India might become an important hub of logistics for our neighbouring countries: Professor Rajat Agrawal

Supply chains and the professionals engaged in operating them play a crucial role in managing the flow of goods and thereafter running the economy. With the explosive growth of e-commerce in the modern world and the utilisation of new technologies, such as AI and blockchain, the requirements for supply chain professionals continues to increase.

Supply chain professionals are closely involved in every single stage of the product life cycle. Beginning from material growth to manufacturing to the final delivery of the product to the consumers. The Telegraph Online Edugraph recently got into a discussion with Professor Rajat Agrawal of IIT Roorkee to get more minute insights on the subject, NEP 2020 and much more.

IIT Roorkee offers a number of different course options for students wishing to pursue Supply Chain Management. Speaking about the subject and the skills required by young professionals to succeed in the field, Prof Agrawal said, “Speaking from our country’s point of view, it is to be highlighted that around 15% of our GDP comes from the logistics sector and hence the sector has become an extremely important part of our economic growth. Fortunately, we are also witnessing a good development in our infrastructure and with this we are surely going to become an important hub for the Asian market, as well. In the near future, India might become an important hub of logistics for our neighbouring countries as well, only increasing the demand for skilled professionals in the industry.”

​​The supply chain world has been transforming drastically, in line with market dynamics throughout industries that are affected rapidly by shifts in customer and their buying-behaviour, requiring highly skilled professionals joining the field to make a difference. Throwing light on the skills required by these professionals, Prof Agrawal highlighted “I believe students willing to make a career in the field must fully understand the global business environment along with the ability to analyse the data. In the current time, more and more real time data is being generated and the market needs more of those kinds of people who are readily able to analyse data to make decisions on a real time basis. Another important thing which is happening in this industry is that now supply chain systems are becoming more responsive than ever and hence the professionals willing to enter the industry must have the ability to understand the customer preferences.”

Pursuing a career in supply chain management means going through numerous procedures, phases, people, to keep the flow of goods and services going. Therefore, it is not only important for employees to be equipped with different skills in order to work effectively but also for institutes to be prepared to deliver the latest and essential information to the students. Adding about IIT Roorkee’s initiative to deliver the best possible education, he added, “Seeing from IIT’s point of view, we are step by step becoming more liberal in our educational set up. We are also on a constant lookout for better partners to go global. For instance, we have started a programme called the e-MBA, which is a new initiative by IIT Roorkee that was not here earlier. We are now also changing our perspective as to how we can become a global university. I hope in near future many such online courses will be launched by IIT Roorkee, targeting the global students.”

Students that crack the process and join in IIT’s come with diverse backgrounds and experiences that have the potential to nurture and be a part of its ever enriching learning culture. However, to be a part of the same, they highly rely on their professors and the transformation they put forward to provide them with a positive learning environment in which they are valued and accepted. Outlining the basic initiatives taken by IIT Roorkee at present, Prof Agrawal highlighted, “At IIT now every course has the flavour of analytics, we have now started a full UG programme on data analytics and artificial intelligence. The JEE ranks for these programmes are extremely high. As an institute we are currently also focused on promoting various multidisciplinary programmes, where faculty members from different departments are taking those courses and building new programmes. Hence, these are a few of the new things that are taking place in IIT Roorkee, considering future requirements.”

The National Education Policy also referred to as NEP 2020 encourages students to choose academic paths as per their choices and aims to pave the way for flexible, lifelong learning. The Multiple Entry and Exit System is therefore one of the major cornerstones of the new policy so far as higher education is concerned. This system allows students to abandon a course and resume it later if desired. When asked about how the IIT is preparing for the same, Professor Rajat added “At the moment we at IIT Roorkee are developing various exit options, like for example in our PhD programmes we have developed the option that if a student is unable to complete their PhD and they want to leave the course midway, the institute can provide the student some kind of intermediate degree which can help them in their testimonial. Similarly, in our MTech programmes, if a student decides to discontinue their education after one year, there will be some sort of provision which can be provided to the student later. At the moment we have created a provision for multiple exit, but the lateral entry system is not very common in our IIT functioning and no such rules for the same exist as of now.”

Supply chain management is a system used to meet the end to end customer demand for products or services. As explained by our expert, the profession is highly profitable and has great potential for India, its neighbouring countries and organisations looking forward to hiring SCM experts for scaling their businesses in future.