Supply Chain
Technology Podcast

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Supply chain visibility, digitalization, technical competency, multicultural diversity, supply chain strategy, ERP systems, Amazon, Tesla, blockchain, AI and machine learning, customer segmentation, lead time segmentation, supply chain design, digital marketing, SCM Dojo.

SPEAKERS

Premsai Sainathan, Dr. Mudassir Ahmed

Premsai Sainathan  00:08

Welcome to Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Muddassir Ahmed, the EA Regional Planning & Operations Manager, Bridgestone EMEA  and the founder of SCM dojo, a leading blog for supply chain management professionals. He shares with us the most common and unique supply chain problems he’s come across the top three Supply Chain Management trends and technologies and top tips for supply chain management professionals in the new novel. All right, welcome to the Rome be supply chain tech podcast series today, we have a very special guest with us. It’s Dr Mudassir Ahmed. For those who know Dr Mudassir, Dr Mudassir Ahmed is you’re probably thinking, what is it that Dr Mudassir is doing on the other end, he’s usually conducting all these podcasts, and today he’s with us being quest, for those who don’t know Dr Ahmed. Dr Ahmed seer is an intrapreneur, so he’s basically works like an entrepreneur within large organizations. He has traveled a lot of countries. He’s currently with Bridgestone, running their supply chain planning and operations based out of Dubai. And more interestingly, he also runs his site called SCM dojo, which is actually a large repository of knowledge for the supply chain society, which also makes him a supply chain evangelist. So that’s in short about our very special guest today, Dr Mudassir, welcome to the show.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  01:56

Yeah. Thank you, Premsai. I think this is one of the best and precise introductions someone has given me so well done for your research and the study. So yeah, I probably don’t have anything to add. I think you’ve done very well. So let’s start let’s start discussion.

Premsai Sainathan  02:11

Thank you, Dr Mudassir. So first question to you is, you actually traveled in what you say, in your in your site that you’ve gone to 36 countries and more you’ve worked in 26 of them, what is the most common supply chain problem that you see in in all of these countries that you visited or worked in?

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  02:37

Now good question, I think I recently posted on one of my LinkedIn you know, I do some poses stuff. One of the most common problem, as I put a headline, is a visibility, right? Is a visibility of your demand, visibility of your you know, problems with the supply chain, visibility of data within the organization, right, which mainly stems from a lack of integrated system. You know, in the supply chain, despite we are in, you know, 2020 there’s lot of systems are available. Technology is going through the roof in, you know, we are doing this episode during Coronavirus days. If you go and see the the share prices of the company, I mean, the technique companies or entrepreneurs are making billions every day, right? You know, because of the there’s still at trust on technology so And despite all that, I think visibility is a big problem, right? So I’m not going to say nobody see Corona coming, but that’s fine, but we are already in six months down the line. We still don’t know. You know what is going to happen in six months, 12 months, but this is where I believe we have enough enough knowledge across the let’s call it the think tanks. In the supply chain, we should be able to start seeing what’s going to happen in your market, in your vertical but that was a problem I see in general, anyway, without COVID, it was the same issue. You know, suddenly, boom, something happened. And you say, I don’t, don’t know, and I start losing business or market share. So visibility is a problem. We need more tools available, more technology needs to get better, which is essentially help us in enhancing visibility, therefore integrating supply chain, both upstream and downstream. Once that will happen, because essentially us as a supply chain people, unless you work in a warehouse or you know, work on a production line, putting parts together. 80 or 90% of people, we sit behind a computer, and the only thing we do, we manage information, right? Since we manage information, so we have to get a better information, right? There is no other way. Of course, your technical knowledge comes into play, but the better you get information, the better you get in your managing your materials. And essentially, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to provide the services you know, on time with the lowest quality, with the shortest possible lead time, with the with the best quality you’re going to get. And you can only do that by managing the information better. So that’s my first common problem. The second one that I see is the new. Probably hear me saying this over the period of this, this, this episode, is the competencies in supply chain, right? Because I was, I would probably want to take my last job in Bristol as well, because the beauty of supply chain is very multicultural, right? Yes, you work in China, which is, I, I’ve visited China a few times. It’s that everybody just, you know, Chinese around you, which is, which is great, because you have a common culture. Or, unless you go to Japan, everybody Japanese. But even the, you know, if I go to Romania or Czech Republic or Germany or France or UK, Dubai, it’s hugely multicultural, right? So in my office, I remember I have a meeting, even just today, I have 13 people in the room not allowed, even because of the COVID and stuff. Should not be people, but they are from 12 different nationalities. You know, it’s so diverse. So there is a very diversity of the of the people around us and and that diversity is not just, you know, their ages, experience, access, nationalities and all this, their diversity, in the knowledge, in most of the people end up in supply chain is because they just end up in supply chain. It’s not there is no gender, right? It’s not like I want to be engineer and go this. I want to be a doctor and become a doctor at such it doesn’t work like that. Most people, somehow, after engineering or basic, whatever, graduating, they do they had them in supply chain. After three, four years, they realized, actually, I want to go and do some education, you know. And everybody basically direct them to do this apex, the, you know, steps and CRT, which is ridiculously archaic, ridiculously old, mostly, you know, curious there, but it’s not up to speed up, you know. I know they keep updating the curriculum, but most importantly, they have made it because they want to make money out of certification and selling their books. They made it very, very expensive, right? And it’s not available readily to the the to the let’s call it the bigger community of supply chain, and that’s what I’m trying to be as individuals make this knowledge readily available to most of the supply chain community who wants to work. So just cut long story short, is the second problem I see. There is a huge gap in the technical development of the technical competency of the supply chain professionals. Moreover, also a soft skills, because you do not under underestimate because, like business. Supply chain is a business function which depends hugely how you deal with people, your soft skills, your leadership skills, your communication skills, your emotional intelligence, right? We only learn those terms five years down the line. We should be teaching them to a graduate, 22 years old, who come to a business, right? So you can see, I mean, I can talk from this all day. Just to close this topic again, supply chain visibility and also the lack of, let’s call it, technical competency and a knowledge base at the in the supply chain community.

