What’s Happening in Supply Chain Today?

the next level supply chain with gs1us a podcast in which we explore the mind-bending world of Global Supply chains covering topics such as automation Innovation unique identity and more I'm your co-host Reed and I'm Liz and welcome to the show so Reed and I just had a conversation with Lisa Anderson from LMA Consulting Group she's worked as a consultant for the past 18 years with all different players within the supply chain she talked to us about what trends she's seeing what risks she's seeing within the supply chain what kind of Technology can be used to answer some of those questions the technology ranges from EDI to digital Twins and kind of everything in between it was fascinating to talk about all of the different players in the supply chain and how they need to come together and have cross-functional teams and discussions she talked about having this control tower having this thought of a control tower out in the future to be able to see where everything is within Supply chains it was just awesome it's a great episode enjoy good morning Lisa welcome to the show great glad to be here well we appreciate you getting up so early because you're calling in from California and it's like 10 o'clock on the East Coast so it's a little bit early for you we appreciate that it's a great topic so let's just jump right into that if you could just give us a little background on yourself and LMA Consulting sure so I am a former Vice President of Operations and supply chain for a mid-market manufacturer and I've been now Consulting for the last 18 years with a specialty in Supply Chain management so you've seen a lot absolutely I work with manufacturers and Distributors and there's always new trends occurring complications there isn't a day that goes by where some new challenge hasn't Arisen it's a pretty typical day yeah especially probably in the last several years nothing is the same as it used to be with all of your knowledge and background what do you see happening today in the supply chain that's new and different there's a lot going on that is new and different to your point now that we're postcovid there is no normal anymore we're not going back to some sort of old normal we're in a new normal if you will which really includes you know a lack of Labor across the board actually I went on a trip to Europe this summer and I also I belong to several different groups that have Global members and I've yet to find a location in the world that seems to have plenty of Labor so labor is a short supply no matter where you go that's one challenge that definitely has provided some unique opportunities in the supply chain because the bottleneck keeps moving to different places in the supply chain but you know it's causing problems like potential strikes and a whole host of activities so that's one Trend that's happening another is is that the risk in the supply chain is really elevated although we don't have the same issues that we had during the pandemic currently the risk is just extreme between what's happening in Russia Ukraine what's happening with China they're threatening of Taiwan and that whole region the South China Seas there's risks of weather events which we just had another weather event or weather related event in Hawaii so there's just a ton of risk in the supply chain you brought up some really good things I mean labor is a major issue right and we have the baby boomer generation moving on out we have new groups coming in there's new interests but supply chain has been one of the largest because of covid Master degrees sought after they've just seen a complete spike in that but there's labor at a lot of different levels that we have to address and then the risks you brought up two huge ones you know we have political risks but we have environmental risks as well that we're all all experiencing is there one more Trend that you're seeing that's a big rock out there not a technology I'd like to separate the technology out I'd like to jump into the technology separately but I really love that you highlighted labor and political and environmental risks is there any other big rocks I would include regulatory risk in that as well as part of that other risk category another one that we're seeing in the practice is that a collaboration across the supply chain so from your customers to your suppliers the successful companies are finding ways to implement programs like sales and operations planning Sales Inventory operations planning which is one of our Specialties but it really is critical today because you have to be able to tie together your Demand with your supply and your customers with your suppliers the whole supply chain got out of whack during covid and it really hasn't gone back into control if you will completely and it just is a different ball game so you need to have the ability to communicate and standardize and have a cross-organizational approach if you want to succeed in today's environment what are some popular techno technology trends that you're seeing today right now in supply chain or whatever you're seeing that's big trends that are people diving into right now well you know it's really the technologies that support customers and support you know this lack of Labor if you will the ones that support the mitigation of risk so what that really means is that Predictive Analytics is very popular because after all we have to figure out where to focus our attention we don't have endless amounts of resources and we just don't have endless amounts of time the people who are successful in the next several years I think are going to be the ones that lead their Industries for decades to come because it's going to be similar to The Great Depression in terms of the amount of volatility going on in the supply chain not because we're going through a Great Depression at least I hope not but basically you know I think there's gonna be more opportunities than never before except for during that time frame where more people shot to the key in their industry Predictive Analytics to understand where you're going I of course like the supply chain softwares it depends on the industry I am all for common sense Technologies it's demand planning for industries that require high volume of skus and promotional activity and that type of thing that's quite critical but really digital twins e-commerce actually the softwares that help with the customer and serve the customer customer experience improved so that can be just simply Advanced planning softwares because how