new competencies and
innovations in logistics

ILI was created in Barcelona as a non-profit organisation and is financed by the Port of Barcelona and the Ministry for Development and Employment. It has run traditional face-to-face training sessions for several years from its Head Office in Barcelona and from its International Headquarters in Montevideo, Uruguay, with training centres in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Training centres are also envisaged in Colombia, Portugal and Peru. ILI is certified ISO 9001 for the whole of its training operation.

ILI developed E-learning in 2001 in order to reach a wider public that is both spread out geographically and has little free time to study. The level of responsibility varies according to the courses on offered (from beginners to master's level).

ILI has 43 tutors, for both face-to-face training and E-learning. The tutors work according to their domain of expertise and ILI says that there are no particular problems involved in getting the tutors to work on-line (they are between 30 to 50 years old). The services provided by the tutors include using the distance learning platform, follow-up of learners, tutoring via e-mail, up-dating course materials.

The tutor can follow the progress of the learner through a system of connection statistics. He can contact the learner by e-mail if the latter has not shown signs of connecting with the learning system. The tutor takes part in the forum and the chats, and provides one-to-one tutoring through answering the learner's questions put to him by e-mail. ILI considers the quality of active tutoring it provides as one of the principal strengths of its system and the key to the success of its e-learning project.

ILI has set up a series of 12 courses lasting from 7 hours (introduction to logistics) to 380 hours (for the Master), made up of modules. Here is the list of courses on line:

• Diploma of High Technician in Complete Logistics.
• Team management and decision making.
• Diploma High Technician in complete logistics (Masters y Diplomas).
• Management of total quality.
• Management of company's communication.
• Initiation to transport.
• Industrial logistics, production.
• Reversed logistics.
• Logistics for non-logisticians.
• Logistics and industrial outsourcing.
• Tertiarisation, logistics services (subcontracting).
• IInternational trade terminals, the incoterms.

Each module lasts approximately 30 or 40 theoretical training hours and includes a range of training services on line, namely:

• Course guide (methodology).
• Course material.
• Chat.
• Forum.
• Exercises (open questions).
• Automatic testing (multiple choice question).
• FAQ.
• Case studies.
• Supplementary learning resources.
• Links to useful websites.

It is an exchange of competences from different countries concerning logistics and its evolution. It is a means to be aware of the different tendencies, evolutions and novelties of the sector and to be ready in order to react immediately. The contents of some courses is presented below.

These two curricula show the different activities of an operation planner in a supply chain management. And thanks to the interrelation with others in other countries, these trainees can easily exchange ideas on their jobs, functions, tasks and resolution of problems in their logistics life. They instantly integrate notions they learn in the curriculum for their active life.

As people have little time to study, ILI decided to settle a specific system in order to avoid drop-out. The registration can last two years at the maximum (after this time limit, the student must pay again and his validated modules expire). During this period, the learner can interrupt his studies whilst retaining the benefit of marks gained and modules already completed.

The on-line training sessions are available on a dedicated distance learning platform, created to ILI's specifications by a sub-contractor in Barcelona (2½ years' work). The course contents is presented mostly in text format (PDF) using video-streaming, which means that the learner starts to see the contents before it has finished being downloaded.

A total of 130 distance learners have followed the courses in the three years since they were set up, with between 15 and 20 learners per group. The rate of consultation of the courses is at present 35,000 to 45,000 screen pages per month. The 40-hour module is considered as the most suitable in terms of length of study time and of price. ILI gives commercial reduction in the case of students who continue studying by participating in another course. Students are marked according to their answers to the exercises, multiple choice questions, case studies and the forum.

ILI is engaged in formalising this collective force in the learning communities by creating an ILI Club as from March 2004. This aims at sustaining the group dynamics beyond the end of the training course. In this way, the training system opens up the possibility of setting up a collaborative work tool for the development of logistics managers' competences, based on practical case studies encountered in their real work situations. In particular, this collaborative tool corresponds to a desire expressed by Latin American logistics managers to benefit from the European logistics experience and acquire their know-how. The potential commercial and professional benefits are obvious for European logistics providers interested in the Latin-American market.