Premsai Sainathan  07:55

That’s a very interesting point. Dr Mudassir said you’re talking about, you’re talking about the fact that people get into supply chain because they just landed up there. It’s not that nobody in in college or during their higher education, basically say that supply chain is what I want to get into. Because if you look at the other spaces, like the consulting space. People, when they are studying, they like, hey, I want to be a consultant, but nobody says that. So can you elaborate a little bit more about why supply chain is not the cool profession for lack of better ones?

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  08:37

Yes, I think it’s, if you see the evaluation of the business functions, right? So if you talk about management, general management, so the term Supply Chain Management was not it’s not even established 20 years ago. They used to call it purchasing, which now has become procurement. And I have a blog which says, What is the difference between purchasing and procurement, or most of strategy procurement, and they used to call it a materials management and logistics, right? And now it becomes supply chainment, okay? So it has been evolved over the period of 20 years, right? But the marketing always existed. Your financial accounting always existed, right? Even it existed for last 2030, years. You know, the IT graduates grew as is a cool thing. You want to make myself engineers. Make lot of money, it’s clear. So most of when I was growing up, I only have two options. You know, if you think about it, because I don’t want to be a doctor of medicals. I feel you go to engineering university and basically end up being into a big company, do a engineering job, whatever, or go and do your, your your MBA, or maybe become a financial, you know, do a finance degree become a CA lot of money. So nobody actually mentioned there was a chance, or there’s education available for supply chain. Now, you can see in UK, USA. Now, I mean, I have written quite a few blogs about, you know, doctor. 83 schools in in USA or Europe, or or or in in UK. Now the masters programs are available for the supply chain. So I’m not saying they are not available. So they are again available with the lead manufacturing and etc. But in fact, is, is still now, if you think about it, if you go to LinkedIn, so go to LinkedIn Pro, right, and you will see in LinkedIn Pro, they have a marketing function approach available. They have a service industry like finance, accounting, legal, right, and consulting as well, and art and designing and writing, but you will find supply chain. So my question is, why somebody like LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, who has the all the power of artificial intelligence. Do not see supply chain as a function, right? That’s just my simple question, and that’s borderline ridiculous for me, because the thing is, people, including, again, I’ll give example of LinkedIn, with just six, 60 million professionals, they confuses supply chain is a function. Will logistics as industry? So Logistics is industry, right? Is like shipping in industry, like logistics industry, like three pill in the industry, for example, you steel is an industry right? Because do not mix the two things. Okay? So Logistics is an industry on its own, which is related to moving parts from A to B, or anything with the physical space of the goods. But supply chain is a function, right? It could be a small function, bigger function. It depends. So coming back to your point, so establish of the period of time. Now it’s getting better thanks to the companies like Zara or Apple or Amazon, more to say they have now proven that the products you can only design innovative products so much, right? The innovation in the product right now is expensive, it’s limited. It’s difficult to become a market leader. Companies and products are not so people are not competing, or the businesses are not competing with products. There is a supply chain competing with supply chain, right? So again, I give example of shanada is a leading provider of the electrical it’s not like they have a super innovative product. Some of them are, but most of the companies, they make by simply superseding or being better in managing supply chain than their competition. I gave example of