Supply Chain
Technology Podcast

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Supply chain, real-time visibility, disruptions, shortages, resiliency, COVID-19 impact, diversification, procurement, transparency, digitalization, cognitive overload, sustainability, collaboration, technology, supply chain heroes.

SPEAKERS

Scott Mears, Mark Baxa

Scott Mears  00:00

You throw a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Mark Baxa  00:02

Let’s do it.

Scott Mears  00:03

Supply chain heroes need more real time visibility?

Mark Baxa  00:07

Thumbs up.

Scott Mears  00:08

All supply chain heroes support Manchester United.

Mark Baxa  00:11

Repeat that again.

Scott Mears  00:21

Welcome to the Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. Scott Mears here Global Field Marketing Manager at Roambee and one of the hosts of the Supply Chain Tech Podcast. We thank you for joining us today. In this episode, we speak with Mark Baxa. Mark is the President and CEO of CSCMP. We discuss the current supply chain news, trends and new technology out there. How do we deal with the impact and pressure from war, viruses and everything else that is creating shortages and unpredictable disruptions in the world today? We answer the pressing question is dealing with shortages the new normal, and what technology and software is out there to help us predict and be more agile to deal with shortages out of our control. Hi Mark. It’s great to have you on today.

Mark Baxa  01:18

Great to be here. It’s a pleasure. Thank you.

Scott Mears  01:20

Thank you so much. It was wonderful because we met last year at CSCMP Edge, and it was a very exciting event for us, because we had that we were battling for the Supply Chain Innovation Award. And it was really wonderful seeing all the presentations and all the different rooms, because there are so many rooms and so many amazing talks going on. And we were so glad to have met you on that stage and we got that runners up award. We were chuffed, and it was a wonderful event for us. So it’s great that we now have time to speak a bit further and further on this episode.

Mark Baxa  01:50

Well, we were excited to have you. Congratulations on your accomplishment, and thanks for speaking so highly about the Edge Conference. It’s a it is the culmination of a year’s worth of work, not for the association, but for the supply chain profession and our academics, culminating on the you know, the, if you will, the live and in person review, and also in assurance that the right messaging is heard around all of the things happening to supply chain and the innovation people need to succeed in the year ahead. So really great to have you on the innovative stage, though. Fantastic. Yeah.

Scott Mears  02:25

Absolutely. I know is a wonderful time. I always like to start off with a bit of an icebreaker to learn a bit about our guest. And I would love to know if you had another job in supply chain. What do you think that would be if you had another role in supply chain?

Mark Baxa  02:45

Well, I think the most ideal job is the place where you can experience helping others achieve their own personal and business goals. I mean, to me, that’s the mark of a real leader, and that is, it’s not about themselves, it’s about what you can make of everybody else and help them to achieve the greatness they want to aspire to. And again, it’s not about individualism. It’s really about helping people achieve results. And that’s the most exciting part about the role that I’m in. I love this role. This is a culmination of 40 some years in supply chain. And yeah, and I’ve been a part of the Association for about 23 almost 24 years. And you know it, this is ideal, right here for me, because with 10,000 members around the world and another 50 plus 1000 affiliates, all those that have come before me and those that are still here. But you know, service you name it, service providers, everybody, folks like yourself, everybody, you know, we were better together and to help those aspire to their next level of performance in their current role or their next roles. And even executives today who really are looking for a lot of help as they lead to our challenges today. Being a part of CSCMP and leading this great organization is humbling, and it’s really exciting. I just love to be right here, where I’m at. This is the ideal job for me, and I hope others see it the same way as well.

Scott Mears  04:14

That’s wonderful. I love that answer, that the alternative job would just be where you are now, because it is just so perfect and aligns so much with your goals and being able to give back to so many. I mean, the the attendance at the event was second to none. It was an incredible amount of attendance at the event. And to know you’re supporting all these companies in so many ways is just it’s incredible to be a part of that. So that’s wonderful to hear that you are in the role that you always dreamt to be. Oh, thank you. Moving on. I would love to dive in through this episode is into news and trends and specifically shortages. So, I mean, over the past few years, we felt this, I would say, it’s very much been a lot more present, and we felt it the hardest, if. The past few years, dealing with disruptions and shortages. I mean, starting off with toilet paper, going to baby formula, car computer chips, even now, eggs and bread and flour. It goes on and on these shortages that we’re suffering from. I want to pose this question is, is dealing with shortages now the new normal?

