• Understand how to programme

manage the supply chain processes.

• Implement projects effectively

and efficiently.

Cranefield College provides focused, job-relevant education to meet private and public organisations’ performance needs.

O

ver the past decade Cranefield College has positioned its academic

qualifications best to serve the leadership and management needs of organisations in both the private and public sectors. Public sector organisations include local, provincial, and central government, and parastatals. Cranefield’s academic qualifications focus on value chain management, which includes the organisation’s supply chain activities, its project management portfolios, and the appropriate leadership behaviours that lead to strategic success. The human talent and organisational behaviour dimensions are comprehensively integrated in all courses. In the current and rapidly changing global economic dispensation, private and public organisations find it difficult to maintain and to improve their levels of

90 Management Today | August 2011

operational productivity and strategic benefits. The above- mentioned approach uniquely positions Cranefield College as a graduate academic institution that addresses the leadership and performance management needs of profit- and non-profit- driven organisations. Of the most important knowledge that students gain from the Cranefield College graduate courses are to:

• Effectively lead private and public organisations.

• Integrate human talent and behaviour into operations effectively.

• Utilise customer relationship management to enhance service delivery.

• Achieve organisational performance and continuous improvement through a quality management system.

• Utilise the balanced scorecard to achieve strategic objectives.

Employers need job-relevant education and training to improve the competence of employees and to provide them with the necessary skills to be of immediate benefit to the organisation. This must also take account of the rapidly changing needs of organisations in the new economy. What employees learn in the academic environment today, they must be able to implement in their work contexts tomorrow. Without these practical incentives, it does not make any sense for employers to invest in education. Where benefits accrue from focused, job-relevant education, employers find it acceptable that employees are absent from work, as long as the time away is productive and minimised. Cranefield College is ISO 9001 certified and subject to stringent quality measurements. The most frequent comments emanating from the quality assurance appraisals confirm that it conforms to the above- mentioned criteria. Due to the modular structure of Cranefield’s academic courses, students spend only one day per month away from work. Between class contact days, syndicate groups meet outside work hours to discuss their practical case studies. The average age of a Cranefield College student is 38 years.

Students receive strategy- centred leadership and management education based on project, programme,