/TL_wk4_Minutes_EN

Consulting

Minutes of the high-level seminar on logistics training needs in Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) in the framework of the development of the LOGISMED network Venue rd

The seminar was held on the afternoon of the 23 of November 2011 in Barcelona.

Attendants It gathered 25 experts in logistics and in logistics training and education coming from diverse Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) and EU member countries. #

Person

Entity

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Khaled Hanafy George Wadie Azzedine Doukkali Abdelkhalek Lahyani Yves Guillo Wissem Gaida Majoub Ali Aouabed Menouer Boughedaoui Khaled Al-Sahili Mario Sassine Muna Hamdi Ramon Garcia Saki Aciman Laia Mercadé Elena Campelo Manuel Fernández Habda Rahhali Mateu Turró Marcello Scalisi Salvatore d'Alfonso Jean-François Arvis Charles Kirby Mustapha El Khayat Nicolau Brosa Lluís Ferrer

AASTMT - Arab Academy DAMCO (Maersk Group) Office Formation Profes. et Promotion Travail (OFPPT) DISLOG Vectorys Ministry of Transport University of Blida - Algeria Ecole Nationale Politecnicque - Algeria University an Najah - Nablus - Palestine USEK - Lebanon ITS Arab Centro Español Logística CEL) CETMO CETMO EIB EIB EIB UPC Unimed Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) World Bank Idom Idom - AMLOG Idom Idom

Agenda The session began with a welcome message from Manuel Fernandez. Following his introductory speech, Mateu Turró presented the LOGISMED initiative, focusing on its virtues for regional integration. He also described the main conclusions of the seminar held in November 2010, which has been used as a starting point for the current LOGISMEDTA technical assistance. Then, the seminar itself followed. It comprised three clearly differentiated parts: 1. Presentation of the conclusions from the desk research and field missions 2. Validation of initial conclusions and identified issues 3. Validation of proposed action lines Conclusions from the seminar will be used as a key input to build the action plan in the upcoming stages of the project.

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1. Presentation of the conclusions from the desk research and field missions Mr. Kirby presented the LOGISMEDTA technical assistance and the objectives of the initial stage of the project. He pointed out the need of building a common framework for the profession and briefly described the proposal made by IDOM, which is based on the NOVALOG initiative, and a general classification by levels.

Also different reference models were portrayed (i.e. USA, UK, Spain and ELA) as possible “to be” situations for beneficiary MPCs. At that point, Mr. Arvis mentioned that the USA and UK models might not necessarily provide the best benchmarks, as the most important logistics companies are based in continental Europe. Hence, to his understanding, German and northern countries models could provide more appropriate benchmarks. Mr. Kirby agreed with this statement, but remarked that the USA and UK are however the most commonly recognized education models.

Then, the key inputs from the desk research and the field work efforts in each pilot country were presented. In general, no deep objections came up, but Mr. Doukkali pointed out that the OFPPT in Morocco, responsible for the 90% of the education courses, has its own strategy of development in the field of transport and logistics and nowadays houses more than 2,100 students. Also, Mr. Hanafy corrected the statement that in Egypt “no specific logistics offering” exists for TVET, explaining that in the context of the “Kohl-Mubarak initiative” some trainings have been set up.

When discussing the data from the three pilot countries, Mr. Boughedaoui questioned why Algeria was not included in this technical assistance. Mr. Fernandez indicated that the EIB was willing to include Algeria and other countries in the region to hold LOGISMED logistics platforms, but that they had decided to start with the countries that had shown a higher readiness. All in all, he mentioned that the EIB is ready to start conversations with the relevant ministries in Algeria on such training activities and that any support from local stakeholders in this effort would be welcomed.

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2. Validation of initial conclusions and identified issues A list of potential issues was presented and discussed. Mr. Scalisi pointed that in most cases, these issues were common to Europe and the MPCs. As a result of the discussion, new issues aroused, namely: • • •

Issue 11: Limited financing for logistics training and education efforts Issue 12: Lack of awareness on existing logistics training and education offer Issue 13: Lack of sensitivity from public administrations to logistics training and education issues

A poll was passed. Experts were asked to split 100 points over the list of issues generated according to its relevance. The results are shown in the following table and present the issues ranked by average grade. The last column shows the percentage of attendants who considered the issue relevant by giving at list one point to it.

RANKG CODE

IDENTIFIED ISSUES

Avg. Grade % of persons

1

Issue06 Limited incorporation of international best practices in education for logistics

12,6

53%

2

Issue05 Insufficient continuous education and evaluation schemes for teachers

12,6

59%

3

Issue01 Limited availability of specialized tertiary training and education offer

11,7

53%

4

Issue07 Companies do not regard education for logistics as a valuable investment

10,4

53%

5

Issue02 Limited availability of specialized TVET training and education offer

10,2

47%

6

Issue04 Tertiary education contents and methods are too detached from company needs (1)

7,9

47%

7

Issue11 Limited financing for logistics training and education efforts

7,6

35%

8

Issue03 Training and education offer not aligned w ith private sector needs

7,4

47%

9

Issue09 Logistics is not regarded as an attractive career path for young and future professionals

7,2

41%

10

Issue10 An assessment of training needs / shortages per job position has not been performed

5,0

41%

11

Issue08 Lack of appreciation of certification provided by most local education institutions

3,5

24%

12

Issue12 Lack of aw areness on existing logistics training and education offer

2,6

18%

13

Issue13 Lack of sensitivity from public administrations to logistics training and education issues

1,2

12%

(1) i.e. no "real w orld" skills, no internships, etc.

Results based on the information of 17 respondants

Table 1: Issues poll results

The first conclusion to extract is that there is no individual issue that outstands over the rest.