Mark Baxa  05:24

Well, it’s a great question, and I would have to say partly yes and mostly Yes. For now, things will eventually smooth out. We will always have disruption. Some of that disruption can be anticipated, built in, if you will, so what I call value added redundancy. But above all, supply chains are learning the value of resiliency, and that’s the ability to respond while you know a an event occurs to you, or a series of events, and yet be able to still in a fluid like way, continue to do what you set out to achieve. And that is your your entire planning through delivery scenario and serving your end customer could still move on as disruptions occur, and there are some forces against us. You know, when a human health pandemic hits like COVID 19, it almost seems surreal the environment we were in fact, it was surreal. I mean, who would have ever anticipated what we all attempted to do to recover from that, to protect the health of our families, our co workers and society at large, while it’s still at the same time maintaining business continuity, when the very elements of health risk. And you know, the concerns from the health just impacted all of us in our ability to serve. And as a result, Supply Chain Leaders are faced with this insurmountable challenge that is, what’s next? You asked about? Is this a, you know, this something we need to learn or live with. And I absolutely think it is now, hopefully it’s something that we don’t see as a result of a wide scale, global, wide scale, globally wide scale out pandemic like COVID 19. But we will have disruptions. We will have tornadoes, we will have hurricanes, we will have tsunamis. We will have earthquakes. You know, we will have weather constraints, things that are whether you personally attribute it to global warming or not. Is agnostic, we will have weather impacts. Okay, so the the whole idea that there is a risk in our supply chain, and the ability to navigate that risk by anticipating it, kind of what I call leaders, being able to see around the corner and think a little further ahead than perhaps we’d like to think we do, or maybe we actually do, is something we’re going to have to really get good at. So here’s a case in point. So if I think about what happened during COVID 19, and let’s forget about for a moment where it came from, but just the very epicenter of the manufacturing breath and capacity of Wuhan China, if you just look at all of the businesses that were aligned with those companies that manufactured products in that region of the world, couple that with the disruption from the human health pandemic and then the the chain of risks that it opposed to so many businesses such as the automobile industry and others. Now you come to a place and say, Okay, what were we really thinking? What did we really know, and were we truly able to overcome, not necessarily the magnitude as human health impact, but if it happens again in a similar way? There’s another catastrophe. There’s another something that stands in the way. What are the alternatives that we have? So here’s here’s the bottom line. In the case of Wuhan, you know, many companies thought that when they went to the distributor level and they were buying the same components from, what? Why? What, I would say, a diversified set of suppliers. They were predominantly merchants. They weren’t manufacturers. Those merchants, as you look at your upstream, your tier one, two and three suppliers are all aimed at the same factory, the same factory. So when that factory shut down because of the human health pandemic, everybody lost. And we all look back and said, I thought we had diversification in our purchasing portfolio. Well, yeah, you did at the distributor level, but you didn’t understand enough about where this stuff really came from. Another case in point is Taiwan and and the chip manufacturing scenario. Same thing, heavy, heavy dependence on a single, almost single source that’s not just feeding certain industries, but the globe. So this is going to become something of a. Of a venture or adventure, depending on how you look at it, for supply chain leaders to think about how they build in resiliency within their supply chain. I certainly, for one, don’t have all the answers. But you know when the tsunamis hit in Indonesia, and you know severe hurricanes like Katrina and others hit the coast, the southern coast of the United States, there were companies that knew how to anticipate the risks, and they were the hidden winners. So I don’t remember having a shortage of coffee after Katrina, most catastrophic hurricane when it hit the United States, and that’s because they were smart, and we knew this. We figured it out afterwards. Because I lived through it, I was unable to get containers to move product in and out of the United States through our southern ports. And the reason is, the coffee industry anticipated the risk, and they had quite a few of these containers already in hand. So smart companies know how to do this. Know how to anticipate, you know, we’re just gonna have to all get better at it, not just a few.

