Wilson, MarkChilderhouse, P2018-06-082014-02-11https://hdl.handle.net/10182/9555This report was commissioned by Agri One Ltd, a joint venture company between Massey and Lincoln Universities, with the purpose of growing educational opportunities and knowledge dissemination between universities and the Agribusiness sector of New Zealand. Hence, the primary audiences for this report are agribusiness leaders and managers, government policy makers and also University Councils and senior management down to Faculty level. In order to gain an appreciation of the customer’s perspective we conducted interviews with senior managers and executives from a wide range of New Zealand agribusinesses, associated service providers and government agencies. There is consensus on the potential for supply chain management skills to add real value to New Zealand’s agribusiness. Overall, the informants desire technically capable people that can interface collaboratively with fellow employees and also other firms in the supply chain. However, there is a distinct skill gap between supply chain graduates and what industry demands from its supply chain professionals. Employers are reluctant to provide comprehensive education for their own staff relying instead on the labour market to provide the graduates with the right skills (buy instead of make). Yet, a number also mentioned the necessity of retraining graduates on commencement. Most firms mentioned affordability and capacity to absorb absences as key educational constraints. The most preferred method of providing staff training is 2-3 day short courses. Discussions around engagement produced some interesting results that highlight a number of areas for universities to consider. Summarizing the areas of industry dissatisfaction with universities we note that a large number of respondents felt universities provided a poor level of service to industry. The graduates are poorly prepared for the workplace and the research is overly theoretical. Employers often sourced supply chain education from overseas providers rather than local universities. The research undertaken by domestic academic staff is of limited value to them directly and all too often internationally focused. They do not ask academics to perform consultancy work as they are too slow and typically not well respected in the industry. The courses at New Zealand universities are too theoretical and of limited value to solve their current problems at hand. Despite these perceived shortcomings a number of the respondents were willing to attempt to build cooperative relationships, mainly relationally based, with universities to drive productivity gains. Very encouragingly three spin off projects have been initiated as a consequence of this investigation (section 7.3).50 pagesensupply chain managmentagribusinessskill gapsupply chain educationReportANZSRC::130108 Technical, Further and Workplace EducationANZSRC::130213 Vocational Education and Training Curriculum and PedagogyANZSRC::150309 Logistics and Supply Chain Management