Supply Chain
Technology Podcast

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Digital transformation, supply chain, Dow Chemicals, COVID-19 impact, real-time visibility, logistics, SAP implementation, safety, chemical industry, operational improvement, project management, automotive industry, household goods, food packaging, digital workforce.

SPEAKERS

Scott Mears, Speaker 1, Peter Marshall, Santosh Takoor

Santosh Takoor  00:09

Welcome to the Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. In this episode, we speak with Peter Marshall, the outgoing Supply Chain Director at Dow Chemicals, Europe. Peter reflects on 30 plus years of experience in the chemical sector, implementing digital transformation programs, embracing new technologies and adjusting to the new normal amidst the COVID 19 pandemic. Peter also provides top tips for supply chain, professional driving, data driven, efficiency and change in their organizations. Hello, Peter, thank you again for taking time out to have a chat with me today. Really looking forward to this conversation.

Peter Marshall  00:52

Great to be here. Thanks for the invite.

Santosh Takoor  00:54

Thank you. So Peter, I think for the benefit of the audience, I want to just give a quick, quick summary of your your parkour today, where you’ve come from, and your CV is phenomenal. In business for 37 years and the last 24 years in various supply chain positions with Dow Chemical, one of the top three chemical producers in the world, which is an incredible achievement. So maybe tell us a little bit more about your park, your journey to how you come to where you are now?

Peter Marshall  01:23

Yeah, certainly. Well, 37 years ago, as a young chemical engineer joining Dell in a research group in Germany, I had no idea what was ahead of me, and I have to say, it’s been a fantastic ride, fantastic journey, and been a lot of fun, and the opportunity to do so many things, it’s just been great. So as you say, the last 24 years has been concentrated on supply chain. Before that, I had more technical roles in R, D and manufacturing, which then led to, one day, I was a plant leader at a polystyrene producing plant in Wales, and got a call out of the blue from the supply chain director for that business who asked if I’d like to come and work in supply chain. And like I said, it was out of the blue, but I thought, yeah, why not? Let’s go for it. And 24 years later, we’re still in supply chain. So yeah, quite a quite a journey.

Santosh Takoor  02:22

That is incredible. Little anecdote. I didn’t quite, I don’t think you realized, but you started off in Newcastle Uni, which is literally 20 minutes up the road from where I live. I live in Teesside now. So the whole chemical world has been a very big, prominent, defining moment for this era here. So as you probably remember, I’ve been in the enterprise sales, software, ERP SAS world for for the last 15-20, years now. And my passion has always been to bring technology to organizations, to bring them the kind of cutting edge, sometimes bleeding edge, changes that can either support a transformation, or trigger transformation. I just want to get some an idea from you, from from your your experience and what you’ve seen in DOW and the chemical industry, but most supply chain. How do you see this at the industry challenges that are facing the whole supply chain domain? If you want

Peter Marshall  03:19

Yes, it’s a very good question. And like every industry, there are some specifics, and there’s probably some commonality too. I think the key thing from a chemical perspective, is, first of all, safety is always our number one priority, and the nature of the product, the hazardous nature, really imposes some extra dimensions in our thinking. And like I said, it’s always front of mind in terms of everything we do. The other key point is actually interesting. You’re talking about Teesside and the chemical industry, and maybe not understood by all that, really the chemical industry, you could say, is the industry of industries, because practically every other industry takes product from the chemical industry in some shape or form. So clearly we’re a B2B out there, not necessarily that well known in the general world, but because of that, because of the nature of our business, supplying so many different industries, that’s also imposes some different challenges in terms of dynamics.

Santosh Takoor  04:33

This is interesting, the fact that you said Dow Chemical is not well known well to me, at least if I look 5-10, years ago, Dow Chemical was, and still is, a bellwether for industry, for commerce, as you said, it’s a fundamental it’s the chemical industry is the backbone of everything. And with Roambee, as you know, we provide real time tracking solutions and for visibility for shipments. And the one industry that we found. Was still very active, and had to be. It was a chemical industry, because if that stops the knock on effect, once all the stocks and the piles just are gone, most of industry would have stopped. So we saw that the chemical industry was still very much functioning. But what changed? What the challenges over the last year, in this very unusual year that we’ve been the challenges changed, the kind of needs for the industry change. How did that? How did you see that endow you know, from, from your view, from, from having all those years of experience in a, I wouldn’t say, steady state, there’s no, there’s no such thing as a steady state. There’s always something. But this, this past year, was exceptional. How did you see that impacting your ability to deliver a very efficient process to your organization.