The first nine issues have a similar average grade that ranges from 7.2 and 12.6. Only issues # 8, 10, 12 and 13 had a clearly lower valuation according to poll results. Other outstanding facts / conclusions were: •

The top two ranked issues are related to the quality of the teacher and the teaching. In this sense, Ms. Rahhali explained as an example that in a master degree she had been enrolled in Morocco, the quality of the teachers did not reach the expected level. In fact, some of the teachers were not even logistics specialists, but had other fields of expertise such as finance.

•

The third and fifth ranked issues focus on the choice availability of the education (tertiary and TVET, respectively). There is a limited offer of courses in this area.

•

All issues received at least two votes.

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3. Validation of proposed action lines After reviewing the above issues, the working group focused on the action lines to set up to target them. Mr. Kirby explained that the overall goal of the LOGISMEDTA technical assistance is to create a pool of specialists at various levels to lead transformation in the LOGISMED network, but that further actions would also be necessary. In this sense, proposed action lines were divided in five main categories: • • • • •

Improving the offer of training by academic institutions Improving the offer of training by non-academic institutions Improving the demand for training by the professionals Improving the demand for training by the companies Improve the support of the administration

Again, two new actions lines arose from the discussion, both of them proposed by Mr. Scalisi and affecting the improvement of the training offer: • •

Developing and improving internship programs (code 1.8) Improving the relationship between private and academic sector (Code 1.9)

Mr. Scalisi also put special emphasis on the importance of communication, i.e. on properly marketing / making aware target groups of any new measure being pushed.

On launching new programs, Mr. El Khayat stated that the Ministry of Education should have as one if its duties the certification of these programs in order to avoid cases such as the Moroccan one. There, a number of master degrees in logistics have emerged very quickly in the last few years, leading to low quality programs. This has a negative impact in the sector, as the diplomas are not valued by employers. It generates as well an excessive number of students, some of which will end up unemployed.

For the certification of the LOGISMED label, Mr. Aouabed proposed the creation of a common undergraduate program across MPCs. The syllabus will be the same in the different countries, so that the homogeneity of the knowledge is guaranteed. If there is demand for it, this effort could be replicated to develop a shared master degree.

Another possible way to deploy this network was highlighted by Mr Garcia. He said that maybe an identical program is not needed, but maybe just a clear framework that ensures the homogeneity, but gives freedom to adapt the training to each country. This proposition is based on the ELA certification model.

Also, Mr. Turro argued that the idea of the creation or adaptation of LOGISMEDTA programs could be slow and difficult. At that point, he asked Mr. Aouabed and Mr. Khanafy whether the institutions they represented would be interested in developing one of those programs and the estimate time to develop it. Both showed interest and did not give too much importance on the time to set up the plan.

For Mr. Wadie, a top issue is that training and education programs for logistics are very detached from the real needs of the companies operating in the sector. To his understanding, the best option to close this gap is through more direct contact and a strengthening of the relationship between private and academic sector.

On the side of demand, Mr. Lahyani mentioned the need to attract young people to the profession. He proposed to separate the action lines for improvement of the demand of professionals in two categories: prospective professionals (students) and current professionals.

In the same sense, Mr. Turró proposed to split the need for increasing the demand from the 4

Consulting

side of the companies into industrial companies and logistic services providers. Both propositions were judged as to make sense by the group, but were not reflected in the poll for the sake of simplicity. However, they will be taken into account when setting up the action lines.

In the area of improvement of the administration support, Mr. Garcia recalled that the process is a slow, although it is a necessary one. In Europe, it was not until 2009 that logistics was officially recognised as an economy leverage tool.

After the discussion, the second poll covering the potential action lines was distributed. The results are presented in Table 2.

RANKG CODE

ACTION LINES

Avg. Grade % of persons

1

Action 1.2 Develop “train the trainers program”

15,3

71%

2

Action 4.1 Aw areness actions targeting companies

9,4

65%

3

Action 1.6 Develop certification schemes for new or existing institutions

7,1

47%

4

Action 3.1 Aw areness actions targeting prof essionals

6,8

53%

5

Action 1.1 Promote creation of new courses in existing institutions

5,9

47%

6

Action 3.2 Funding support aimed at prof essionals

5,9

41%

7

Action 4.4 Promote collaboration for courses for SME or specialized courses

5,8

47%

8

Action 1.5 Promote new specialized institutions aligned w ith demand: Continuous

5,3

35%

9

Action 4.2 Promote courses adapted to local demands

5,0

41%

10

Action 3.3 Increase value of course and certification for career development across professionals

4,4

35%

11

Action 1.7 Develop certification schemes for courses

3,8

41%

12

Action 1.9 Improve relation betw een private and academic sector

3,6

29%

13

Action 1.3 Promote new specialized institutions aligned w ith demand: TVET

3,5

24%

14

Action 4.3 Funding support aimed at companies

3,5

24%

15

Action 5.1 Aw areness actions targeting the local administration

3,5

24%

16

Action 2.2 Develop certification schemes for companies and courses

3,2

24%

17

Action 5.2 Funding support aimed at the local administration

2,9

18%

18

Action 1.8 Develop internship programs

2,6

18%

19

Action 1.4 Promote new specialized institutions aligned w ith demand: Tertiary

1,2

12%

20

Action 2.1 Promote creation and development of specialized training companies

1,2

18%

Results based on the information of 17 respondants

Table 2: Action lines poll results

In this case, the top ranked action line (i.e. develop “train the trainers program”) scores clearly above the second ranked one. It is supported by 71% of the respondents with an average grade of 15.3 points vs. the 65% mentions and 9.4 average that the second ranked action gets.

Actions ranked #2 and #4 focus on awareness actions aimed to companies and professionals, respectively, and are supported by more than half of the respondents. Action ranked #3 is related to the development of certification schemes for new or existing institutions.

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