Amazon, right? Amazon, a e commerce company. They started Amazon Prime. Why everybody happy to pay them? You know, whatever, $10 $15 whatever their monthly fees is, and because they just need, they have a they have designed the supply chain structure that they can commit you to provide between 24 hours, and based on that commitment, you are happy to pay them extra money. And guess what, they have made $700 million last year just from Amazon Prime, which is basically a money which is driven from a customer service. And it all comes down to their supply chain design. So supply chain awareness is increasing. People are recognizing is a go to go to is a go to function. The only issue we have got right now, which is, again, if you see my videos and you know, and I follow my videos on my channel as well as you go and see the CEO, still do not see that supply chain is a sea level job, right? So what happened is your supply chain managers and your directors, and they either end up reporting to CFO or one of your CEO CEOs, right? Chief Operating Officer, in my view, that’s that’s wrong, right? CEO of the managing operations manufacturing, or other functions like quality, or maybe R and D or engineering, that’s good with me, but the supply chain itself is a different ball game. Strategy is a different ball game. You know, it’s the way you need to think about supply chain be to give you a strategic advantage. And don’t know about you guys, but I know lot of operational leaders. The operational leaders generally come from the, you know, industrial engineering, engineering background. They end up in manufacturing. They become very good in quality. They know everything you don’t need to know about manufacturing quality, etcetera, etcetera. But unless they come from a supply chain background. But some of them are like always give an example of Tim Cook, right? So Tim Cook is a supply chain guy who become a CEO, and he’s transformed the apple. It’s very difficult for the other operational leaders to know as much as know about supply chain. So what they do, they end up hiring lot of people and relying on their information. But as a sea level person, your job is to set a vision, and your job should set the strategy. If you’re going to hire people to set the vision and strategy, then it’s not your vision and strategy. You’re basically getting somebody else to do it. So my suggestion to be, let’s call it corporate leaders and CEO, is start thinking about, yes, operation. Chief Operating Officer is important. You need. Keep it. However, supply chain management is a separate function, and you need a chief supply chain officer, right? Call it CPO. Call it whatever you want. I don’t really care. So that’s one reason. The second reason I want to give is there is a you will find a chief marketing officer. You will find a CFO. The thing is, they have their own agenda. They have their own bias and agendas, right? The CFO needs to make sure their PNL profitable, you know, if the shares will still goes up, etc, etc. And the same with marketing guys. But the thing is, they try to influence supply chain to do stuff or or without understanding the, let’s call it detail, or maybe some of the of them do with all due respect, but the mindset is different, as I’m trying to say. So essentially, as we say, in our business world, there’s a slight conflict of interest, right? So it’s almost like the person who is allowed to do invoicing cannot enter orders because there is a conflict of interest, right? And that’s what I’m trying to trying to say, if the sales is bringing orders in which is on the upstream of the of the process, then they can’t do the invoicing part. It has to be done by by the somebody logistics. So it’s, it’s a it’s a mindset change is required. And once that will happen, just to conclude my thought process, the reason I’m saying it needs to be in the sea level, then the supply chain, people will become as important in the company as a marketing person or any sales person or any financial person, and they would probably make more money, right? Because right now, we are very much considered as a transactional people, right? Sorry to say, mostly, and the transition people will not get as much money, right. So it made sure the once the function become uh, goes out from a transactional, uh..