Peter Marshall  05:45

Yeah, this time last year, we had no idea what was ahead of us. Unbelievable year. And in the end, it really wasn’t a bad year for Dow. I mean, obviously earnings were impacted, particularly in the first half of the year. But actually, what I mentioned before, the fact that we supply so many different industries, played an important part. We saw in the first part of the years, especially in Europe, the automotive industry pretty much shut down. But on the other hand, the need for detergents, household goods, sanitizers, the need for food, packaging, all of those things increased. So it meant that in some of our sectors, there were some losses, and other areas did well. But in terms of the overall supply chain challenge, I would say if this had happened maybe five years, certainly 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have been in any position to cope with it as well as we did from the organization, having to overnight work from home, and people taking their laptops with them, and the connectivity, the bandwidth, the ability to work from anywhere that didn’t exist, and neither did the underlying system support. I think of the journey that we’ve been on, I guess when I first started in supply chain, we were in the first round of SAP implementation, SAP r2 we more recently had a upgrade and various other elements that were bolted on. That meant that we already got far greater visibility than we would have had say in the past, which, together with the people being able to work from home and all of that, meant that our supply chain planners and the logistics professionals and everyone else in the organization, even though it happened overnight without great preparation, everything continued. And have to give great credit to our logistics service providers as well, that at a time when you and I couldn’t cross borders in Europe, even in the Schengen zone, borders were closed, we managed to keep product moving. I think maybe one of the best examples is there are four manufacturing facilities in northern Italy, which actually was the initial hot point in terms of the outbreak, and those plants kept running right through Q1, Q2, in fact, I think they even set records, and we managed to bring products out and supply products, etc, thanks to everything that I mentioned before, which is really quite incredible. So the impact on on Dow was really based on the downstream industries. So if the automotive industry is shut down, then we’re not supplying but our ability, our logistical ability, to keep customers going was actually pretty amazing throughout last year, even in the most difficult times.

Santosh Takoor  08:56

Now this is fascinating. You just triggered something in my mind when you were on SAP are too, if not mistaken, I’m almost sure. I’m sure it’s an urban myth. But SAPs customer number one was ICI in the northeast, one of the very first customers. And you would think chemical industry not the most agile or the most venturous to take new technologies, but that’s, I think the contrary. It’s been an industry that has been very astute in picking and choosing which which trends you need to pick up, and what industries which parts of its, its its portfolio, it needs to to mature. And I just described there to go from very much brick and mortar, pen and paper on desk, to being a digital workforce. It meant that you could, you could cope with that, with that disruption of not having to be, not being able to be in the office, but on the other side, with your logistics providers, how did that work? Because then we had this disruption over the world, where before, sometimes you relied a lot on manpower. They would have people on the ground. They would check where things are going, and there was a lot of communication through telephones. And emails because people were physically around, did that disrupt a bit of your vision or your ability to look into the supply chain, to have control over because some of that human intervention was was taken out?

Peter Marshall  10:13

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say there’s still room to improve. But I think as a result of many years of work in that space, we really could continue. So I mean, obviously, at the end of the day of the physical activities, you have to have people in the warehouses and at the sites and driving the trucks, etc. But beyond that, the fact that say, all of our out plans, as we call them, warehouses or marine terminals where we store products are connected and integrated into our system, meant that we could process orders, we could see the inventories, we could do all the usual things remotely, which actually we do all the time anyway, the same, say, same goes for say, the overall logistics. And I guess it was a benefit that probably about three years earlier, we set off on a journey to have real time logistics visibility for all modes of transport, not just trucks, but also rail and the various marine modes as well. And that’s still in progress. That’s still got a ways to go, but I think through the progress that has been made that already helped us, that already started to pay off in a time of disruption. So many of the things that we’ve been working on, and that’s interesting, your your comments or your feedback, perhaps that the chemical industry is not such a laggard. We are a fairly conservative sector, I guess because of the nature of the fact we’re handling hazardous materials, you have to be careful. But on the other hand, I think a company like like Dow, with a $40 billion turnover on a single instance of SAP globally is quite a quite a thing. And I guess the guys that thought that up 10 years ago that we would enter into such a program were really, actually quite, quite far-sighted.

