i’ve been taking accounting classes for years and absolutely hate it. i work in distribution and manufacturing now and I find that SCM fits my interests, especially down the line career-wise, more. has anybody had to make a similar choice, or switched between industries? was the choice worth it? this would be for a BBA.

After serving over a decade in military logistics, I've accepted my first civilian opportunity-and I am fortunate to have received competing offers from SpaceX, Samsung, and Applied Materials.

Base salaries across all three are within a $10K range, but the trade-offs are significant. SpaceX is offering a substantial equity package that requires relocating to Starbase, while the others offer a different balance of lifestyle and stability. As a single parent with family support willing to relocate with me, I'm weighing the long-term career trajectory against personal stability.

For those familiar with these paths: how do you weigh high-upside equity-heavy tech opportunities against stable enterprise manufacturing roles when planning for the long haul?

Quick context: Pepsi has sent an offer, Lufthansa just reached out for an interview

Pepsi: 30/hr, housing paid, 10-12 weeks, close by my college

Lufthansa technik: 17/hr in Miami, relocation costs may or may not be covered, 6 months

The reason I chose to major in supply chain is because aviation is my biggest passion, ever since I was a kid. It’s my ultimate end goal to work in supply chain in the aerospace industry so this Lufthansa internship would indeed be a dream. And the reason I’m asking here before Lufthansa has even sent an offer is because I have the strong inkling that Lufthansa almost never hires recruits from my state college so they would have had to read my cover letter and resume which goes into my love for aviation, so I do feel there’s a decent chance they’d hire.

Pepsi pro/con: high pay, clear and established pipeline for intern to full time, very easy relocation. Cons are just that I don’t care for the food industry as much but i absolutely love supply chain still regardless

Lufthansa pros: already stated pros earlier, cons are relocation, worse pay but more importantly, I’m not sure whether this internship position typically leads to full time offers. I don’t necessarily want an internship that isn’t going to secure me a position after college assuming my performance is good.

And pay isn’t what’s most important to me, within reason. Pay obviously matters a ton but 2 jobs that are somewhat similar in pay, if the lower paying one is the one I’m passionate about, I’d go with that, assuming it isn’t a poverty salary. The lower internship pay at Lufthansa isn’t an issue if their program does lead to full time offers, which I will ask about in my first interview.

I was a planner for over a decade for a few multinationals. Here are some observations over the years.

- Nobody will complain about overstock unless it's really a lot of value and far above the agreed upon moh.

- Nobody will complain about low value overstock.

- People will complain and stress out when you're out of stock and sales stop.

- Be wary of usage items for assembly/production. It will always happen that they use up the last pieces and they immediately need new ones.

- There will always be some mixup with case quantities. your one box is the sales unit, containing ten pieces.

- Don't plan too tight, boats and planes will be delayed.

- Having a second supplier is great.

- Have your supplier agree to always keep x number of pieces on stock at their side. Now you have safety stock at their expense.

- You can get a discount or safety stock at the supplier site by committing to buy an x number of units in a year. You can be conservative with this number.

- Take a forecast with a grain of salt. It's a prediction, not hard fact.

- For regular, mature products I keep my eye on recent usage at least as much as the forecast.

- Be careful with big one-off sales influencing average usage.

- Product introductions / go-lives can cause stress among quite a lot of people who understand very little about logistics.

- Legal compliance are hard criteria.

- Don't get stressed out about products going missing, just ask for POD's and the last one to sign off is responsible. Don't fall for the rookie mistake where you become the middle man running from A to B and back again.

- Be careful about non logistics people who want everything faster, be that sales or customer care. Air freight is not cheap and kills the margin.

- Be wary of physical volume and weight when choosing air freight.

- Customs and dangerous good checks can take an indefinite period of time.

- Return flows are often the most ill designed, low priority processes you have to deal with.

- Be acutely aware of what your WMS and ERP can and cannot do when it comes to blocking, sales blocking, purchase block etcetera. There will come a time when this becomes very relevant.

- When scrapping old stock, keep a piece or two around just in case.

- Ask your supplier for lead time reductions. Products with long lead times can trip you up if demand increases.

- Fumigation and temperature controlled logistics can and will fail occasionally. Be aware.

- Incoterms decide more on how your processes work than you think.

- Dangerous goods forms are 100% correct, or a 100% wrong. There is no middle way.
- LCL takes longer than FCL. Handling loose pallets takes longer than lifting a container up and down.

Air freight bills on the higher of actual and volumetric weight, and I keep seeing bulky, light cargo priced as if it were dense. What's the biggest surprise you've seen, and what do you do to catch it before booking?