Premsai Sainathan  16:52

Transaction to a strategic strategy,

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  16:55

Where they are perceived as value addition rather than the the support cost, because you check any P and L, right now, all financial people sell resets and support cost because they do not see as a value adding function, unless you work for Amazon. Amazon, yeah, I think the supply chain is a value adding function. So they get, they pay a lot of money. So I mean, again, long answer, but that’s my answer,

Premsai Sainathan  17:20

No, I think to your point, Dr modasere, your the whole supply chain aspect in today’s world has actually come out very well. I think things are changing because people are starting to recognize that if for the COVID vaccine today, one is the man the innovation and the manufacturing of the vaccine itself. And the second one is, how do you take this and distribute this to every single person in the world who needs it? So that brings me to the second question, Dr, Modus, something that I’ve been very curious to learn about. How do your thoughts about changing this world as a supply chain evangelist? How did it take you from mudasirism to sem dojo? Can you tell us a little bit about your journey and the work you’re doing to follow your passion of changing this space to how you envision it.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  18:23

Yeah, I mean, it’s all down to as I have it at the back, you know, do what you love again. I, like most people, I said, I end up being supply chain. I did my masters in management, production, supply chain, and I absolutely loved it, right? So it helped bring in lot of, you know, prosperity to me, lot of success, you know, my PhD and all this. So I really like, and I do, I genuinely believe that supply chain is a strategic function which can drive competitor advantage to any business, any business, right? And could be service business as well. It doesn’t have to be a product business, because you can, you know, because one of my specialty supply chain design. But to answer your question, so once I did my PhD, I was basically too lazy to write research papers, right? Because I only have two research papers, but I have lot of information available in me, and I was one of those, let’s call it people collect coins or pens and nice watches. What I do always have been doing for last 20 years, I collect information, right? So I have a folder and folders of and files and files of best practices knowledge and lot of things available, right? So that’s what I have in Hindi. And I tried. So once I was doing this, my PhD thesis was available, and I come across, as somebody said, Oh, why don’t you start doing? You know, start publishing. So I’ll start just basically publishing on WordPress. It was essentially a bunch of my thesis. So any also you see my all articles in 2000 end of 26 1516, end of 2015 and 16. They all basically mostly around Supply. Development, which was my research topics. So once that happened is then I start writing something about more practical for example, three, you know, few years ago, I wrote an article between interview, you know, 23 interview questions, because I everybody asked me, oh, I’m doing a supply chain interview. Help me prepare, right? So I just wrote an article which was the question I would ask, right? And that is now in the top 1% of the, you know, top one or two of the Google similarly, if you, you know, if you search the inventory reduction strategy, so I wrote a blog on at inventory production strategies, which is nothing but my experience, right? I’m just writing it, okay, what I’ve learned? I mean, this week, I’m writing a blog of 15 reasons why you should increase the inventory, right? And I can give you 15 years of how would I increase the inventory? Being an engineer, I like my list. I cannot write more. Too many colorative blogs, right? So when I start publishing it, lot of people find it very useful, right, especially the professionals on the early part of the carrier, being three to five is industry, maybe up to 1015, years. They find industry interesting, so I help them out. You know, a simple thing, I if you Google LinkedIn supply chain groups, so you, you’ll find a blog on that. So just to help the community get better in their job. So this is the, this is the vision of s inclusion. You can go and have a look the supply chain knowledge and solutions for everyone. And I mean, everyone, right? It doesn’t matter what function you work. You could work in sales, you work in finance, you can work in engineering. If you come to my blog, you should find anything from basics to a very advanced topics in whatever category you want to, want to find, right? So that was one, I think the one of the reasons I did that is to make it available. I find it. And during the journey, I started learning about SEO and, you know, digital marketing. And I just do it in my part time, where I get time. So I have, right now, I think I see individuals considered as top three in the world right now in terms of the supply chain blog recently, somebod.

Premsai Sainathan  22:04

You have, you have, like, 30,000 followers on LinkedIn, a large part

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  22:12

37.

Premsai Sainathan  22:14

30,000 plus 1000 followers. What I noticed so definitely, your, your your all the work you’re doing is definitely reaching the people and, you know, really empowering them. So I think it’s a phenomenal initiative. How long have you been doing this? So you also travel a lot, and how do you manage to travel? You worked in 26 countries, and you do this, how do you manage your day?

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  22:44

I mean, when I said, just to correct, okay, I did travel 38 countries, but my experience of connecting, or for work reasons, is about 26 right? So that’s it doesn’t mean I work there, but I mean.