do you have the right product in the right place at the right time is quite the challenge in today's environment and you know there's softwares that you know help with the sciop Sales Inventory operations find the type of process there's other ones that support it right you know we're working with a client right now a simple procedure which is preparing for a inventory audit which is definitely foundational right it's not rocket science cycle counting however they're going to move to barcoding and better ways to track inventory and automate processes there's Bunches of automation type of software which is definitely great because in a manufacturing environment if you can automate a process you can minimize again how many people you need which you can't find anyway and you can make it more repetitive quality improve the quality of the process and the results there's quite a bit of Technology actually there's ar audio you know there's on and on opportunities when it comes to Tech actually 3D printing additive manufacturing is exciting because maybe we need to be re-looking at our supply chains in the first place and we do need to be positioning it more towards customers so actually you asked about trends in the Supply Chain by all means reshoring and near Shoring is another Trend and really just expanding manufacturing you may not be really bringing anything back anywhere or moving it somewhere close what you're really doing is you're expanding your manufacturing capabilities closer to your customers so again it's about the customer right and ideally as you're doing this you're automating and utilizing more technology so that you can ramp up quickly with less people those types of activities is definitely needed that can lead you to Robotics and some other Technologies as well so with all of the technology that you just mentioned which is vast and you have an organization that has let's just say in this case been around for years how do you know what to focus on when I mean what problem are they trying to solve I'm assuming and you can help them with that conversation but trying to figure out what to focus on with all of that stuff must be daunting well I mean you're right I mean that's actually why with each project that we start we'll start with a quick assessment so that we don't just do whack-a-mole because there's just too many priorities and it really is quite important that you prioritize where you focus attention you don't have endless resources that's something that we're recommending to every client they really need to be doing is looking at where do they spend their time but you don't want to get into analysis paralysis you just want to like look at Common Sense factors you know what's going to help who your customers in Revenue in a way that's profitable and that better supports your people which could be just simply having them because that'll do it right because you'll have customers or employees and your profit all wrapped into one so it doesn't have to be complex but you should be looking at what's going to be relevant to you unfortunately a lot of times it's very tempting to follow the fads or what it is that is talked about in the news any of these Technologies could probably help you but are they going to be one that's really going to make a difference to your customers make a difference to your bottom line or make a difference to your your ability to fulfill your customer orders or it better engages your employees so I really really do need to look at what you're doing and perhaps you know work with an expert at least at a minimum make sure that you're thinking through this before you throw good money after bad because after all any of these Technologies is going to require that you invest and that you implement roll out provide training education those types of things I love that you pointed out and Liz you kind of chimed in there about the prioritization and not chasing just the shiny object or the hottest new trend I mean you may need to right you may need to put some Automation in you may need to do some other things and it may be game changing for you but ultimately you have to know your business and then you also have to do what I refer to as just some fundamentals and some blocking and tackling and looking at your business you said earlier moving towards barcoding and for like us we're in barcoding every day RFID every day that's what we do every day but I have seen a lot of warehouses where they're still not using it right they're mid-size companies or they're smaller companies and they're like ah we're not big enough we don't need that I was wondering if you can maybe talk about that just a little bit about like just some of these things that have been proven over decades tried and true methods that maybe are really really low hanging fruit where you could really get yourself or maybe with some of them you skip over them and move to the latest Trend which is beneficial but the fact that he said that people need to move to barcoding I'm like they're not so maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on that it depends on the size Company the company I was talking about is a decent size you know they should crawl walk and then run but they're going to have to expedite that path because there's many clients that are very interested in barcoding that aren't barcoding today sounds like a no-brainer obviously however if you don't have transactional disciplines and those types of processes in place barcoding could make your situation worse you have to start with the foundation although really that is not going to cut it in the next several years because only those companies that are pursuing technology and are automating and digitizing are going to thrive so they have to quickly put those foundations in place it's surprising how many people are not just doing something as simple as barcoding or pursuing RFID I mean it's like that with other areas as well a technology I should have mentioned but to some degree it's similar to a baseline technology and that's Erp so art do they have a modern Erp system because that will connect with a lot of these technologies that I was talking about that they really do need but yes the standardization of data is quite critical for communicating across the supply chain which is definitely another Trend actually and and what I mean by that is the visibility of being able to see across the supply chain if you think Amazon right they send you a note saying this is where your product is on his way or nine stops away or something that's