This past fall, Leanware embarked on a three-part lecture tour to visit schools that provide education in in-house logistics. The tour kicked off in Tampere on 25/9, continued in Kotka on 16/10 and culminated in Jyväskylä on 4/11. The idea for a school tour was born late last year when we decided to invest in the future of logistics competence as a Christmas present for our customers.
At the first lecture of the tour in Tampere, Pekka Saarelainen introduced students of vocational college Tredu to the in-house logistics process. The lecture went over logistics megatrends, the costs and streamlining opportunities of the in-house logistics process and technical solutions for warehouse management. The audience comprised of students of all ages who did not shy away from posing some hard-hitting questions. The students were particularly interested in how the new automation solutions are going to affect the employment situation. Pekka remarked that logistics is the one thing that—unlike manufacturing—cannot be outsourced abroad, which means that changes in the industry will mostly affect only how the work is carried out.
Each lecture of the tour concluded with a demo of a warehouse management system where students could try their hand at warehouse work by controlling a miniature warehouse model with the LeanwareWMS system. Schools have the opportunity to acquire this miniature model and management system for use in teaching. We have also begun the first LeanwareWMS delivery into a full-sized teaching warehouse.
The tour continued on the XAMK campus in Kotka, where students from the university of applied sciences XAMK and vocational colleges KSAO and EKAMI gathered to learn about warehousing. We examined how a warehouse management system can comprehensively control the warehouse process and how this relates to the principles of Lean. We also looked at the principles of dynamic warehousing and weighed in on the benefits of different picking strategies. The students listened intently, and although their ages, schools, years of education and levels of work experience were diverse, the topics had something to offer for everybody.
The last lecture of the tour was presented by our CEO Janne Viinikkala. He introduced students at the university of applied sciences JAMK to the evaluation of the efficiency of the warehouse process and the management of streamlining. The lecture also covered different automation solutions and related investments. Janne described how his audience immediately perked up after he noted that those were the tools that they would be working with in the future.
Our visits at the schools were met with enthusiasm. All the tour stops garnered positive feedback, and the lectures seemed to hold the attention of the students well. There were also requests to continue the tour. While this particular tour has now come to its conclusion, we will consider embarking on a similar tour next year.