Premsai Sainathan  22:54

It’s still a lot more than most people do.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  22:58

So when I try to sell supply chain to a graduate, and this is my, one of my way to sell them, and it’s exciting thing, you know, supply chain takes you places. I would have probably not gone to China. It’s not for more work. I would have not gone to Romania or Czech Republic or Malaysia, right to those countries, unless it’s all I had to travel because of the work, right? So, you know, it’s going see suppliers, do some supply assessment, have some terrific experiences, meeting with lot of fantastic people. Again, this, as I talk about this cross cultural, you know, experience which is, which is fantastic. You know, I remember, in 2008 my first year to Dubai was essentially setting up a three pair, three pair warehouse. It was, again, for work reasons. So as supply chain makes you travel. Furthermore, when I become, you know, in 2017 18, my blog is start getting traction. And it I think, as you said, it was mudslim, but then somebody said, it’s very individual, and other people wants to contribute. Then I moved to supply chain dujo. And that’s the theme. Dujo, the Japanese word means a place to learn and meditate. So that’s, that’s, I think the brand fits well. People started inviting me for, you know, being a speaker and a master class trainer as well. I mean, unfortunately, COVID has happened. Otherwise I would have traveled to three more new countries, which I never been. I was supposed to go to Azerbaijan in April, and then May, Kenya and June, South Africa, and which unfortunately didn’t happen. So the point is, supply chain can take you places, and, you know, go and meet new people. And that’s for me, I’ll find it as such. I find it very exciting, and I like traveling. So yeah.

Premsai Sainathan  24:36

Wonderful, wonderful. Dr Mudassir, the first thing that he talked about was basically the need for supply chain visibility. So let me touch upon that a little bit. Supply chain visibility is part of the entire innovation that is driving supply chain today, where you can actually sit where you are. Are and visualize everything that’s happening across the world without actually having to physically be there with that in context, could you tell us talk a little bit about not just visibility, but innovation in general, in supply chain, we always talk about innovations in manufacturing. We talk about innovations in E commerce. We talk about innovations in marketing automation. How do you perceive the innovations that are happening in supply chain from a technology perspective, what is driving it or what is not? You know, Prem I think this is a very, very good question, right? And I’m going to give you the answer, which is by starting a good example. So think about marketing pre Google, right? Think about marketing pre Google. So what was marketing look like? So your marketing guy, tell me how pre Google Marketing look like. So what was your main verticals to put your brand forward? So just, just, just google your marketing. I’m asking you a question. I’m sure you can say something about it. Absolutely. I think you’ve taken back the role as the podcasters. But very good question. Dr, Modus, air, is we? It was very ATL driven world. You had to rely on people to get your message out. You had to rely on the TV channels, you had to rely on the on the publishers, you had to rely on the magazines, and you had to rely on codings. But Google came in and it democratized the space. Anybody with a laptop in front of them, could now reach out to the people they want. That’s kind of how I look at it from the marketing space. And I’m very eager to learn how you apply this analogy to supply chain.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  26:51

Exactly, right? And this is where the game changing happened with marketing, right? The people like me I have, believe me or not, right? I have never studied marketing in my life, right? I have never been to any business school which have a marketing course. I have never taken any marketing course, right? What I’ve just done, just bought a digital book for free, in fact, from Amazon Kindle, again, digital marketing. On what is digital marketing? So learn about newsletter, and also learn about you know how to write a good copy, you know, how to write an SEO and then I found about yours to you, yours is a very good, you know, leading company on SEO to start following them. Then I found out couple of big bloggers and start following them. It would have not happened. We go, would it? It just would have not happened, right? So what happened is the the the digitalization of the marketing function has changed the game entirely. How you put your brand forward. You know you would have not known me if, at the you wouldn’t know me, right? The reason you know me is because, okay, I am into a digital space. I’m writing content. Content is king. Is a media, content and the the text content, whatever same you form. The point is this, a technology has changed the game in supply chain. So following this example, if you think about what a supply chain, you know, 1520, years ago and what is right now, has we really changed the game? The answer is no, we haven’t really changed the game, right? You know, the ERP system is still the bloody same old, 20 years old SAP ERP system, where you go into SAP, put a tea goat in, and it runs your report, and you tell me, you got in stock. That is crap. That is, that is Kodak. That is rubbish, right? And I genuinely this, and I say this out loud, I have a blog which is written, you know why ERB starts? And I think those IT companies who basically develop their brands on the management of the ERP, which is basically supply chain module, link with the finance accounting modules and few others and master data they have, they have killed the innovation. Right now, the sap is launching Sahana to flipping late. They are 10 years late, if you ask me, right? Oracle is trying to do on the cloud too late? Digital marketing people are in cloud 10 years ago, right? They were working on Cloud then the enterprise, the enterprise was there, right now they are really thinking. They’re not thinking about going to cloud the digital marketing of FinTech people. They are thinking how I’m going to use AI or machine learning, right, to bring the best value for my customer. I mean, right now to now, what happened in supply chain? Pace, they realize, oh, we are late. Or let’s talk about big data. Let’s talk about AI, let’s talk about machine learning. Let’s talk about 3d printing, right? Let’s talk about blockchain. The thing is, all those people who are talking about those, let’s call it technology, or innovations available. They are not supply chain people. They are the IT people, right? They are the IT people, trying to sell technology to the supply chain, to, you know, people, which is, again, for me, is a dumb move. The right move is the supply chain. People should learn enough, fast enough, quick enough to all those technology platforms available, which could be Platform as a Service, which could be, you know, any staff tools available to know their processes right, know their current business problems and start using technological solutions available to drive value for the customer, if you follow what I mean, right?