Scott Mears  11:03

That’s a really well rounded answer. I really appreciate you even really went on to that second question I was going to ask of where do you feel we need to put that attention? It sounds like you very much answered that through diversifying and know truly, where is this coming from, and who is involved in that and and that’s a great example of a coffee example of them predicting that coming up. And I appreciate these cases where we may not be able to predict it, but having that diversification will put us in a much better we’ll have a much better base to handle the disruptions that we aren’t able to predict.

Mark Baxa  11:41

Well, let me, let me take that a step further. Thanks for that. I appreciate that follow on. So I think the burden is really moved heavily towards the chief procurement officer, and not recently, because of solving for inflation and rising and escalating costs. You know, take costs back. I’ll protect our interests. That’s a big part of it. But if that’s what you’re focused on now, you’re too late. You should have been working on that two years ago. So in the case of the procurement or sourcing function, not only do you have the majority of your companies spend accounted for in that function and what you represent, but you now have the responsibility to build value added resiliency and redundancy into the supply chain. No other function, yeah, you can have people leading and pushing into it or connecting into this, but no other function in the business rests with this kind of opportunity, but also certainly risk. So here’s what I mean by this. So I spoke earlier about diversification and understanding where your product really comes from. So we have to be smarter about our Upstream so just because we’ve allowed us aligned ourselves with this really strong tier one set of suppliers, do you know enough about those suppliers, supply chains? So here comes the transparency conversation, and in a traditional sense, well, I don’t want to discuss any more about my business than I have to, and the supplier doesn’t want to tell me any more than they have to, because I’m giving up competitive advantage and they might leverage me on a cost position. Well, from a sales side, the pricing element is the last it’s the last thing that you can give once you’ve given a price you’re done in the negotiations. So why worry about that today? That’s really not the focus. The focus is an app is a new level of value add in the working relationship with your strategic suppliers, those that you have to have, those that are perhaps the most dependent on you, but you’re most dependent on them, to create a more symbiotic relationship, and a relationship built on trust and transparency. T to the second power, trust and transparency. This is where we get in trouble if we don’t have that. And we believe that the three bids in a selection, and here you go, internal stakeholder here, I got a supplier for you. Go get them. If that’s strategic sourcing, you’re missing you’re missing the boat. So supply chain executives, EVPs of supply chain, need to be asking their chief procurement officer, what are you working at? Tell me about the alignment. Tell me about the resiliency story that you’re building into our business. Show me the connection into our customer and how we’re going to build a more reliable, predictable flow of goods, build trust back in one of the biggest mistakes I find when I talk to our member companies is and they’ll admit it, that we don’t let go of the partnerships we’ve always had because we’ve known to trust them, and somehow it always showed up at the gate, and we never asked any more questions, because it showed up at the gate. We got the quality, we got the quantity, and we got the price we wanted. What’s left to ask. So not only did this become more exacerbated during COVID 19 and the visibility of it, but it all started back in 2000 18, when President Trump fired off the section 232, and 301, tariffs, then he started poking at Europe and the whole, you know, airline industry and everything else, right? So, and that’s not a please. This is not a political conversation. This is apolitical, it’s a fact that any government leader can do something that disrupts the supply chain, and it can happen with the stroke of a pen, as it did with the administrative orders that we issued here in the United States, and they’re still there. They’ve expired, or we passed the four year mark. Now we’re asking questions, and we’ve sustained that, and that 25% that immediate 25% increase the cost of goods for so many businesses here in the US, it not only penalized China in the manufacturing flow, but it penalized the US businesses, and it created other consternations for other countries, like the country that you reside in. So I think the main thing here is that we need to be thinking further out. We need to be looking at as leaders. We need to be testing areas we’ve never tested before to stabilize our flow of goods. And it’s not going to be perfect, but the patterns of which we operate our supply chains today will be different than we operated two and three years ago. It’s it’s very evident, and this is a hard transition, because, again, these trusted relationships may not be the ones you need to keep you got to be in. Got to be ready to let them go. If somebody else can prove to you they can bring reliability better and more cost effectively, not necessarily the lowest cost, but more cost effectively for your business. Because when you lose customers, that’s the big price. It’s not about a one or two cent reduction in that that that components cost. It’s really about losing customers.

