[Music] thank you for joining today's event please stand by for about one minute as we let people join the room and get situated we hope you enjoy today's presentation [Music] so hi everyone uh hope you are doing well and are staying safe so welcome to the first micromasters open access live event of 2021 so this is a cross course collaboration event we have students from sc0x sc2x and fc4x so which are the courses of our micromasters program currently running right now and of course this event is also open to all other supply chain enthusiasts anywhere in the world so i'm sindhu i'm currently running fc 0x code and i have laura with me se2x courses who will be co-hosting this event today thank you sindhu and hi everyone welcome and thank you for joining us today yeah so uh today we've invited liben huang to chat with us on optimizing supply chains to meet stakeholders needs so just a little intro about label so she has an undergraduate degree in medicine and holds a master's degree in strategy management and product development in bioindustries so she recently graduated from mit supply chain management blended masters program which makes laura lieben and me ex-classmates so alibian has worked across multiple industries first as an entrepreneur and later as a supply chain professional um so currently she is serving as the director of operation strategy at about diagnostics thank you lieben for taking the time out to join us for this live event great well thanks for having me um it's great to see you both again um i have to say the mit supply chain blended master's program is truly an amazing experience and i am grateful to meeting all the like-minded supply chain profession professionals like both of you um around the world and uh thank you for the opportunity to share my personal experience here with all the michael master learners thank you thank you that that's great living we're so happy to have you here with us today so for all that are joining today today's topic is often raised by our learners in discussion forums in our courses we get questions like how do we apply certain models or techniques that are taught in courses how much of the outcome from models and algorithm are we supposed to implement or maybe how do we consider external factors that cannot be modeled into account so while we may not be able to touch on all of these topics we thought that drawing on living's inside here would help address the topic of putting theories into action during the conversation we will answer a few questions we received in advance from learners for those that are joining live or not currently enroll in the course please let us know your questions in a q a tab also if you are taking a course you can jump in with your question in the q a tab but please rename yourself write in your name and the course name you are participating in so we know who you are probably something like this yeah so uh libra before we you know jump to the topic of our discussion uh help us set some context about your experience so how does the person who has who has studied medicine end up on the path of supply chain management what caught your interest in this field great sure um so i have to say that i learned from my career that supply chain is the backbone of any business no matter what industry or job functions that you're in you will interact with supply chain at some point so as sindhu introduced earlier after i graduated from medical school in china i continue my study in the business management master's program and subsequently i started my own business as an independent consultant helping western companies to do business in china this experience really opened my eyes on the complexity and opportunity of global trade so later on i joined a leading product realization and contract manufacturing company with over 100 manufacturing sites around the world in that company i had various different roles from business management strategic planning to mergers and acquisitions supply chain management is the core competency of a contract manufacturing company i learned so much from this career experience and deeply appreciated that how an agile transparent and scalable supply chain can be an important competitive advantage to help create value for our customers so currently i'm a director operations strategy for healthcare product company where my responsibilities are developing and implementing strategies to drive network optimization to enable reliable supply of health health products that our customers depend upon um i started my michael masters journey in 2017 working alongside supply chain professionals i wanted to really get more knowledge in supply chain fundamentals so so i can better make connections with them and and and help them to develop initiatives so i was working full-time and and i needed something really flexible and online so i came across the michael masters program i took scx0 first and with the intention to try it out i was so impressed with the quality and i decided to complete it to complete all the five courses and pursue the michael masters surf certificate so like cindy mentioned um we went through the uh uh the master's degree program together in 2020 so yeah this is my background that's great that's impressive living and thank you for sharing that um the journey of yours actually answers also some questions that are brought from our learners like how am i supposed to be in supply chain or excel in supply chain if i'm a finance manager or a food engineer or an i.t professional i have to say myself that i started in finance and cost controlling so i totally see their point but as you said and as we always share together supply chains are applicable in every industry touch every aspect of doing business and it's just about being curious enough to figure out the problem statement and acquire the skills to solve it just as you explained you did so now getting on the topic of the day let's go to stakeholders stakeholders have many many interests that needs to be addressed while designing us any supply chain like for example minimizing cost providing a better service level and so on what were some of the big concepts that you applied in your work that help in optimizing supply chains would you tell us any big take aways that you want to share sure i would say i learn a lot from each of the michael masters courses and i have used many of the concepts in my work especially the concepts from xcx0 supply chain analytics and xcx1 supply chain fundamentals so those two courses for me out of foundations help me better understand the mathematical basics for optimization simulation and trade-off considerations for supply chain policies um early in my career when i was in business development role we help our customers to reduce their overall supply chain costs by optimizing the total landing costs which means over overall costs from builder material sourcing to the delivery of final products including the manufacturing