where we've gotten used to understanding and so that type of visibility is going to be critical and so that kind of leads to supply chain control towers and those types of things as well it's just fascinating because that's what we expect now is that visibility of consumers to know where something is whether it's you know an Amazon or food delivery or what have you it's just what is expected and as organizations change and evolve to what consumers expect I'm assuming it's super important for organizations one you talked about that cross-functional but to know your own supply chain from the raw materials all the way down to the point of sale or food or what have you you our organizations really leaning into understanding beginning to end of these processes so that they can figure out where to implement the Technologies or bring more visibility to consumers or things like that yeah some of them are I mean they're looking at supplier portals to get better understanding of what's coming to them and then from a customer standpoint it depends there's EDI in some cases and you know certainly blockchain is another technology that's out there although it's not really widely being used by any means but you know really understanding what's on the way to a customer and being able to track it like an Amazon does that's definitely something that customers expect and so companies are pursuing how to achieve that so they can at least get that type of visibility so they can provide that type of information to their customers if they call in at a minimum it's so funny you said EDI and I can't program it but I can talk to it in very detailed ways if you ever want to go down a rabbit hole I would love to talk to you about EDI but it's so funny because it's an old technology right but it can be used for that foundational visibility to information across the supply chain so you almost can look in the past to help you solve current issues I don't know it's just interesting that you said no you're absolutely correct I mean sometimes we get so carried away with like the latest the newest thing that's coming what's really the difference for many of these customers if they're utilizing EDI why would they need to go to blockchain I mean it just depends on what kind of product they have if product traceability I mean that's a part of a most Erp systems anyway so it's I mean I'm not suggesting that blockchain doesn't have some advantages but it's you can be doing Overkill too you need to figure out what's really appropriate to give you the data that you need so that you can run your business in the way that's best for your customer if it's not best for your customers your profit and your employees why are you investing this money so yes EDI can work quite well I used to utilize EDI as a part of a VMI vendor managed inventory program where we figured out what our number one customer needed at each of their branches across the world and we sent the product to their branches for them you know we won supplier of the Year several years in a row 0 and reduce both of our inventories and improve both of our profits and increased our sales because we had the inventory where it needed to be and that was using a supply chain software that's basically forecasting and replenishment type of software and EDI it didn't require rocket science yeah it's crazy how you can go back to basics and use something from the past that is super applicable today and it talks to the importance of data standardization that you mentioned before because when you have good foundational data whatever technology that you end up using EDI or something super more fancy if you CIS or whatever but because we're in standards I have to ask you a standards question I mean we talked about data standardization it sounds like you are 100 behind standards playing that important role in managing and having a traceable supply chain yeah no absolutely I mean you need to have standardized is data for example I'm working with another client an industrial type of client it has an engineering to order type of a product and I mean one of the key things that we did that dramatically helped them improve their customer performance and improve their profitability actually and most importantly allowed them to get the right products ready for sales so that they could increase their sales volume was standardizing their data you know their engineering to order so every product is like different but there was quite a bit of standardization across different groupings of products and they had different data sources so you know we had to sync the data sources up so we had to sync the data sources off standardize it establish some commonality and that allowed us to be able to see into the future of what was going to be coming down the pipe and enough detail to get the right types of people for the right areas of the operation which which was important to be able to do that in advance and to also be looking at what materials needed to be coming in and be on contract if you will so that we could support the sales and that allowed us to decrease lead times and grow the business far greater than they would have otherwise that was really a part of the sales of operations planning process but it was really the standardization of data that was the foundation we built in order to make everything work and in that case it was a simple in quotes tools that we put together although they have robust Erp systems but if it doesn't sync up and where does it matter so we didn't necessarily use something fancy but it's prepared now so that we can start to use I mean part of technology is once you have a standard data or standard platform you've built the foundation then you can utilize technology to do it faster to you know be more efficient and be successful it's a step in the process yeah and people don't love that step because it's not very exciting to look at your data and figure out who owns it and is it quality and do you need to go back and do some basic foundational stuff to it it's just not exciting but it's so important to start there because otherwise it's just bad data everywhere and throughout oh yeah you're making poor decisions this is the issue because you don't know and you know you don't have to like everyone thinks you know oh my gosh it's gonna take a year or two years I don't have the resources to clean up this data so let's find something faster but it doesn't work that way you know really what you should do instead is and this is what we did is start cleaning up the data immediately