Scott Mears  16:41

I so many great points there that you’ve touched on, and again, really looking at the whole picture there who’s involved to really ensure that we’re ready for these challenges that come up. And I know you did mention about the war, and suddenly it does carry on to to go on and and it’s had a lot of impact on our supply chains. I mean, just today, one that I was being up on about things that are made of grain and wheat, bread, flour, cereal, Russia and Ukraine actually are the 20 are the major producers of this. They’re actually about 20% of the world’s cereal and grain. Cereal and grain production in the world, which has increased price and shortages on this and it’s mostly due to because of this war. How do you feel? And of course, the war has affected supply chains in many other ways as well. How do you feel? This war, as it continues to go on, carries on, to to affect our supply chain, and how, how do we deal with that pressure, to overcome them? Because obviously, that’s very much out of our control. How do we handle that pressure and the continued impact that has on us, that is supply chain?

Mark Baxa  17:56

That’s really a great question. You know, when you have a sudden impact to energy flows into Europe, a sudden impact, and a big, scary one, not only energy, but also the flow of things we need to survive. You know, you mentioned wheat, there’s corn, there’s other grains that that Ukraine is very effective at producing and supplying into Europe and other places. And then you have the global transportation flow and the disruption that that created, not only just the cargo capacity of carrying grains in and out of Ukraine, but really all the trans shipments that occur, the shipments in and out of and the ship routings through that region of the world. That creates a a very big reverberation, and then you play into that, the what next factor, and how do I even survive this very scenario, if my business is dependent on, you know, working in and out of Ukraine, and, for that matter, Russia, look how fast we expedited between the United States, Europe and other countries, Japan, Australia, how quickly we join hands UK in placing embargoes and sanctions on banks and other actors in Russia and even in some cases other parts of the world that were known to be supporting the efforts that Russia had upon Ukraine, the CSCMP issued under my my direction and my pen, an immediate response to this, we created to support our round table there, we have a very active and amazing set of supply chain professionals who make up the CSCMP round table in Ukraine. We joined hands with them and created as part of our Center for supply chain talent here in the US, our talent center. We formed a 501, c3 for a lot of different purposes, which I will share later, but we created a special. Fund where people could donate. And what we did is we sent those funds to our roundtable team, and they used it to help support human survival. I mean, it was clothing, food, medicines, distribution channels, etc. So look, the whole thing has been disrupted. We have had some real scary moments, and I think it’s not over. I mean, Putin is still threatening to do even more. This is very scary, and we’re all in this together, the US, other parts of the world, Europe, the UK, others have been involved in this, hoping to quell down tempers and angers and whatever else might be leading into this, to come to a solution before any more life is lost. It’s almost well in a long distance view. It’s almost like you want to say, seriously, isn’t there a better way to resolve this? You know, we don’t like to see war. Nobody likes to see this. So having said that, we got a big job as supply chain professionals, and the work that we’re doing as the association to help figure out and bring into visibility ways that service providers such as third party logistics firms and others are going to help not only with the rebuilding, but continue to sustain trade in this part of the world, and it’s with a high degree of risk. You don’t know when the next missile will come and where it will hit. It’s very scary. So this has been real problematic for the supply chain. The best solution today are those that we can prepare for when this war is over, and how we can help build back quickly and create recreate the infrastructure that’s needed to sustain life and society in Ukraine, but also to get the things that Ukraine supplies to other regions of the world, like energy and grains, back into its traditional flow. I’ve often said that if if Russia decides to attack certain ports in and really annihilate them, I mean, to the point where they’re crippled in Ukraine. That just not only affects Ukraine, that affects the whole world. And this is just an example, when one country hurts these days, like Ukraine, all of us are hurting. So I’m hoping for a quick and expeditious end to this, and hoping that our entire supply chain can help rebuild quickly, so that we can get that infrastructure back in place, up and running to its full level of efficiency, and we can begin resupplying the goods and energy that’s needed and elsewhere around the world for the benefit of Ukraine but everybody else, society at large.

