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Digital Supply Chain, manufacturing, Podcast, Supply Chain

Digital Supply Chain and surviving coronavirus-driven supply chain disruptions – a chat with MSCG

Supply chains have never been hit with so many disruptions at once. A perfect storm of trade wars, an oil price crash, and then the coronavirus have seen global supply chains shocked like never before.

In the midst of this, via a chat on LinkedIn I discovered that MSCG held a webinar for partners and customers on this very topic, so I invited the two webinar hosts, Dr Dan Bhide and Odell Smith to come on the podcast and talk about the comments, concerns, and learnings folks came away from the webinar with.

I think it was a great chat, but don’t take my word for it (I may be a bit biased 😉 ), have a listen using the player above and/or check out the transcript below, and let me know what you think.

 

Odell Smith [00:00:00] We’ve been in great times, you know, over the last over the last several years, and and the the the thought about risk management and about evaluating risk and then putting in good mitigation plans hasn’t hasn’t really been in place.

 

Tom Raftery [00:00:19] Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. Where ever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast and I am your host, Tom Raftery.

 

Tom Raftery [00:00:31] Hi, everyone, welcome to the Digital Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I have two guests, Dan and Odell. Dan and Odell, would you like to introduce yourselves?

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:00:45] Yes, happy to Tom. Thanks for having us on your podcast today. Really look forward to this conversation. My name is Dan Bhide. I’m a co-founder and partner at My Supply Chain Group. We are Enterprise consulting firm, helping our clients with supply chain stategy, process reengineering and solution implementation in multiple industry verticals.

 

Tom Raftery [00:01:07] Super, and Odell…

 

Odell Smith [00:01:09] Hey. Glad to be here. My name is Odell Smith. I have been with My Supply Chain Group for since it started over 11 years ago. I have been working in the supply chain space for over 30 years and specifically and in I.T. for the last 26 or so and build ITs, architect I.T. solutions for the supply chain.

 

Tom Raftery [00:01:38] Nice, nice, nice. Now, you guys held a webinar a week or so ago addressing specifically supply chain disruption, because  we’re in a kind of a crazy mixed up world right now, this is April 2020, the 14th of April 2020. You know, everything in the world seems to have gone to pot. And you had about a hundred or so people on the webinar. And I was interested to maybe bring some of the learnings from that to the audience of his podcast. So, do you want to talk about the background to the webinar first and then we can get into some of the things that come out of it?

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:02:20] Indeed, we had a lot of other clients calling us, asking, hey, you know, can you help us with these issues vs those issues? And we certainly engage in those activities. What turns out from our experience is this unlike many other disruptions that we have seen in the recent past, whether it was an earthquake or a tsunami, or a fire at a major airport, this one is unique in the sense that quite a few things have certainly assembly together themselves in one place at one time. You know, whether it’s the corona pandemic, whether it’s also the mix of the US-Sino trade war that’s actually been happening for the last couple of years whether it is this certain glut of oil and the rapid decline in oil prices because of that, the fear of recession. All those things are suddenly piled up on us. And a lot of companies that thought they had their business continuity plans put together are now finding that, you know, those weren’t after all that resilient. So that was the reason behind us saying lets take a big picture approach to helping our clients and prospects understand what happened, why it’s happening and what we can do about it. As we go on this conversation we can explain the fact that, you know, beyond going from just issues, impact and mitigation strategies, very able to help clients understand how to actually translate a mitigation strategy into the specific action plans and the specific tasks.

 

Tom Raftery [00:03:44] Okay. Odell, you want to jump in and add anything to that or…

 

Odell Smith [00:03:48] A lot of a lot of this kind of comes down to to information and in the sharing of information. And so one of the one of the only ways that any business is going to be able to get through this is is with collaboration. And so so there’s being able to have information to process and manage internally as well as being able to share with your your vendors and your customers.

 

Tom Raftery [00:04:20] Can I interrupt you Odell for a second just, rather than getting into that just yet, can we take a step back? And we’ve identified the kind of main factors, the drop in oil price, the trade wars and the sudden global pandemic that has shut almost everything down. Those are the big picture factors. But how is that affecting supply chains? How is that affecting organizations you work with? What is it? What are the problems that you guys are seeing out there for companies?

 

Odell Smith [00:04:55] OK. So an example is there’s there’s quite a bit of disruption in in not only in in some of the vendors and suppliers, especially with the the great focus that’s been happening over the last 10 to 20 years of outsourcing, a lot of stuff overseas. And and so there’s obviously enormous impact there with suppliers not being able to provide raw material and/or finished goods to to the supply chains. But in addition to that, there’s there’s logistics impacts as well. So take, for instance, one of our clients has asked us to help them build some what/if simulation capability around port closures. So as these as these products, in addition to the suppliers not being able to provide things, the government mandated closure of of logistics facilities and ports has been a significant problem and a concern with several companies in addition to health and safety measures for the people that work in those areas. So there’s just a couple of examples of of things where things that you wouldn’t normally expect. I mean, sometimes you have union strikes and these type of things, but they’re they’re known more ahead of time. Right. Sure. And there’s a way to be able to try to mitigate some of that. But this is this is urgent, immediate and unexpected in many cases.

