Specialist logistics roles: planning, dispatch and warehouse management

Where the operational layer ends and the specialist one begins

The boundary is best drawn by who carries out the plan and who creates it. A warehouse worker, a materials handler, a picking operative or a shipping operative works to a brief the system and the shift bring them. A dispatcher, a planner or a warehouse manager assembles that brief, changes it during the day and carries its consequences. The operational roles have pages of their own; this page deals only with the layer above them.

The difference shows up as soon as the position is briefed. For an operational role it is enough to describe the workplace, the shift pattern and the physical demands. For a specialist role the responsibility has to be described: what volume, how many people, which systems, what decision-making authority, and what is supposed to happen when the plan and reality part company.

Which roles make up this layer

Titles differ from company to company, but the content of the roles recurs. In a brief it is therefore better to describe the responsibility than the title — the same title means something different in a small warehouse and in a distribution centre.

The Czech national occupations register describes occupations and their usual requirements, and is a suitable starting point where a brief needs clarifying.

The roles that recur, whatever they are called:

• Dispatcher — runs the daily flow of vehicles and consignments and decides in real time when the plan stops holding
• Transport planner — builds routes and runs, consolidates orders, and watches load utilisation and the fit with time windows
• Shipping coordinator — holds the handovers between picking, checking and clearing the carrier
• Warehouse shift supervisor — responsible for staffing the shift, the pace, the quality and the handover to the shift that follows
• Warehouse manager — responsible for the operation as a whole: capacity, stock, equipment, people and cost
• Supply specialist — watches the availability of material or goods, reorder levels, and communication with suppliers
• Customs declarant — prepares and lodges customs documents and keeps track of the procedures for consignments outside the EU customs territory
• WMS specialist — administers the warehouse system, its processes, its master data and the outputs used for management

Working with systems as a real selection criterion

For this layer, working with systems is one of the few criteria selection can honestly verify. It is not about the brand of WMS or ERP named in a CV. What decides is depth: the work of someone who only confirms tasks in the system differs from that of someone who creates master data, sets putaway rules, resolves stock discrepancies and can get a usable basis for a decision out of the system.

This is verified by questions about situations, not about the names of modules. Transferability between systems tends to be high for an experienced person who understands the logic of the process; knowledge of one particular system without that understanding, by contrast, is over-valued in advertisements and needlessly narrows the field.

What to ask about:

• What they did in the system themselves, and what somebody else did after them
• How they handled a difference between the system stock and the physical stock, and who approved the correction
• What role they had in the stocktake, and what changed after it
• Which data from the system they followed regularly, and what decisions they took on the basis of it
• Whether they went through an implementation or a reconfiguration of the system, and what specifically was theirs

Customs work and consignments outside the EU customs territory

Some logistics operations manage without customs work; others rest on it. Where goods cross the boundary of the EU customs territory, you need someone who can prepare and lodge customs documents, work with customs procedures and representation, and keep track of the associated documentation. That competence is usually tied closely to a particular type of goods and to the direction of flow, which narrows the pool of suitable people further.

Specific conditions, the scope of representation, deadlines and fees are not stated here — customs rules derive from EU legislation and its Czech implementation, and are to be verified with the Czech customs administration. For a brief, what matters is describing which procedures and which directions of flow the person will actually handle; without that, CVs cannot sensibly be compared.

Planning under instability, and the interface with the operation

Planning roles in logistics differ from planning in manufacturing in how fast the inputs change: a delayed delivery, a cancelled carrier, missing people on a shift, an exceptional order. The qualification does not show on a calm day but at the moment the plan stops holding. In selection it is therefore worth having the candidate describe a specific day when the plan fell apart: what they did first, whom they informed, what they gave up, and on what basis they decided.

The other half of the role is the interface with the operation. Both the dispatcher and the shift supervisor stand between the plan and the people who carry it out, and the brief has to be intelligible to a shift working at high pace, part of which joined recently. A shift supervisor is moreover often in the position of a managerial employee within the meaning of the Czech Labour Code — that is, where other employees are subordinated to them and they assign and organise their work; that position also carries responsibility for compliance with occupational health and safety rules in the section entrusted to them. That is a different responsibility from coordination, and it is worth naming it in the profile.

Why this layer is thin on the market

Every warehouse has many operational roles and only a few specialist ones — warehouse management, dispatch, planning, system administration. The competence moreover forms over time inside a particular operation rather than at school, so the people who have it are usually not looking for work and do not respond to advertisements.

No figures on the availability of these occupations are stated here; labour market data are published by the Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Czech Labour Office and the Czech Statistical Office.

There are therefore two realistic routes, and they are usually combined: promotion from within the operational layer, and approaching people who currently work elsewhere. With promotion from within, what decides is whether you can give the person time and support for what they have not done before — planning, dealing with carriers, leading people. Formal qualification can be added through the system of professional qualifications, whose standards are maintained by the Czech national qualifications register.

Do not estimate a pay range and do not take one from other companies’ advertisements. Publicly available data on earnings by occupation is provided by the Czech average earnings information system; this page states no amounts.