Premsai Sainathan  30:30

So absolutely. Dr Mudassir, so the let me just ask you a follow up question on that. So if ERPs are not driving the innovation of the future in supply chain. Then, who is, in your opinion, or who should be? Who, who has begun the innovation journey in supply chain?

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  30:53

I would, again, at the moment, I would have to the only people come to my mind, it’s, it’s, it’s Google. So not, sorry, Google, Amazon, right? So Amazon, the way they have designed their infrastructure, is enabling their physical structure to perform better, distribution wise, right? And the same level of and that’s why, if you ask me, Why AWS is so successful. The reason AWS is so successful it’s because Amazon Web Services, because they have designed their IT structure and their physical structure on AWS, right? So they have a very good, real case study to play with, right? So they exactly know where the problem and pain points are, and they are designing solutions, right? But the other players, like Google or Microsoft, Azure, if they’re coming right now, they are not into the the supply chain space. So for them, they have to rely on other people to bring the problem, to find a solution, right? So for me, I would say Amazon, through and through, right? There is a reason why Jeff Bezos, right now, is the most religious person on the world, because I think he cracked the code of of that, right? If you, if you say, I can give you one more example, which is slightly not always Amazon, Tesla. Maybe I’m not the biggest fan of Elon Musk or his tweets, but one thing Tesla has definitely changed, which I feel is the right thing to do. If an OEM can do it, everybody should do it. So let me tell you what I mean by that. Tesla has decided they are not going to go to the traditional dealer model, right? They have decided you can go and, literally, buy your car online, place an order, and they can deliver you, right? They have done it successfully. So they have cut the middleman. So just think about the theory. When I was in 2000 you know, five, six, when I was doing my Masters, I learned the theory back then in the books that if you have too many players in the supply chain, that means you have more cost, more bull be perfect, and more inefficiency. So if you, if the OEM, a manufacturer, get closer to the end customer, then you can drive more efficiently. You make money. The knowledge is available for 15 years. But guess what? How many players has actually done that. Very few. I know Tesla, they have done it. Why Ford is not doing it? Why other account companies are not doing it? They are still going very archaic model of the distributor, dealer and the end customer. Why? You know, I mean, I’ve right now, even I’m challenging the the current, most of the models the Middle East, again, the OEM is OEM. They have to hire a distributor. You locally in release, then they sell it to a dealer, and then they sell it to a customer. It’s a waste because everybody’s keeping their margins. And then the end customer gets a product very, very expensively, and you lose money in between, in because of inefficiency involved, which could be a bad information The point I’m making is this, so use. So come back to your question. The technology is available to connect the most the people who are producing the goods or services to the end customer. Do it. Internet have told you 20 years ago, what are you waiting for?

Premsai Sainathan  33:59

So Doctor Mudassir, if a company is looking to transform their supply chain and they’re on the digitization journey, are the kind of solutions they should look for so that they can become those aspirational brands like Amazon that you talked about.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  34:17

