EU - PERISCOPE - Purchasing Education and Research with an Innovative Sustainability Scope.

In the modern network economy, a typical industrial firm in Europe spends about 60% of their turnover on purchased components. More than half of the entire income of a firm is directly routed through to its suppliers. Hence, not only from the perspective of an individual firm but from the perspective of European competitiveness the management of the buyer-supplier interface, i.e. professional Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM), is crucial. For that, world-class training and education of purchasers are necessary. In a previous Erasmus+ strategic partnership project we empirically identified the skills characteristic for successful purchasers and developed a curriculum and a MOOC for teaching them (www.project-perfect.eu). However, since then, a new development gained unpreceded momentum, the sustainability challenge facing the global economy. Developing sustainable and innovative solutions in supply chain management design is now obligatory for businesses, not just an option. The PERISCOPE project (http://eu-periscope.essca.fr/) aims to prepare students in acquiring future PSM skills and key competencies towards innovative and sustainability solutions. In the fastchanging world, PSM employers need to keep pace with the occurring developments. Institutes for higher education need to be a step ahead of the employer needs of the future and have to face the future and prepare students for the upcoming developments i.e. sustainable developments. Within education as well as in industry there is a strong demand for directions on how to manage this change in general and how to educate and prepare the purchasing workforce in particular.