transportation customs in transit inventory handling and carrying costs one of the tools behind this approach is the mixed integer linear programming that we will all learn about in xcx0 so this is just one example of the the mixed integer linear programming application it's very useful tool that you can use to help improve all areas of supply chain from day-to-day operations such as resource planning production planning to network design the xcx2 courses provided deeper understanding on supply chain network uh network design and um that builds on builds up on the mathematical basics from xcx0 so in my current role one of the key responsibility is to optimize our network i have used models from simple excel model like the ones that you will all learn from the course or to a more complex model using software or python programming however for me the key for any network optimization project is not building the model is understanding the problem itself so typically i have a few steps i always take for network optimization projects so the first step i would try to understand what is the real problem we're trying to solve sometimes it's obvious sometimes it's not my recommendation is don't always assume for example sometimes you may initially think it's an inventory problem but after deep dive you realize it's an order pattern problem so to understand what problem we're trying to solve i would first map the current processes step by step talk with process owners gather data along the way supporting each of the steps understand how things are working and why they're working this way so after understanding the real problems to solve you can still building the models for different scenarios and pulling stakeholders to discuss trade-offs in this step it's important to identify the key drivers for the decision and how the variability of those drivers can impact the outcome not only the quantitative drivers like cash flow cost saving lead time saving but also the qualitative factors that are important to your business it's important to understand how the new design will support the business objectives for example as a consumer electronic company time to market probably one of your top considerations but for healthcare product company compliance and quality are high top priorities lastly i would like to borrow chris kepler's mantra that you will hear many times throughout xcx course models don't make decisions people do back to you nice thank you that that really explains i mean we really like the way you explain that it's not important uh to you know right away collect data and build the models and start finding solutions but rather understand the problem statement uh you know go understand what are the constraints that are going into ideating different scenarios and then use you know the underlying techniques and then build the models and run them so that's great thank you so much for sharing that so related to our discussion right now um there are a lot of questions from learners um which we received around covert 19 of course so uh when such unexpected scenarios arise where our supply chain networks are stressed right so what would your recommendation be for a turnaround so when such uh how do we deal with such external factors that we probably wouldn't have taken into account when we are you know making our models or creating our structures sure um yeah covet it's uh such an impactful event that touch everybody's life and every company's uh you know operations um from my opinion i would say the pandemic further accentuates the importance of robust closed loop risk management and business continuity planning because no model can accurately predict when and what risk will take place any business should have a plan to respond to unwanted disruptions have a deep understanding of all aspects of your supply chain identifying the risks and vulnerabilities and how they may impact your business and develop risk mitigations plan around these variables the risk factors are also dynamic so we need to have a process to monitor and update trigger points this includes updating the set models and structures for mitigations with lessons learned from the unexpected scenarios like today the pandemic so the risk management plan also does not exist in the vacuum we need to evaluate and communicate with the supply chain internal and external stakeholders frequently so when the unexpected happens all parties are on the same page and move towards the same direction that's great living thanks for sharing and i think this is also another tool that could be helpful and i would love to address here so building upon the network design concept and this communication you talk about according to your experience in the general field of supply chain from all your years of experience what is the importance being placed on end-to-end visibility yeah it's a very interesting topic so i think supply chain visibility has become more and more important to companies as the supply chain become more and more complex for example if a manufacturer needs to recall products it's important to have a visibility on where the product inventory is across the distribution channels and the customers whom they sell this product to so they can inform the parties impacted and retrieve the products in a very timely basis and also another example if an unexpected shortage of a component which is only less than 0.1 percent of the product cost that can shut down the whole manufacturing line due to lack of a supply chain visibility so the shortage could be caused by many reasons supplier quality issue loss or delay freight regulatory issue but without a visibility we cannot mitigate it connecting to the pandemic question that we just discussed if a company have end-to-end visibility of their supply chain it will be able to see the abnormal supply or demand behaviors from the suppliers and customers in the early stage of the pandemic and able to develop proactive mitigation plans to prevent unwanted disruptions of the operations so in my view end-to-end visibility is the foundation that enables a company to be proactive and efficient enabling the visibility often involves connecting data that are in different format different refreshing cadence and from different silo systems to generate actionable insights i believe as professional supply chain professionals we all desire to have this end-to-end visibility of our supply chain however however many times this could mean significant investments in which case it's important to lay out and align the future vision with the organization's leadership and prioritize the initiative based on the benefits versus efforts taking incremental wins to demonstrate the value of achieving the final goal that's very true living and i would like to move on to the digital transformation line now that you talked about this uh trade-offs between the technologies that we might need and that would love to have and the cost that we can afford and the technology that is available wherever we're working so we have a related question from manish so he's saying that the modern tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence and has to question why if they are we think replacing human managers somehow and also if we um supply chain manager have to learn the new tools to keep up with the modern times i would say yes i believe data analytics and data scientific science skills are more important now than ever digi like you mentioned right digital transformation industry 4.0
