Business Analytics Skills for the Future-proof Supply Chains

The project consortium wanted to use the project's results primarily to expand and improve their universities' educational offerings, adapting them to the requirements of the "new age" of logistic...

The project consortium wanted to use the project's results primarily to expand and improve their universities' educational offerings, adapting them to the requirements of the "new age" of logistics. This would enable their graduates to acquire analytical skills and prepare them for work in a digitally transformed logistics industry. The consortium aimed to accurately identify the profiles of the logistics industries and educational institutions in the partner countries, to ensure that the planned courses met the real needs of companies in terms of their future employees' competencies. This activity contributed to the development of 3 courses on the use of business analytics in logistics, which was the project's main goal, creation of a virtual E-learning environment containing materials in 5 languages. To extend the impact of the results, partners made the virtual environment accessible to universities outside the consortium, enabling them to implement the courses in their modules. The active involvement of stakeholders, including companies, academic teachers and students ensured that the courses met the expectations of all interested parties. These activities enabled the project's main and specific objectives to be achieved.

The activity that prepared the consortium to achieve the project's main objective was to identify the competence gap. This was based on an analysis of the business analytics in logistics curriculum implemented at universities from Europe and USA, as well as a survey of companies in the logistics and manufacturing sector, academic teachers and students. The identified gap was used to develop three courses: C1: Advanced spreadsheet analysis for logistics data; C2: Business Intelligence; and C3: Statistical methods for logistics data analysis. These were implemented in an open-access virtual environment, together with handbooks, lecture materials, workshop materials and additional Open Educational Resources (OER). The developed materials and virtual environment were provided in five languages: English, Polish, Croatian, Slovenian and Serbian. These materials were also verified during a series of training sessions for academic staff and students. Feedback collected after these sessions was used to improve the materials. The project also involved various dissemination activities, such as multiplier events, presentations at international scientific conferences and social media initiatives. Guide in file WP1.1_BAS4SC Project Abstract.

The concrete outputs of the project were the contents of 3 courses: C1: Advanced spreadsheet analysis for logistics data; C2: Business Intelligence; and C3: Statistical methods for logistics data analysis. These courses included course cards, handbooks, lecture materials, pre- and post-tests and workshop materials, including multimedia presentations, tasks with data sets, and case studies. Additional materials were provided in the form of OER. The partners also developed a two-stage case study that summarises all the topics covered in the courses. These materials were then implemented in a virtual environment adapted for the 5 languages, which is also open to universities outside the consortium. Project partners produced also the following results: an analysis of educational programmes used at European and US universities, a needs analysis of existing business analytics competencies among academic teachers and students, a needs analysis of business analytics competencies among logistics and manufacturing company management staff. The consortium also identified a skills gap. Together with the above-mentioned analyses, this was used to develop the project's main results, i.e. course content for three areas: C1, C2 and C3.