Scott Mears  22:45

Again, yeah, I’m just echoing what you’re saying there, and it’s it, it’s wonderful to hear that you’ve got, there’s already a very strong round table of CSCMP there. It sounds like you’ve got a great presence there, and and doing a lot there. And I thank you for the support you’ve that you can to drive through Ukraine to help. And it is a scary one, and it’s a very unpredictable one, and yet, being ready to set ourselves up once, once it’s over, and being ready for that point where we can help Ukraine and help how it’s affected around the world. Is very much the mindset that is wonderful to see, that you are echoing today. I want to move on to technology and what really the reason I want to move to that now is to understand, how can we recognize as best as we can these disruptions and shortages. Yes, as we’ve already learned on this episode, there are going to be times where we will not predict them. It is it is out of Cloud Control, but there is also a lot that we can predict, and more and more as this technology comes out and from attending events in supply chain events. And I know you, you are attending supply chain events all year round. All year round. A big thing that I’ve seen a trend is is number one real time data is always spoken about in every event, yeah. But something that I have seen a trend that’s starting to shift, is going from real time data to real time intelligent data. And I’ll explain what I mean by that is companies are starting to not just look for that, just just real time. Okay, this is what’s gone wrong, or it’s currently it’s sitting in the airport and the temperatures rising, they don’t just want to know that individual piece of information. They want to know. Then what does that mean? What can I do with that information? What are the insights and foresights I can I can use from all that information to predict risks in the future, disruptions in the future, or what the. The next step is to deal with that they’re looking for more intelligent data with just the information as something’s gone wrong. Would you agree with this? And if yes, do you feel companies need more visibility, or more intelligent visibility?