Santosh Takoor  12:12

And as you said, three years ago, not many companies were thinking real time visibility was a need, because you could get cheap labor in some of the some countries, you could rely on pen and paper. You could pressure on your supply chain partners to get visibility. But had you not embarked on that journey three years ago, you would have been far short. And I’ll be honest, during the pandemic, during summer last year, I took personal phone calls from a lot of CIOs and supply chain execs who were at their wits end, because they just did not know where the shipments were. Very simple, very basic need. They knew they shipped two containers from Malaysia. The last time they heard, one was in Sri Lanka, the other one was in Cape Town somewhere, and had no clue what was going on, because they realized that they didn’t have that kind of foresight that you put in to start digitizing, to start getting information, to start being able to put basically getting digital twin your supply chain go on that journey. It meant that where before, they would have relied on a lot of human intervention or manual processes that became difficult and pushed a whole lot of transformation. And again, it’s a really bad thing. What’s happened? The only good thing I can take out of it is it becomes a fulcrum. It becomes a turning point for the industry where visibility of your supply chain is not a nice to have. It’s a must have. It becomes a hygiene factor. It should be just better. Is that? Is that how you Dow would be seeing it as well?

Peter Marshall  13:35

Oh, definitely. And our CEO, actually, three years ago, said, Look, you need to be Amazon like as consumers, you know, it’s not new. We’re used to being able to on our phone, go order something, you know, track it maybe last minute. Say, Hey, I’m not going to be home tomorrow. Deliver it to a different place. And you know that that is something that is very familiar to all of us as consumers. And our CEO said, Well, why can’t we do that, Peter, why can’t you tell me where our stuff is at any point in time? And I think through that challenge, it has helped us maybe take a step forward and get to where we are. I’m sure, actually, though, in say, five years, we’ll look back at the capabilities in 2020 and say, Well, that was, you know, we’ve come a long way since then. So it’s not that we’re anywhere near the end of this journey. I think we’re still at the early stages of it, but that’s not a bad thing.

Santosh Takoor  14:32

Again, I think I really applaud down the way you looked at this first of all, recognizing that there’s a paradigm shift in how business has been conducted where before, business would seep into the consumer world and influence how consumers worked. And over the last we all know this. Last 1015, 20 years, it’s been the other way around. The paradigm shift being the consumer world has been transforming as an incredible rate, and that’s now is pushing the business world and having your leader, your CEO, saying, Guys, you. So it’s not a nice to have. It’s a must have. It’s primordial then that seed to the whole organization that need to transform. And this is really good. So if I look at your CV as well, I’ll come back to that. I’ve seen all the roles you’ve taken, from Sigma black belt to transformation to innovation. What are the learning? What are the key nuggets of wisdom you found you know things to do, things not to do, in terms of, let’s say you were 5-10, years before, looking back, how would you advise anybody who’s now thinking about, okay, I’ll need to start doing something. What would you how would you advise them? I like that. I like I like the way you put this leave the world a better place for the next in line. So do something better, improve it, even if it’s a little incremental improvement, at least it’s better than when, when you took it over. And if everybody does that constantly improving. I wish we could do the same with the world, but I think we’re starting to do that now. We’re getting better doing that.

Peter Marshall  15:35

That’s a great question. One of the things I say to say more junior supply chain professionals is it’s the early stage in your career get as much experience as possible, like, like, do different things. Maybe you’ve proven yourself as a supply chain planner, or go and do something in logistics, or work on a project and do do improvements and stuff. So get get a broad experience, then the next thing I would say is actually, whatever you do, your responsibility is to build on what you took over from your predecessor and leave your successor with something better, like you should be focused on improvement. I think all supply chain professionals should learn project management skills, whether it’s six sigma or lean or whatever, but improvement mindset is key. Like, yeah, obviously, if your operational the day job is to make things happen, but everybody’s job should be about improvement. And, you know, taking the basic processes and say, Well, how can I make this better? And kind of beyond that, I would say, if you have an operational role in supply chain, then you have to learn to hold your nerve to be able to go home at the end of the day. And so well, despite the things that went wrong, it was still a good day, and I had to quite often remind some of my commercial leader colleagues that we’re in supply chain. We’re also responsible for the shipments that go right, the the 99% of things that happen correctly each day, and not just the the 1% that went wrong that people like to focus on. So I think learning to deal with that pressure in the right way. It’s not obviously everything that goes wrong with is somebody’s shipment, somebody’s order, we have to take seriously, we have to follow up on but you have to find the right balance as well. I mean, like otherwise, you never survive in an operational role. Yeah, at doing that indeed. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, think from a, say, just from a software perspective. And we get so much downloaded on our laptops and that, you know, how well do we know how to use each of these, these packages, very true, basic things like that, and putting that into to use in daily work is a, maybe a simple example that everybody can follow, you know, through to obviously, if you’re leading a group, then your focus should be on, how can I improve this organization? How can I help the people that work for me do a better job? How can I coach them? When I hire people, do I hire the right people that that add to the team that sort of thing.

Speaker 1  18:43

I like, I like the the angle you’ve taken on there where our generation, which is a few years, a few decades before you.

Scott Mears  18:51

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.