but we know that it's going to be a journey in this case it will take a couple of years to standardize all the data but you can again start with the priorities and start to work in the areas where you have to make some key decisions you don't need to wait years you don't even wait months necessarily you know you find something that you can do within a few months it depends on the size you know organization if it's a small one find something if you do within a few weeks but basically you find something you can do where you can make progress and you can make some directionally correct decisions that will lead you in the right direction because you have to stay ahead of your customers your competition Etc so you know it's a matter of pursuing the path but doing it in such a way where you don't wait till it's all done to go forward you do it in a way where you make progress along the way and you can use what you've done yeah you don't have to single thread that a kind of improvement that process right yeah I mean we've talked about the trends and the technology what do you see on the horizon based on the last several years for the supply chain industry and how do businesses stay ahead of all of that I mean we talked about the importance of foundational data and standardization so that's probably one thing but what else can organizations do to stay ahead of all of this change you really do need to make sure that you're utilizing if you have a modern Erp system and when I say modern you know it's got to be one that will work with these Advanced Technologies as you get there so some of the archaic or really old systems you're just going to struggle along the way but if you have a modern system then really it can just better utilize your Erp system so and Erp systems will allow you to standardize your data as well it'll support that process right and it will connect with some of these things we've been talking about so that's another thing you should be doing some of the cool things on the horizon a digital twin gives you the capability to do like a what if analysis it doesn't have to be as fancy as a digital twin obviously AI everyone's talking about AI today I forgot to mention that earlier but AI is actually incorporated into many of the modern Erp systems into many of the functions it's incorporated into like Predictive Analytics demand forecasting in those those types of things with that said though that's an exciting technology if you add AI iot so any internet of things which really could just mean you're collecting data from your machines you know it doesn't have to be so complicated as everyone says or you know your work or collecting it from vehicles or whatever and then you're utilizing something like Predictive Analytics and you can use it in combination with it could be what I would call like a poor man's digital twin so you don't even have to have something that's officially a digital twin but something that allows you to do some what if scenarios look across actually you know there's companies out there that have designed factories and then ran the what-if scenarios and redesigned it before they actually started constructing which is awesome because they were able to optimize that factory setup through yeah that's the use of these Technologies and the supply chain Side manufacturing and supply chain like go hand in hand so there's so much you can do you know like from the control tower or point of view you want to know where all your let's say your supply chain is going to have multiple suppliers it's going to have multiple perhaps manufacturers and it's definitely going to have multiple customers one would hope and different levels of customers and transportation partners and depends on how complexity it all is may have different modes of transportation as well you want to be able to ideally know where everything is in your supply chain that would be the ideal state which is sometimes called a control tower and then you know you could say you have a truck that's going from here to there you have a container ship that's at this location you have your suppliers have this type of capacity and if you could look across your whole supply chain theoretically if something happens in I don't know well I hope that China doesn't like go into Taiwan but I don't know there's a lot of risk over there so if something happens you know where things are in your supply chain and you know where where your wrists are because you have like your supplier supplier is located in the midst of The Hot Zone or whatever you would know that you have an issue so you're going to have to turn on your backup supplier so that type of like a control tower type of capability is exciting although it's complicated because it's difficult to get all those Partners to work together one of the things that's happening right now is like the ports the ports of La Long Beach they have some digital projects going right one of the projects is simply to try to figure out that from a port point of view like what's coming in on what ship where is it and you would think that would be simple but it's not because there's so many different parties involved that don't work for the same company so if you can do it though a control tower for your company and everybody is in your supply chain somewhere you have at least more control over that situation I'm not saying you should all work by yourself instead of like working on a collaborative effort because you should work on collaborative efforts that's going to move your company in the right direction and that's a priority for your company which if it's not though so that's like goes back to priorities right but anyway I do think that that's some of the exciting Technologies out there and I've probably forgotten actually another one that's big in supply chain and Manufacturing is where you can like look in the goggles and you can see oh you can somebody can show you how you actually work on the piece of equipment you're doing or they can prevent an accident on a forklift by you saying hey you're getting ready to run into something and like actually autonomous vehicles can stop it there's like all sorts of interesting Technologies out there from that point of view all that is so cool I just envisioned this I don't know we've seen it in the movies right you have a boat or a plane or truck and it's got this on it it would be really cool that you could very quickly shift oh there's a hurricane coming here so we're going to I'm sure it's Nirvana but that is what is very needed in today's world