those are hot topics and nowadays that you can see everywhere from industry literatures or you know or discussions in the industry uh summit so many companies are going through different stages of this transformations more and more data will come from supply chain as supply chain professionals we need to have the skills to understand and leverage the information i think it's very important to understand the basics and theories behind the different data analytic tools but i don't believe we have to be the expert in programming i'm not so if your company already implemented ml or ai the data science the data science knowledge will help you better understand the model and ask the right questions to evaluate and improve the ml models and if your company is still developing the data strategy the data science knowledge will help you bring on the right tools right skill sets for your team interestingly about the question of ai replacing supply chain professionals in the capstone project of the scm program my partner and i studied human machine teaming in ai driven supply chains among the successful ai implementation projects that we studied one common theme is that ai are not replacing supply chain professionals but are becoming more of a human's teammate to augment humans capability in better decision-making that's very well said yes and i i don't think we we would agree that you are not a programmer because we've seen your skills in our classes during the master's program but uh thanks for the comment saying that human managers are not necessarily you know they will not be replaced by the program but then there's something that would go hand in hand to you know be better so um thank you for the discussion so far i think we've quickly progressed to the live event and um it's nice how our discussion so far has touched almost you know all of the sex courses that are currently running right now so just a quick thing for the professionals who are not enrolled in any of our courses so we have about five courses as a part of our micromasters program which ends with a comprehensive final exam so upon completion of this you receive an official certificate in micromasters in sem so if you need more details you can always visit our program page and also there is this other live event we did where dr poncey our executive director spoke about the details of the program and also the value that it brings so we will send you these details in the follow-up email as well as it will also be available in our platform as well for you to check it out thank you thank you so now we will get some questions from the crowd and the questions we received in advance remember to rename yourself mentioning your course number if you're enrolled into one i would like to start with this question from steph living and this is totally for you how has the micro master course enriched the traditional master education you received um i would say it's uh the micromaster course is very supply chain specific and gives a lot of great information on supply chain fundamentals so the traditional so i did have a business management masters before before taking the michael masters program so the business management master's program gave me a great perspective all the different tools that i need from a business management standpoint strategy development product design and quality management and all the general concepts that i need to get into however it's not dipping deep enough to for the supply chain fundamental concepts so the micromasters program really gives a great introduction and great education on the fundamentals that you will need to use or leverage uh in supply chain so i think this is totally related to that so i will just jump in with the second one we got um our learners are asking especially sandeep um how did your view point toward scm problems changed before and after getting these specific technical skills you got through our course was there any change in the point of view and how you jumped in in maybe your board meetings how how does it change your scm view um so i would say uh helps me better understand uh why things are why things happen this way and how things are operated for example you know understanding how inventory policies are setting and what kind of different approach that we use in inventory policy setting and uh and also have a broader perspective understanding how one decision from one value chain step of the supply chain could impact uh the entire uh entire supply chain entire value chain through the bullwhip effect so that you will you will also learn how in the sex course so um yes i think the x the michael master course uh give me better understanding on the details of supply chain and broaden my perspective and when i speak to supply chain professionals and when i work with them that help help me to speak the same language if you will with them and and and yeah so that helps to better drive the final outcomes that we desire great living and now i will give you some seconds to rest and i will jump into sindu um i also know senior has been taking the macromaster in the past before going to the blended master program and she did it when she was working and had her own hobbies going on um a lot of people is wondering how do you handle the courses your day-to-day life a full-time job and the application to a residential or blender mask program how was your journey i think this is one of the famous questions that we always get how do you manage it right so for me when i was working so i was a full-time professional when i took up the micromasters program so working during the weekdays was not an option monday to friday it was just morning to evening uh the same drill go to the office work and come back so the time that i used to work or study the micromasters courses was only during the weekend so i would start on saturday mornings and at least you know try to be done by sunday afternoon so that i have actually the sunday evening free for me some of the courses were tough i mean probably after sc2x and so on it gets a little more tricky you need to spend some more time so that time it would you know fill into monday but then you have to manage somehow right because the courses are so interesting they start with being completely math based where probably you know if you get the concept you can quickly solve the questions but then later it becomes more into concepts and understanding getting