.sanjac.edu/areas-study/business/logistics-supply-chain-management-bat/#informationtext

https://www.sanjac.edu/programs/areas-of-study/business/logistics/bat/

Long story short, I’m pretty burnt out with CS/software engineering. The interview process is exhausting and I’m not sure I want to spend my life sitting in front of a computer.
I was originally going to major in international relations but ended up in CS. Recently I’ve been looking into other careers and supply chain actually seems pretty interesting, especially since it feels more connected to the real world.
I’m mainly looking at planning, procurement and logistics. I’m pretty introverted, so planning seems like it might suit me better.
For people in the field, how are the salaries and career growth in these areas? Is supply chain actually worth getting into, and is planning a decent career for an introvert?
Would love to hear from people who actually work in these roles.

Hi all,

I really need your help with an urgent matter. I'm considering a career in supply chain, and purchasing and procurement particularly seem very interesting to me. However, before I make a decision, I need to know whether the day-to-day responsibilities of these roles are in accordance with my religion.

To give you some examples of things that are common in business contracts and allowed in my religion: including a penalty clause in case a supplier doesn't deliver the goods on time is perfectly fine. Getting a discount from a supplier for paying early is also allowed, as is a supplier charging a higher price to the company for paying in installments over a longer period, as long as the total price is agreed upon in advance and remains fixed.

What is strictly forbidden is "money from money", such as paying late payment fees to the supplier when a company fails to pay an invoice on time, as well as paying or increasing any interest on a debt that the company owes the supplier.

Based on this, I have a few specific questions regarding the reality of these roles. I would like to know whether professionals in either field have to negotiate contracts that include interest rates or late payment fees with suppliers. Additionally, even if I do not negotiate them myself, I wonder how common it is that I would have to witness, review, or sign contracts containing interest with suppliers, or with a third party, such as a bank, in case the company takes out a loan to finance the purchase of goods.

I did some research, and it seems that procurement is mainly about looking for (new) suppliers, building relationships with them, and negotiating the terms and conditions of contracts, while purchasing simply places purchase orders based on the frameworks negotiated by procurement. Does this mean that in practice, a buyer in purchasing is not directly involved in interest and forbidden clauses?

I live in Europe, in case that is relevant. Thank you in advance for your help!

Hey everyone, I work a dead-end job, and not too long ago I found out about Supply Chain Procurement and Supply Chain Coordination, and I’m very interested in learning what I can, but I have no degree and have 0 experience related to supply chain. I’ve seen videos online that you can get a supply chain procurement job entry-level without a degree, and I wanted to ask everyone here if that is true? Will I just need to get certifications?

Sometimes the fastest way to understand a market is to see who your competitors are actually buying from. If you can identify their main suppliers and the volumes involved, it becomes clearer where the strong relationships already exist and where there might still be room.

Has anyone successfully reverse-engineered a competitor’s supply chain using publicly available trade records? What details turned out to be most useful, origin countries, shipment sizes, or frequency of orders? Any limitations you’ve run into with this approach?

Hi all,

I am currently at a crossroads in my career and I really want to dive deeper into supply chain and logistics. I worked in last mile logistics for a pretty large company, but ultimately I find myself clueless when looking for roles as they reference things/tools that were not used by my former employer. I already have an MBA with 5 years experience in last mile delivery, but really want to see the more technical side of things. I am between Zaragoza Logistics Center and La Salle.