I think the first thing, the first thing they need to do is, again, this, I think your question is very good, and maybe my I’m not well prepared, but I tell you impromptu answer for that. It’s to look into the supply chain strategy and the supply chain design. Right? What I mean by the supply chain strategy and design is they have to look into this four key variables, or segmentation. When you look into your supply chain design or supply chain strategy, what is first is, what’s your product segmentation? Are you into innovative product, or are you more into a functional product? So are you making a really cool technology product, like Apple, or you’re making genes, right? The design is different, right? The second thing you need to look at. At What’s your customer segmentation? If you are in a OEM sort of business, and you’re again, working for few distributors, then your ABC analysis is different. Then if you are a cloth manufacturer, functional, and you’re selling to e commerce, Amazon, is it different? Is a different segmentation you’re looking at so and then you look into your lead time segmentation, which is, I think, the most underrated topic in supply chain. If you, if you would have asked, let me give you a question there, just to test people, ask any supply chain person, Senior Manager, tell me what’s your supply chain segment, lead time segmentation. Just ask the question. And I am pretty sure more than 50 people, some people will actually struggle to answer, either right, or they going to give you an average number. And this is what I’m talking about, what I’m talking about, a supply chain function should exactly say that for my, for my, for example, my functional product, for my a grade customer, which I make 80% of my money, my lead time for those products is five days. I should know this top of my head, and that’s what I’m talking about. What is your lead time segmentation? Right for your C Class customers, you should be able to supply the 60 days lead time that’s pretty cool, because they don’t forecast, they don’t give you enough orders. You don’t want to put them enough money. So design your supply chain based on your product segmentation, your your your customer segmentation, your lead time segmentation. And the last one is, which is, again, my theory, than than anything else is your supply segmentation, which plays a big role, right? So you need to fit that in, into your supply supply chain design. This is basically you need to look into, okay, what are my a grade strategic suppliers, which I want to develop to either innovate my product further or improve my service offering. You still need your see, you know cob suppliers, because they supply you widgets or parts, that’s cool, but you need to identify your study supply so. So this is how I, how I how I see that you need to know about. Once you know your supply chain strategy, segmentation, then you need to think, okay, what are my so the second aspect, which I think I touched base, you need to think about four pillars of supply chain strategy. So one of my first blog, I did.

Premsai Sainathan  37:10

That’s on on your site.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  37:14

It was in my bedroom, and I was super rubbish. And you can see when you go and see right now it was, I think, 2007 early on, and I even you gain my bedroom advice, crappy jumper on. But the concept is a four wheeler supply chain strategy, which is basically a banner of my LinkedIn profile, which is people, processes, system execution. So once you know your segmentation of the of your customers, products, lead time and suppliers, you need to think about upper people available. What are the people I want to develop? What is my organization structure? What are the roles and responsibilities, how, where is my competency gap? So almost do a SWOT analysis of your people, right? Similarly, you need to look, I’m going to into, what are the key processes? What are your key supply chain processes? What I mean by supply chain processes, okay? What, how I do my ABC analysis and how frequently I do it. What is my Snop, for example? What is my planning processes? Distribution? I would say, go down to a picking level. What is my picking process? Right? So, design as many processes as you want, and then look into the systems. What systems are using, what people do, which is, for me, is, is ridiculous, and again, that’s why, when I wrote a blog on the nine factors of the risk in ERP implementation, is they go and spend millions and millions right to buy a system which is very less flexible or not very customized, and trying to fit a new system into their old business operation model. You have the other way around. Actually, the system is designed our best practice. You have to change your business model, or, sorry, your operational practices to fit into your ERP system, and then they claim the system is crap. No, the system is not crap. You just never redesign your your processes into your current ERP system. Because people will say, Oh, I used to get this report from Excel before. I don’t get it, yeah, because you haven’t really think it through how you’re going to generate it from your new ERP system. So just to connect the dots, you have to have a system, and the process is designed around that to make the best out of the system. And people should be trained to use those processes. Once you put that together, then you can focus on execution and execute it better. So don’t sit down. Have a lot of long meetings, and you gotta do this and this and this, small discussions. More time on action, more time on learning the whole PDCA cycle, right? So, so that is what I’m going to say SO to SO once you do that, then you will identify it’s I, by the way, I haven’t, still haven’t, answered your question, so I will come to answering your question. So look into your strategy. Look into your key pillars. Once you know, then link it back with your business strategy. Your business strategy is, we want to go towards the transformational journey, right, or a digital transfer. Information. That means we probably want to reach out the end customer. Who are the end customer is? So how we going to reach them? Right? So how are we going to so for example, how are we going to connect to them? What we is our systems look like, what our key processes look like. So design your systems. Let me give you example to explain my point here, I’ve currently done a project where the whole order collection system was through spreadsheet, right? Everything used to get through spreadsheets from all the distributors, and once we send the supply confirmation was Excel file, once we send them, for example, the documentation through emails. If anybody have to search any invoice or documentation, you just go to the folders and and find out you couldn’t find it like basic stuff, right? Then what we did, again, a small example of of supply chain digitalization. We create a cloud platform which is available where customers can open, open the catalog, literally, like very much, like Amazon, look into the lead time, click on the picture. Can see the product. See the product info, product the you know, whatever the specification of the product, and it’s, I’m talking B to B, by the way, I’m talking b to b little platform, not, not E commerce, right? A, B to B platform, where they can see that, they can see the availability, which is because they are linked with the ERP system. You can, you can see that, and then after this, they choose to order. When the order is entered, we can process it through ERP system. They get the confirmation that this is your shipping lead time. This is your estimated eta, estimated time to arrival. Once you start shipping, they can see their containers, because the information is available through the shipping companies. They can see on the web. They know when it’s arriving. They can see their open orders, and they can download their documentation, everything, the whole communication, into one platform. We’ve taken out a requirement of 450 emails per distributor per month, we have reduced the number of cost customer service used to get. We have taken all the annoying sort of communication from the sales guys so they’re more focused in adding value to a customer, rather than saying, oh, where’s the document, where’s the invoice, where’s my order confirmation. So that’s what I’m thinking about. You starting the strategy, understanding your customer, understanding your four pillars and then delivering the value to a customer by doing a proper digitalization.