more into the qualitative part of the supply chain so it takes a bit more time you want to get um get into depth and you know understand what you're studying and everything so and also probably one of the other strategies i applied was to take courses one at a time because it was definitely not feasible to take you know two or more at once some of them do some of the learners do write to us saying they are taking two or more courses that's kudos to them because i definitely was not able to manage and i was like doing one at a time and probably the drafting was also better if i did one at a time because the courses were demanding as well but then it was worth it and yeah that's how i was able to manage thank you cindy i got another question i think that's interesting i will jump in with some brief comments myself but i will then go to living with it so um we have uh one of uh our members in the audience asking after 20 years of experience in supply chain will this give me something new i will say i had over 10 years not 20 when i started with the micromaster program but i have to say that it gave me a lot of technical skills and we also discussed this with living in the past um we did many things but we didn't have the frameworks or we probably didn't know what was behind the underlying um data in the technology we were using uh how things were done we knew we had some tools that probably didn't have this formal framework and i think that's what the micromaster gave me and that gives you also a lot of strength to go to your meetings to um stand in front of the people you have to convince about any supply chain decision because you have a well more structured um presentation for your data um i don't know living if you want to add something else uh no i absolutely agree i think i agree to everything you just said um it's it's always great to uh even though some of the concepts that you you you know you may already know it's always going back to have a very structured way to understanding you know each of the concept and how they connect to each other and i i also have to say one of the new concepts that i really appreciate that i learned from the michael masters program is simulation uh using and also system dynamic and you know understanding how each of the components are impacting each other and then uh and how we can leverage different simulation tool uh to to understand the different elements and different variability of the factors can impact each other so so yes i i would say it's very interesting thank you living we have a question uh from an undergrad student that is joining us and he has taken our course and wants to know how to get into the industry which kind of tools do you think is super important to have maybe not only basing the techniques um special in supply chain technical skills but maybe in their capabilities what else do they need to develop to jump into the industry um i would say uh just like i think a general rule for learning development is 70 20 and 10 right so 70 learning through doing so if possible i would recommend to look for internships or summer job opportunity within the industry that you're interested in and start from there get get understanding of the get better understanding of the industry and uh from operations to you know various functions you know through that value chain and and learn as much as you can so i would say uh yeah so that would be one of the recommendation and then i have uh 20 learning through others so talk with people who are in the industry uh and then learn from them and understand what you know what make them successful and and then what are the trajectory those uh ex those people went through so i would say those are the next steps that i would recommend look for internship uh or and then talk with industry practitioners that's a great piece of advice thank you living and there is something else that people is jumping in with many questions in the q a um and i think it's a great part of our program um we have some people saying i am a very i'm very experienced in the i i t field or very experienced in finance as we talked before um and there is also a question about networking how does networking make supply chain professionals better and how does that help to improve in your career so i think that this is one of the greatest thing of our course we have these people from all around the world uh that are all interested in supply chain some of them have more experience in one or another field or a different industry some people is just beginning we have undergraduates and we also have master program people um phds doing this um how would you consider networking important for supply chain in your own experience uh i think networking is very important uh not only for supply chain i think for any job functions uh relationship is one of the foundation that helps you broaden your your trajectory so um and one of the uh thing that i feel i'm lucky in my career that is that i have met a few great mentors um so that's really helped me and guide me through my career trajectory so finding a great mentor or finding several mentors uh in in your career i think it's one of the important steps and and um really connect to with them and learn from them and get coaching for the development and also networking within the company that you're in um maybe different divisions or different business units even different job functions so doesn't mean that supply chain have to network with supply chain person only i would highly recommend learn as much as you can from other functions commercial how they sell and why they you know how they make business proposals and why they make business proposals this way and i think all those would help you when you develop your supply chain strategy implement strategy initiatives and supply chain you have a full understanding of why we're doing what we do that's great living thank you um i think we have we have so many questions we probably won't be able to address them all so i think uh we will stop it by now um this brings us to the end of the live event um we hope the conversation offer you some insights on optimization supply chain um to meet stakeholder nate that was our yeah main goal um so thank you living for taking your time out of your busy scale to join us we truly appreciate thank you for answering so many questions and uh for giving a great pieces of advice for all our learners um we can tell you uh cindy and i share the same perspective about networking about communication so stay tuned and you will learn a lot of great information from our course and even language to speak with other people even if you're not in the same field that us so thank you living thank you yes thank you everyone for joining today we'll follow up on an email and see you in our courses as well we'll be also sharing the links to a recording of this event or you can find it in the youtube channel soon thank you bye bye bye everyone you
2021-02-01