All Eyes on Supply Chain: Why Now Is the Time to Pursue a Career in Supply Chain

Did you know that San Diego is a supply chain town? That’s right — there are way more supply chain jobs in San Diego than employers can hire for!

Why is there so much demand for supply chain professionals? Simon Croom, supply chain professor at the University of San Diego School of Business, once compared supply chain to the nervous system of the body. “Nothing works if the nervous system fails and if your supply chain fails so does your business,” he said. 

The COVID-19 pandemic also brought attention to the massive role that supply chain plays in everyday life — a solid supply chain means that toilet paper and antibacterial soap are stocked on store shelves, that vaccines are successfully transported and are readily available, that there are alternate suppliers in place for manufacturing when one part of the world closes down and so much more.

Despite its critical role in business operations, people know little about supply chain and what a career in supply chain looks like. Mark Palamar, senior director of procurement at Qualcomm and board member at the Supply Chain Management Institute at the USD School of Business, shares his insights on the supply chain industry and what makes this an exciting career path to pursue.

Q&A with Mark Palamar, Senior Director of Procurement

What is supply chain?

A company’s supply chain comprises all the activities involved with the production and fulfillment of a company’s product. The process encompasses a few major steps including:

• Planning & Forecasting: Figuring out what the demand is for a product and how to meet that demand. Who is buying a company’s product/service? How much are they going to buy, when and where are they located? 
• Sourcing: Who and where do you get your raw materials from so that something can be built? Assessing who has the capability and capacity to create your product.
• Procurement: Purchasing and shipping materials where they need to go to become a product. 
• Manufacturing: The actual building or assembly of a product. Manufacturing can take place in house or be outsourced.
• Distribution: How do you get a product to your customers?
• Reverse Logistics: How do you repair a product that’s bad? If someone orders a product and wants to return it, what’s the process to return it? What does a company do with the returned item? 

How is the demand for supply chain talent growing?

I see the demand growing for supply chain talent as supply chains become more complex.

• Globalization: The world is becoming a smaller place with globalization and world economic growth.  Customers and suppliers are now located worldwide which increases the complexity of the supply chain. 
•  “Amazon” effect – Customers expect a wider variety of goods with almost immediate fulfillment. This is driving greater demands on a firm’s supply chain.

To meet these challenges, institutions are adapting with focused supply chain programs that are turning out more capable candidates who can add value quickly to an organization.

How is demand growing here in San Diego?

We've taken for granted that things just get to where they need to go. But COVID has shown that’s not the case, so companies are rethinking their supply chain strategies. 

Also, as companies in San Diego want to expand nationally or internationally, supply chain strategy and execution becomes essential. 

Which areas of supply chain are most promising for new professionals? 

A company’s supply chain covers such a broad spectrum of activities so professionals should be versatile enough to adapt to a number of roles. 

However, we are on the cusp of an incredible opportunity with the transformation to Industry 4.0. The integration of systems and our ability to collect and make sense of large data sets will radically disrupt how we think about supply chains. This will create new opportunities for supply chain professionals. It’s really exciting to see this coming.

What skills and personality traits make someone a good fit for a supply chain career? 

• Comfortable with ambiguity: Supply chain is inherently unpredictable. The whole purpose of supply chain is to try to make something unpredictable, predictable, with forecasts and safety stocks and things like that. It’s a very, very dynamic area where things change frequently, so you have to be comfortable in dealing with that.
• Aptitude for numbers: Supply chain is a quantitative field for the most part, so you should be able to deal with numbers and analytics. You’ll need to be able to quantify what you’re working with and answer questions like, how many units? Unit cost? Variances to cost? Defect rates? 
• Cross-cultural communication: You should understand how to deal with people from different cultures. A supply chain can extend across international boundaries and you will work with people who don't necessarily have the same cultural expectations as you. 

What do you look for in an ideal supply chain job candidate?

I search globally for the best job candidates. If someone has an undergraduate degree in an analytical area of study, has a supply chain MBA or a master’s in supply chain, and has some type of industry experience, to me, that’s the trifecta. Those are the top three things I look for.

What do you most enjoy about your job as senior director of procurement at Qualcomm?

Working in supply chain has been fulfilling for me because I get to actually see the outcome of my work. And I've been fortunate to have a varied career with Qualcomm introducing new products and cutting-edge technology, managing pretty much every area of the supply chain. 

I really enjoy managing commercial relationships. Pre-COVID, I was able to travel to different parts of the world and have traveled extensively through Asia because that's where a lot of supply bases are for the types of products that I dealt with. I enjoy building relationships with people of different cultures from around the world.

I also really enjoy building and developing teams.  A great deal of my work was focused upon building brand new organizations to deliver new technology.  It’s very rewarding to build an organization and deliver something significant on behalf of the organization. For example, I was involved with developing leading-edge display technology and setting up an entire commercial FAB (a factory that produces semiconductors) in Taiwan. That was very, very rewarding.

 

The University of San Diego School of Business offers a part-time, hybrid Master of Science in Supply Chain Management that can be completed in 17 months or less. Click here for more information: https://www.sandiego.edu/business/graduate/ms-supply-chain-management/