Premsai Sainathan  42:29

What you say is you’re talking about top down. But I also think what you’re really talking about is learn bottom up and implement top down. Everything that you’re talking about is go down to the ground level, right from the picking in the warehouse to how your shipments are moving, to what is the demand, what’s the supply, how is things working in every leg of the journey, and then align it with the four pillars that you talk about in your site, the strategy. And then now you’re all set to take the top down plunge, because you have a bird’s eye view of everything. I think this is a this a very innovative approach. It’s the first time I’m hearing it. As we come to the close of this podcast, Dr mudasir, I have a few rapid fire questions. If I was to call it for you, I would see if you can answer some of these in less than a line. Tell me a myth that you come across in the supply chain world.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  43:30

Come across a come across a myth? Oh, yeah, I can tell. In God, we trust everybody else bring data.

Premsai Sainathan  43:40

So top three Supply Chain Management trends to watch for?

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  43:49

Right? Okay, I’m gonna give you a strange answer to this. I would, I’m definitely a fan of supply and digitalization. I’ve brought the, you know, I’m starting, I’ve started a LinkedIn group, please join who is watching. So that’s going to happen. That will change again, as you know, FinTech has done it, or digital market has done it. And I think the second one would be, the is people are thinking the AI or machine learning will basically take the jobs off. That’s totally wrong. And lot of people, whoever actually think the blockchain is a technology to go for. They are wasting their time. Blockchain will not change anything. And I can, I can explain you later on why I’m saying this could be a separate forecast, but stop wasting time with Blockchain.

Premsai Sainathan  44:33

Oh, that’s interesting, and I think people are looking to understand that later. But my third question to you is, what is your top tip for supply chain professionals in the new normal?

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  44:48

In the new normal, right? This is a best time to go and learn as much as possible, right? Because while you’re on your laptop doing your jobs, that means you’re not getting up in the morning. Worrying about I have to take a shower. I have to take a breakfast and do something, and then go to the meeting which you are not. I can give you my example, right? Half of the cows I join, I just, I need to listen, I need to be there, but I don’t add value. So I do multitasking. So anybody so get better multitasking. And while you are things, while you are not doing the things, which you do generally in the office, use that time to learn. Or this is, and again, don’t go for push based learning. Any concept, anything you want to learn. Google it. You’ll find my blog. You’ll find lot of nice resources. Do online courses. You know, I’ve recently launched a course on sales and operations planning, you know, get that. Do it. So learn as much as possible, right? And one more thing, don’t think these podcasts. What you’ve done with me, or, you know, few other people, it’s, it’s useless. Actually do follow and watch it. Let me tell you why. Because there’s a saying my grandma used to say that, you know, listening to an expert is like reading 10 books. So rather than reading your 10 books, you just want one for a lot, for one hour, and you learn a lot.

Premsai Sainathan  46:02

Absolutely. Thank you. Dr Mudassir, I think the supply chain world needs a lot more people like you, but we have a very positive future I see for the supply chain world where this is now turning in from an executional function to a strict business transformation function. So thank you for your time, and we look forward to talking you soon. Thank you.

Dr. Mudassir Ahmed  46:28

So thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed the discussion. I really enjoy what you guys doing it in the romby and I wish you all the success. And yeah, thank you very much.

Scott Mears  46:40

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.