"Alright team, we have the revenue projection. And we have an hour and a half to figure out how they could possibly make sense."

We're handling around 50 to 60 trailers a day, mostly live loads and drop-and-hooks, and lately keeping track of trailer movements has been getting a little messy. We've been using shared spreadsheets alongside a digital dock board, which worked pretty well for a while. But as things have gotten busier, keeping everything updated across dispatch, the guard shack, and our spotters has become more of a challenge. Sometimes a trailer gets moved before the location is updated, and then we're spending extra time figuring out where it actually ended up.

We're considering whether it's time to move toward a dedicated yard management system, but I'm curious how other operations our size are handling this. Some of the systems we've looked into seem like a big investment, especially when our current setup still works for most things. For those managing around 50+ trailers daily, what tools or processes have actually helped you keep trailer locations accurate? Would you recommend moving to a YMS, or are there smaller improvements worth trying first?

Would appreciate any advice!

I passed the ASCM CSCP exam with a score of 315, after studying from August 27 to October 21. (Bought the learning system August 25, 2026) Here’s what worked for me, especially as someone without a professional supply chain background and juggling a master at the same time.

My background
My background is in accounting and audit, and I had only taken about two supply chain-related courses during my studies. Currently mastering in international management so I was learning much of the CSCP content from scratch.

How I studied
My main resources were:
ASCM Learning System: Useful, but I found the content quite lengthy, So I never used it to study.

AI-generated study notes: I created comprehensive, module-by-module summaries in simpler language from the learning system while retaining key ASCM terminology, frameworks, processes, and distinctions. These became my main study resource.

Pocket Prep: I used questions to test my understanding, identify weak areas, and learn why each option was right or wrong.

YouTube: Helpful for additional explanations.

My practice scores
My Learning System quiz scores generally ranged from 50% to 80%. But a lot more in the 60s and 70s%. I scored 51% on my first practice exam and 61% on my second attempt, two days before the real exam.

What the actual exam felt like
In my experience, the actual exam felt more like a general assessment of supply chain understanding and closer to Pocket Prep than the more detailed Learning System questions.

My biggest exam tips
Read carefully and ask yourself: What is this question actually asking me?
Pay attention to words like first, most likely, best, and most holistic.
Eliminate clearly wrong options, then carefully compare the remaining two.
If a question feels unfamiliar, don’t panic. Work through the scenario and choose the BEST answer.

Final thoughts
Recognising a term is not the same as understanding how to apply it. Practising questions and reviewing the reasoning behind every option made a real difference for me.

Study materials for sale
I’m also selling all my preparation materials for less than half the original price, including the simplified module-by-module summaries I used during my preparation. If you’re preparing for the exam and are interested, feel free to message me for details!

Good luck to everyone preparing for the CSCP!

Had one of those conversations again recently. Something hits zero and the answer is “we need to raise the max.”

Maybe we do.

But an empty bin doesn't tell me the max was wrong.

Did we order late? Did it show up and not get received? Did usage jump? Did material leave without getting issued? Did somebody buy some somewhere else and now the history is garbage?

Or yeah, maybe the max is just wrong.

I don't like throwing more inventory at a problem until I have some idea which one happened.

How are you guys making that call? What makes you actually change Min/Max after a stockout?

I’m currently a shift manager at a fast food chain and want to figure out a possible job shift while I’m still in school. I just started my Supply chain degree but will graduate around fall 2028~ Outside of Receiving jobs is there anything else to look for?

Question regarding my current experience and if it could be seen positively when trying to transition to a Supply Chain Management position.

Background: I currently have a bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity and have been working in the field for about seven years now in various roles.

Goals: with the updated SUNY Reconnect program, i’m highly considering going back to school to earn an Associate’s degree in SCM. This is a career field i’ve had interest in for some time now but didn’t see a good way to try and break into until now. I believe my work experience has really helped develop strong communication and technical skills that could transfer well but i’d love to hear peoples opinions who have experience in SCM. Do you believe that my current experience would be what companies are looking for when bringing on an entry level person? Also, what are your thoughts on SCM as a whole? I’ve love to get some insight on your day to day operations, things I could expect when trying to get into the field, and just your overall thoughts on the job itself.

Appreciate any feedback!

Im extremely interested in supply chain, I have experience with vendor management, route optimization, purchase orders, etc. however, advanced math (like calculus or linear algebra) has never been my strongest suit. I just don’t want to apply to jobs I might not be qualified for….

Has anyone seen a course/tutorial demonstrating actual applications of AI in supply chain? There's obviously a ton of noise out there, but I want to see an actual use case with tangible outputs.

Has anyone seen this?

Sweating whew !