Mark Baxa  25:17

Well, everybody needs better intelligence, even the smartest of the smartest is looking for what’s next. How can I capture a better source of information that’s reliable, that has the right quality of data right that tells me or gives me a good sense of direction? So that goes without saying, and for still today, in this environment that we’re in, many supply chains are still using the Excel spreadsheet as their source of data intelligence that’s passed from user to user within a company, I mean, but the level of sophistication continues to move in a really strong and quick and positive direction in supply chain. I mean, event management and planning platforms have continued to expand, and even through COVID, there was a huge desire through our research studies with our collaborators that showed that companies, especially the fortune 500 considered, continued to pursue visibility platforms that enabled better, better insights and predictability to demand, manufacturing, pace, quality, quantity and the delivery systems as to where is it once it’s finished and it’s in route to the ultimate customer, and that continues to evolve demand sensing technologies, In other words, those that in a form of artificial intelligence that help predict using various sources of data, not just consumer purchases, and more real time today than it’s ever been, continues to get closer to that very point of sale or that point of transaction, and even moving up, like when it comes off the shelf and it’s in the cart on its way to the point of sale, right? So we’re we’re seeing a lot of information being gathered around the behaviors, even facial recognition and observing consumer behaviors in a store, and those kind of things are just paramount to help figuring out a better path forward to sense and predict demand. And here’s why we all want to be super efficient in supply chain. And this has been one of the things that have kind of bothered me as a result of feedback on the what was perceived by the consumer as, ah, you know, the fragility of the supply chain. It broke during COVID, etc. You heard some of this. Yes, it is fragile and it can be broken, but as supply chain professionals, we recovered fast. We still had what we needed to survive. May not have been your first choice, and I could tell some really great stories about toilet paper in my house, right? Well, we started toilet paper, we found it right so, and everybody’s got their stories right, but our business, our businesses, we survive. The supply chain is not fragile. It’s fine tuned. It’s lean. Nobody wants excess inventory, working capital being tied up. Now, we do have a bunch of stuff everywhere because, well, let’s face it, we settled to manufacture and purchase the consumer second and third choice during COVID. And who was to know when that was really going to end, but when the demand was there, you were feeding that demand best you knew how and when things began to if you will stabilize again. And COVID quelled, and we went back outside and got back to our workplaces, maybe hybrid work environments. You know your your audience is familiar with all these dynamics. Well, what happened? We got stuck with all this kind of stuff that nobody wanted. We didn’t even want to buy it online, and we didn’t even want to buy it if it was almost free. We just didn’t want it. Who wanted gray sweat pants and sweatshirts when you needed to go to a, you know, an outing outside, you didn’t do that, right? You used it during COVID, but you didn’t. You don’t want it anymore. So there’s a lot of it around there, right? So, and I don’t need to make light of this, but we, you know, we have a hit or miss, so our digitization in the supply chain is anticipating overcoming, managing through and also creating an abundance of visibility, but with credible data, the decision making power and capability is vast, and It continues to grow. I was just at a conference, just got back, and the amount of startups around the digital aspects in supply chain, everything from on road sensing for autonomous vehicles all the way through to ways to improve the last mile and final minute delivery, if you will, to the customer was really mind blowing. I mean, the level of intelligence and the capability of these systems is powerful. The real question is, which one do I acquire for my business? What gives me the most value, right? And who do I need to listen to when it comes to a limited source of cap? Middle or or, if you will, just not discretionary funding. But you know, you know, funding for acquisition of software platforms. Which leader do I listen to as a VP of supply chain? Well, okay, what’s you know? How do I find truth? It’s a little difficult right now, because there is so many options. But you have to understand where your greatest element of risk is and if you have failure in those areas, and you risk business shutdown, that might be the place where you begin. The easiest one to get on board. And the advice I give anybody that asks is you need to find yourself a really strong multi tenant, in other words, where everybody can feed the data components needed into an event management platform once your goods are on the floor and ready to ship at that point, all the way through ultimate customer delivery, understanding and as well as inbound and raw materials, understanding those movements help you become really quickly that much more efficient. The remainder of it becomes more intelligence gathering and being smarter, better and faster about overall business decision making across the whole of the supply chain. And I’m not the best expert at this, but I’m just telling you what our members are telling us and what we’re hearing and learning. But I think there are places where companies, if you haven’t invested, can get on easily with a low level of risk and see some rapid improvement, and that’s along the lines of visibility.

Scott Mears  31:28

Absolutely and your knowledge, and this is so interesting to hear, because you are constantly in front of the members, you’re constantly in front of all these startups, these new technologies. So you really are on the front of seeing the vast support out there when it comes to being visibility in different ways. And I think you touched on it. There a talk. I’ll always remember an event where that it was at the start of the event, and they were talking about cognitive overload, and they they had a lot of conversations in that event, and it was all that everyone sees the value of these platforms. They sit down once they understand. A lot of the time they go, I get the value. I see it. It’s just, I’ve got six of the platforms I’ve brought on that I’m trying to figure out. I’m trying to get my employees up to date with I’m trying to understand how they work together. I’m still not too sure it’s just another one I appreciate. It could end up taking away some of these buttons, but it’s just another thing I need to think about. And it seems to be a real problem and challenge that companies are facing now is that they’re resistant, even though they see the value, because they’re dealing that digitalization journey is happening, and it’s just overloading them with because, I mean employees, I mean, if they’ve been there for X amount of years, they’ve not seen a lot of this technology. They never worked with this technology. So it’s, it’s quite a transition to happening, and it can create a lot of challenges. And I can see the pain from the solution part, because they’re like, well, we’ve got the one you need. This is the one. But it can, it can take a bit of conversation to understand that. So what’s your thoughts around that cognitive overload? And I can see that’s quite present within events, and what’s your thoughts around that?

