Logistics Day Limburg 2013, Steel-Solutions represented.

Steel-solutions B.V.

The 10^th of October 2013 was the day of “Logistics Day Limburg”. This years’ theme was the Logistics Labour Market. This makes it no coincidence that the province launches it “Human Capital Agenda Logistics Limburg”. An interesting event which was visited by Steel-Solutions Operational Director Gijs van Lier. The location this year was theatre “De Maaspoort” in Venlo.

There was a busy schedule for this interesting day. There was a large collaboration with schools from the entire region that provide logistics studies. Fonthys Hogeschool, Zuyd Hogeschool, Open University and the Maastricht University all participated.

The day started off with several presentations, concerning a wide range of topics. “The international chain of fresh products”, “Sustainable operational excellence, communities of practice”, “Fleet management and telematics services” and “Fresh and green retailing, consumer behaviour in the supply chain”.

After a lunch, the program continued with a short clip, made by Logistics students. Something that stood out in this clip was the small amount of female students in the Logistics branch, one to be exact. The only girl that was displayed on the big screen, made Steel-Solutions proud. It was none other than Steel-Solutions’ own Logistics intern Tanita Kawade. She has been an intern at Steel-Solutions B.V.  since February 2012 and is motivated to learn everything there is to know about logistics and warehousing. Her ambition is to grow into a warehouse manager and she is well on her way at Steel-Solutions.

Than it was time for the launch of “Human Capital Agenda Logistics Limburg” including a panel discussion. After that, representatives of several HCA projects shared their knowledge. Some of the on-going projects concerned;

-          Customs and trace compliance in the inland.

-          Orientation program for school dropouts; a program which enables better throughput of human capital between jobs and study programs.

-          Exploiting and maintaining human capital

-          Strengthening (eu)regional knowledge.

Iinteresting project that focus on logistics of goods and knowledge and the development of human capital, without which a logistics company could not exist. And the market situation indicates that this human capital is not being used to its full potential. A lot of truck drivers are sitting at home, waiting for the economy to rise again. When that happens, there will be too little people to work in the logistics sector. “Logistics is not sexy enough” is the message. The image of logistics should change so that people are motivated to work in the branch. The first changes have already been made in the base of the (future) work, the education. Schools realise how important it is that enough people get motivated to satisfy the future needs of Logistics. Steel-Solutions has acknowledged this for years. For many years we have been working with study-projects  for youngsters and do we offer an interesting and challenging place for graduates. It is good to see that Steel-Solutions is contributing already to making Logistics more interesting for future graduates and has learned a lot from this day. All in all it was an interesting day to attend for Steel-Solutions.