Day school for distributors

By Staff -- Industrial Distribution, 4/1/2000

College Station, Tex.-Texas A&M University designed its new Certificate in Distribution Management program to grow top-performing sales representatives into distribution branch managers and manufacturing sales representatives into distribution consultants.

Brian Reynolds, the associate director of the Thomas A. Read Center for Distribution Research and Education, likened the program to a mini-MBA in distribution.

Five four-and-a-half day modules, designed for participants with some industry experience, provide intense training. Starting this month, two sets of the five modules are being offered.

"If you ask most people in the industry, the greatest challenge is finding, hiring and keeping good people," Reynolds said. "This program is an investment in the person and in the future of the company."

Participants who need area-specific training may sign up for individual courses. Topics are as follows: sales and operations management, improving distribution profitability and customer-focused marketing, understanding distribution processes, distributor inventory management for the 21st century, and understanding and implementing a value-based continuous improvement process.

Designing the curriculum was the final step in a year-long Read Center effort to tap into the needs of industry. During that time, Reynolds attended conferences and met individually with industry leaders. He learned that companies going through mergers and acquisitions are concerned about developing a pool of talent to meet changing needs.

"For a company on the growth-acquisition trail, it's a matter of how do you [train] staff and prepare a group of people," Reynolds said.

Other companies must train staff for the next area of responsibility on a typical career track. Managers coming up through the ranks may not have a background in inventory control, asset management and human resource issues, Reynolds said.

"It's not unusual for a company to take one of its best salespeople and say Okay, you'll be the new branch manager."

Larry Cleve, program manager for training and education in global sales for Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee, Wis., is sending 13 sales representatives to the program this year. All of Cleves' sales representatives have an engineering background, but not all have formal industry training.

"I end up with a skill gap between those who have an industrial distribution undergraduate degree and those who do not," Cleve said.

Cleve said Texas A&M's reputation is a motivating factor for his staff, who must make sizable time commitments to attend the courses.

"We were looking for a partnership with some entity to provide this training," Cleve said. "In dealing with Texas A&M my people were motivated to go as opposed to a vendor class."

Each module is limited to about 60 people to allow for maximum interaction among participants. Students also learn from each other by working on case studies together.

"It's an interactive learning environment with people from the distribution and manufacturing side and at different levels of experience," Reynolds said.

Each participant will also work on a project directly related to his or her organization such as dead inventory or low profitability. The requirement was adopted to provide tangible, immediate value for the person and company, Reynolds said.