Mark Baxa  33:10

Well, just a personal story on this. And there are we could probably spend hours. I know we could not. Probably we could spend hours talking about everything from change management on through to, you know, selecting and empowering the right digital solutions for the right reasons. And there’s a whole host of you know, conversation in between those points, but I’ve been a part, personally, of leading some significant it based or digital based projects to enable the supply chain to do something even better than it could today, and the largest one it was a part of was the standardization and optimization efforts on our entire global trade flows. And when you take six independent operating regions around the world and attempt to standardize across a platform and also ensure that you’re meeting governmental compliance along the way, but yet not letting compliance gum up your supply chain. So there’s fluidity by anticipating and being smarter about those requirements sooner than later, right? So you don’t get caught in the end. What do you mean? I can’t ship it, or I can’t import it? It’s too late. You haven’t done your homework, right? So putting in a system that helps to standardize all this critical thinking, minimize the risk of employee turnover and and for of course, defend your business to you and your freedom to operate is an insurmountable task. So I can appreciate where companies are in trying to select what level and what to what extent and where and across which functions do I implement? Wouldn’t it be great if there was just one big software company that made everything for everybody? You know, it’s just like, well, here’s your path. We know this, right? Here you go, start here, go here, there, there, and, you know, pay this invoice and you’ll be happy, right? Yeah, it’s not like that. We we allow for ingenuity. We. Allow for creativity, and we allow for real smart people to do a lot of smart things. And it’s created this world of this ecosystem of available choices for companies to make. So it all rests with this. So how do you build clarity? And that is what have you or need to standardize from a business process perspective, software systems and what they can do for any supply chain is fantastic in that first presentation, when you see it, when you watch the demos, right? Oh, yeah, this is exactly what we need to solve our problem. Warning that’s that’s not the statement to make that’s not going to solve your problem as the thing, right? You must understand in the very nature of your business and where you have business process gaps, standardize your business. First, standardize your working processes, then look to remove non value added redundancy, and then overlay that with the optimizers, the digital technologies that you need, you have to take this in sequence, you know, kind of some form of, you know, sequence. Now we get in a hurry, because we need immediate solutions. And this is the push. This is where the push comes in. It’s like, looks great. This is what we want standardized. And, oh, by the way, while we’re standardizing, start implementing software. Let’s do it together, right? Because we’re going to be smarter than everybody else. Point of failure at that point you already hit and hinted on it is, is this, this overload, this cognitive overload? But supply chain leaders say, I don’t trust what’s in it not they don’t trust what’s in our heads. I don’t trust the quality of my data. So no matter what we do, when we digitize, right? Am I getting quality output? How do I trust How do I know I can trust it? So the quality of data is insurmountable. Look, I had an experience that I still remember. I’ll save the last name, but Bill came to me. He said, When I was about to start this last big project. He said, watch your master data. That’s the thing that’s going to kill you when you get out of the gate and you will have you will have cost overruns you don’t anticipate within the first couple months, because data quality may be poor given the size and scale of your project. And my response was, we’re going to build the plane as we fly. It’s going to be fine. Build, not a problem. And that was probably the worst statement I could have made. Yeah, so, and I’ll just leave it at that. Okay, I’ll just leave it there. So there are points of there are points of failure within which, which end up being a leader’s point or point of inflection, like, where did I go wrong in this thing? Why didn’t this work? Why did something that I anticipated to be so great for my business, for our team, for our supply chain, yet it didn’t work, right? We’re really struggling. We have cost overruns. You know, I’ve had the vendor or the supplier in here multiple times. They can’t seem to fix my issue, and in the end, it ends up being misalignment, and that misalignment can all go all the way back, and often does right back to the fact that your business processes weren’t standardized, and you didn’t have your people attuned to the road ahead. You didn’t sell well, you didn’t get alignment, and you didn’t work through change management, so you got resistors and the human element of it. So there’s there’s things to watch out here, but in the end, the amount of digital progress, the progress we’ve made in digitization in the future state, is incredible. I’ll give you this example, because I think the conversation was relatively early. I’ll I’ll try to refrain from anything that was was unveiled to me, but I heard of a on road sensing technology for autonomous vehicles. At this conference I just came from and a one on one conversation. I just walked up to this gentleman who was standing there by himself during the conference mixer, right in between sessions, and we had a very interesting conversation. And in fact, that was blown away by what he said. And another very large online company representative showed up to talk to this person about that technology, and I left at that point. There was obviously a very specific, high level meeting, right? Very futuristic, very incredible thing to hear about, and I can see where it all had tremendous value. But this, this, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what digitization and supply chain is offering the future state of our, of our, of our entire supply chain network around the world. I’m thrilled. I’m thrilled to be in a part of it. It’s it’s exciting times, and I very much appreciate the ingenuity that’s coming from all of our suppliers in this in this very category.