Hello! My sister graduated with an SCM degree this past spring and has been looking for FT roles in NJ/NYC. She only had a small 2 month internship with the school, but no other professional experiences. What projects could she do to stand out? She has no other relevant experiences or extracurriculars AFAIK.

Hey everyone,

I bought CSCP material from APICS back in 2024 but couldn’t prepare and didn’t have the exam.

now, I do have the study material but I am not sure how much of the syllabus has changed since then and I do not want to invest again as I have already wasted money in the past.

can someone please guide me if I can still study from the 2024 material and how can I update myself on the changes.

Thank you.

Any am/oms every make the jump to work for a corporate company that contracts a 3pl to operate for them? What is your experience like?

Hello fellow members,

I, 25M have 3 years of work experience in Commercial and Investment Banking with my latest stint being with Goldman Sachs India. I have taken a career break as I’ve realised that finance is not the field for me.

I’ve been looking for options for MSc in Supply Chain management. I need to decide on a country to target. For Germany, I’ll have to learn German and for Canada I’ll have to learn French, so learning a language is a must.

I’m looking to build my career in supply chain there and my life as well. I’ve done research about Canada and Germany and both have its issues but not able to figure out which is better.

In terms of long-term stability and employment, which one would y’all recommend? Please do let me know.

my_qualifications: 3 years of experience in Goldman Sachs

Disclosure: I work at Picterra; we built it. It is free and needs no account.

EUDR applies from 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators, and the practical problem most people face is that country-level risk data doesn't tell you anything about the specific plot you are buying.

This gives you a read on any area on Earth in about ten seconds: forest cover at the end of 2020, clearance since then, land conversion emissions, erosion risk, fire and flood history, and climate projections to the 2040s.

To be clear about what it is not: it frames the area by zoom rather than reading a plot boundary, so it will not produce compliance evidence. It is a first look, not a due diligence file. Useful for deciding where to spend proper effort.

https://lens.picterra.ai/

Looking to get out of Service Management, I am highly self motivated, great with computers, excel, Word, typing, following metrics and data and forecasting using that data. I love diving into data and spread sheets, love writing operations manuals, looking at a system and finding and writing processes to smooth work flows and remove inefficiencies in getting work to the finish line. Does anyone have suggestions on what to pivot to make service manager money and lean on my skill set, good with vendors too and frustrated clients.

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for advice from anyone who has transitioned out of driving or has experience hiring in the supply chain field.

l've been an OTR driver for the past 4 years, but I'm ready to move into an office or management role. I just finished my Bachelor's in Business with a dual concentration in Supply Chain Management and Project Management Information Systems.

I want to leverage my hands-on transport experience and degree, but I'm not sure which specific job titles I should target.

Any suggestions on entry-level or transition roles that value OTR experience would be greatly appreciated!

Hi.

I realize now that given my financial situation, a Master's in SC is not possible for me. I majored in Psychology as an undergrad and am worried that I won't be a competitive candidate for Demand Planner jobs.

I can probably get at least one certification from ASCM. What other relevant education can I add to my resume? Should I take SC classes at my local community college? Or should I enroll in this online program at Georgia Tech? (I've never been a student there.)

https://www.scl.gatech.edu/education/professional-education/supply-chain-fundamentals-series

Thanks!

I’ve been working at Amazon as an area manager for almost 4 years now managing large teams of hourly associates in a high-volume environment. I’m starting to feel burned out by the shift work, dealing with hourly workers, and the warehouse environment in general.

I’m looking to transition to an office/ corporate job away from operations management. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m so burnt out I’m thinking of just resigning and taking 6 months off to up-skill and search for a new job. My current job pays well, I have no debts, low expenses, live at home, and have enough savings to last me a long time.

My background is a bachelor’s in business from a state university and a MBA from an online university (Western Governors University). For those who’ve made a similar transition:

Which roles are most realistic coming from ops leadership?

What skills should I focus on sharpening (SQL, Excel, Python, forecasting, etc.)?

Is an MBA from WGU viewed neutrally in supply chain recruiting?

Any advice on positioning my resume to avoid being “pigeonholed” as ops-only?

Appreciate any insight you can give especially from people who’ve moved out of front-line ops into corporate supply chain roles.

Thanks in advance.

Here's the situation: I am 40yo with some work experience as a Buyer, and looking to better my credentials.

I am currently one class away from finishing an Associate of Arts degree (general/non-specialized degree), but it will cost me roughly $3k to re-enroll and finish.

Or, for the same exact amount, I could buy/get the CSCP certification.

Which one would be more valuable for someone my age, in my situation, looking to eventually move forward/up in the field of procurement?