especially if you have a global company and you're highly dependent on a supply chain right I mean if you have a Regional Eye Supply Chain it's not so important you can just keep track of your region we talked about those cross-functional conversations one of the things that I'm working on and you touched on it very early on in the conversation with the risk and Regulatory and when we start talking about food and the food safety modernization act 204 where there's just additional record keeping we keep talking about these cross-functional teams needing to come together because it's not just food safety and it's not just the master data people and it's not just the supply AI chain but it's flexing these muscles of not working in a silo and it seems like there's a lot of problems that that can solve whether it's overall supply chain visibility and cross-functional teams or it's Regulatory and you can use these cross-functional teams for lots of different things so it's almost like get your group together and then you can figure out a lot of problems that collectively can maybe be fixed or uncovered yeah I mean absolutely I mean the food chain is definitely one where Advanced Technologies that can standardize data keep track of the chain if nothing else using traceability in Erp but it would be great to share it and have it quickly available and then you need to tie it together with which end customer has purchased this food which many times could be from a store's point of sale data or something it depends on where it went I suppose it could have gone to a restaurant or whatever but basically being able to trace that whole chain quicker can save lives right so that would be important data it's probably similar to the port example the challenge is getting all these parties to work together but that could be quite critical when it comes to food safety absolutely this has been such a fascinating conversation as we wrap up because we're getting short on time Reid and I ask our guests to closing questions the first is around technology so in your either personal or professional life what is your favorite technology that you are using or talking about today with a client we're using something that kind of approaches a digital twin I mean it's not that but it's something we actually built that's similar to it where we can see data across their demand and their supply so that we can make proactive decisions and I think that's very exciting because we can figure out should we make this should we buy this how do we meet customer needs reduce lead times maximize profitability you have lots of variables that you can maximize at once so I think that's exciting and that also relates really to what could be business intelligence Predictive Analytics and those types of tools and I think those are definitely exciting as well in today's world so I think the combination of those tools is something that currently they've been working on that you know has really driven results it's exciting when you're working with technology that's not just technology but it's one where you get bottom line results with clients I think that's exciting yeah absolutely you can see it all come together that's the best it's been the light bulb and all of it falls into place that's awesome exactly so the last question I have for you is you've seen a lot of Trends out there what blows your mind it can be personal it can be professional but what have you seen that you're just like holy cow I just can't believe that one of the things that's simple but I think it could be revolutionary is actually there's two that popped to my mind one is 3D printing additive Manufacturing in the sense that it's becoming more widespread I mean when it's used for product development that's exciting but if you could actually produce something at a higher volume which is not really there today but it seems like it's coming or you could support engines for planes or something like that that would be quite interesting if you could just print something up as it's literally needed as complex as that that's rather mind-blowing and then you know something that I guess it's a little bit simpler but it still seems quite out there is the idea I was talking about earlier where you're looking into glasses talking to somebody across the world and they're leading you through a complex it could be even used medically right for a particular surgery or something or in terms of plants working on a Machinery or equipment or Supply chains that any something that's occurring in the warehouse or in transportation but I think that that's got a lot of applications that's gonna really change how we do business as well I mean it's like bringing YouTube to life in your specific situation making oceans right here so that you can be next to the person that can help you like virtual yeah virtual reality kind of thinking about my kids playing Oculus and like they literally really like will hit their hand on the wall because they're trying to do something anyway it's really cool technology that I think has a lot of applications I love the doctor analogy just to have an expert be able to be available right there next to you but not you know all of these go back to like the limited resources idea too because yeah you just don't have the people that can fly around everywhere doing all this your greatest experts that you may really need working on something like is it critical as like food safety like we were talking about earlier or a plane that could heal people those kinds of things you want your best people working on it and they can do it from wherever they are in the world that's pretty awesome yeah it's really powerful that's so cool Lisa this has just been such a fun conversation from a supply chain perspective just hearing all the things that is going on I love talking about EDI thank you I never get to talk about EDI I brought up the old topic I guess but it's still used yeah I love it I love it and just you know talking about the overall visibility of the supply chain it's so important and really great so thank you so much it's been a great conversation great very good well I've enjoyed it as well awesome thank you thanks thank you for joining us on this episode of The Next Level supply chain with gs1us if you enjoyed Today's Show please subscribe to our feed and explore more great episodes wherever you get your podcasts don't forget to share and follow us on social media thanks again and we'll see you next time

2023-10-06 06:33

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