Scott Mears  39:40

Absolutely, it’s wonderful to see and get your take on that and and like you said, because we allow that creativity, there is so many different approaches, different heart hardware, we’re using different different platforms that are looking to deal different parts of the problem. So it is wonderful to see this and the. The many amazing ideas, like that conversation you mentioned of a futuristic idea, and I’m sure there’s many more that were to the side of him in that event as well. Just amazing ideas. No, it’s fantastic to get your thoughts there. And I would love to finish the podcast off with a thing that we were introducing today is a thumbs up, thumbs down, and it’s just six questions. And then if you could, you throw a thumbs up or thumbs down. And if you could say as well, thumbs up, thumbs up, just for our audio listeners who doesn’t see it visually as well, that’d be wonderful.

Mark Baxa  40:32

Sure. Let’s do it.

Scott Mears  40:36

And there may be some funny ones in there. So number one, supply chain heroes need more real time visibility.

Mark Baxa  40:45

Thumbs up.

Scott Mears  40:47

All supply chain heroes support Manchester United.

Mark Baxa  40:51

Repeat that again.

Scott Mears  40:54

All supply chain heroes, if you’re not a football fan, then you won’t get this one. All supply chain heroes support Manchester United.

Mark Baxa  41:02

Oh, well, of course. Thumbs up.

Scott Mears  41:04

Oh no, I’m a Leeds United fan but that’s okay.

Mark Baxa  41:11

It might have been a bad guess.

Scott Mears  41:14

It’s okay. Um, supply chain heroes need to become better at predicting disruption and risk.

Mark Baxa  41:20

Oh, big time. Thumbs up.

Scott Mears  41:24

All the world’s shortages are caused by supply chains.

Mark Baxa  41:28

Absolutely not, thumbs down.

Scott Mears  41:33

Companies need to be become more sustainable.

Mark Baxa  41:37

Oh, absolutely thumbs up. That matters greatly.

Scott Mears  41:40

And finally, we need more collaboration and partnerships and supply chain.

Mark Baxa  41:46

Oh, double thumbs up.

Scott Mears  41:47

Double Oh, wow, double thumbs up. Already evolving the game. I love it. Well. Thank you so much. Mark. You’ve been wonderful guest, and it’s just been so good to hear your insight with the amazing experience, and what CSCMP are doing, it is incredible. And I mean, I did mention the start, we went there last year, and we had an amazing time. We spoke there. We won an award there, and we’re actually looking at having a big involvement there this year. And I know you mentioned you’ve got a European event coming up as well. If I’m not mistaken.

Mark Baxa  42:19

That’s right, it’s in Barcelona, June, 8th and 9th. So looking forward to having people there as well.

Scott Mears  42:26

Yes, that’s wonderful to hear that. Yeah. So for our European friends, we can a little less travel, which would be wonderful. But thank you so much, Mark. I wish you a wonderful rest of the day, and thank you for coming on to the episode.

Mark Baxa  42:37

Yeah. Thank you, great to be here. Thanks a lot.

Scott Mears  42:42

Hi, my name is Scott Mears, and I’m one of the hosts of the Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. On this podcast we talk to supply chain heroes from around the world about everything, ranging from the disruptions related to supply chains, their personal experiences with tracking technologies, strategies to build resilience, and much, much more. We already have some recommended videos for you to the side of me, and if any of this sounds interesting to you, do subscribe to our Youtube channel and hit the bell icon so you don’t miss another Roambee video. I’ll see you next time.