Today’s world is all about business. From your favourite brands to the companies providing, you with essential services, business is everywhere around us. It should come to no one’s surprise that one in five students in Europe choose to go to a business profile for their bachelor’s degrees. Being a more general study programme, this also allows more freedom after getting that sweet, sweet degree. But this popularity of business degrees, means that it is becoming increasingly more competitive in the job market. This is where a logistics study programme can come to the rescue.
I like to think of logistics as the practical side of business. Whether the company produces something physical or provides a service, there will always be some logistical challenges to overcome.
For people considering logistics over business, one of the reasons people opt out of following a logistics programme is the very scary term “Engineering”. The reason why this is the name of the programme is that the main focus of the profile is to teach you how to engineer a supply chain. But it is safe to say the difference between logistics engineering and any kind of other engineering is way bigger than the difference between logistics and business. In truth, the logistics engineering programme, is a more practical approach of the business programmes in my experience. This involves all the important topics of business, like finance and management training, as well as courses like stock management, lean six sigma that are sure to put you ahead of all your competitors when applying for jobs.
Another difference between the logistics programme at the HZ and many other study programmes is the ability to work with real companies. I don’t mean that once a year you get to visit a company and that’s it. I mean 4-5 company visits for each quarter, partnerships with basically every company in the region, research agreements, job fairs, etc. The exposure you get from the HZ, and especially from the Logistics Engineering programme, is far more valuable that most degrees - in my opinion. This is without mentioning projects like the Talent Innovation Pool, or T.I.P. which brings students together with companies in order to help each other. So you can be sure that if you are doing a research at the HZ you will have plenty of companies to get data from. I was a part of T.I.P in my second year and I am once again part of it in my third year. The T.I.P. project in the second year is definitely the highlight of my studies, as the project, related to logistics via trains, was very relevant to the current state of the logistics segment.
My fellow colleague and I got paired with a student from the third year at the time, and we got attend one of the most important conferences regarding intermodal transport over trains. It was the first time I felt like was part of the “adult” world and it was intoxicating. This gave me peace of mind that the degree I was working for, was not only useful, but that it will help me thrive in the modern business world.
To conclude, Logistics Engineering is more into the management and business part of supply chain rather than engineering. I hope with this blog, you will understand the difference and grow the interest to study this programme. I wish you the best of luck and hope to see you here!
Image source: Barrett Ward