 

Tom Raftery [00:06:36] Totally, totally unprecedented to use a word that’s been used an awful lot these days.

 

Odell Smith [00:06:43] Exactly.

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:06:44] You know, if you think about it Tom, even in the last few big disruption that some of us have read about or been through we were, none of us were around for the 1929 Great Depression, many of us may not remember the 1973 oil shock, but none of them had this confluence of all the events and the disruption of demand, disruption of supply, the disruption of networks. And all that compounded by the fact that most of us are forced to stay home because of social distancing. Many people are losing jobs, and all this confluence of multiple impacts is fairly unprecedented.

 

Tom Raftery [00:07:18] It is. And we here in Spain, they’re now starting to allow some sectors go back to work again in a very limited capacity. But it looks like we’re coming out, you know, slowly, the other end of it. The curve is being flattened, but it’s still… There’s not going to be a vaccine widely available until mid to late 2021. So social distancing and those kind of measures you know, to Odell’s point in the workplace for health and safety. That’s going to be an ongoing factor and possibly access to supplies and things like that we can deal with these kind of things short term but is this something that we can manage for 18 months?

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:08:11] I guess it’s more do we have a choice about how to manage it. You know one of the CEOs of a big retailer said, “Hey, you know what? There is no playbook. We are doing this on the fly.” And speaking to another client recently, he said because of social distancing requirements we really can’t even have the whole production staff on the floor, for example. And if earlier we were running the line with, say, 20 people on the line, now we have to make do with ten or twelve of them because of social distancing. And that means we are running our lines at says 60-70% of the capacity than I would usual. Now, this is where the ability to look at all kinds of what/if analysis now that I’m running at 70% for example can I open up the third shift? Can I open up Saturdays? And if I do that, do I have an ability to catch up on my demand? That kind of ability to on the fly do these kinds of different analysis and then figure alternative now that you know you have a different harder constraint of not getting everybody on the production floor becomes an issue. And how quickly are you able to do that kind of analysis to have right kind of decisions made becomes a significant challen. If you digitise your supply chains, then that kind of what/if capability becomes a little easier to achieve then if things are still disconnected and maybe worst, even on paper.

 

Tom Raftery [00:09:32] In the webinar that you guys ran what were the primary concerns that people had when they joined the webinar? What were the questions they were asking and what kind of answers did you have for them?

 

Odell Smith [00:09:44] I guess some of the main concerns were around again, back to the data thing trying to be able to understand the impact of a particular situation. In many cases there are there are several different impacts even inside of some of the same companies. Right. You can have massively increased demand in one business unit and devastatingly loss demand in another business unit even inside of the same corporation. So being able to quickly be able to get information on where we think that’s going to go and what the impact of that is going to be is important and being able to simulate what, how am I going to solve whichever side of that that I’m on? One of the things about this flattening the curve thing, Tom, is I get it. It’s important for for the medical response to this. But what that does, in effect is an indeterminately amount extend this issue and extend the supply chain impact for what you’re talking about, a very long duration. Right. That’s a whole purpose of that model of flattening that curve. And and so trying to to be able to put some data, the people that we were talking to were very concerned about how how to model that. Right. So that they could so that they could plan effectively and then try to, you know, come up with different scenarios where they might be able to make it through. There’s a lot of capability to do things to to try to substitute products where available and to be able to maybe, maybe delay demand spikes or, you know, change promotions and and pricing things that were going to affect demand and that type of thing to be able to shift some of those things around. Those are those are very doable. Those wind up affecting then the supply and how it’s supply is going to be able to make that. So there’s a balance that you can do with that. But being able to simulate that and see that have the visibility of those is some of the biggest concern, because a lot of people have not put in some of some of the new capabilities to be able to visualise that stuff. And that’s that’s an important piece of this concern anyway. Not being able to see.

 

Tom Raftery [00:12:30] So Odell, if I remember correctly, I think you said you’ve been in supply chain for 26 years. Yes. If this had happened 25 years ago as opposed to today you know, what are the differences in the supply chain solutions that are available today versus ones that were available 20 odd years ago? What can companies do now that they couldn’t do then? I mean, we were chatting away here on a podcast recording platform that allows us to see each other’s faces. We’re working from home using Zoom and similar technologies, things that could not have happened 25 years ago. How does the supply chain world compare?

 

Odell Smith [00:13:14] It’s even it’s it’s hard to even imagine back then the the being able to have a) this happening, but but the capability of being able to to function as well as we’re able to. I mean, there is still an amazing amount of business that’s being accomplished because of technology, just like what you’re what you’re describing here. So as an engineer, before you know, it got into the I.T. side of the supply chain working in manufacturing there, there were there were these same type of of of problems. But it seems like there has been this kind of just in time mentality that’s that has really shortened the supply chain, has reduced a lot of cost and has and has taken a lot of the flexibility out of the supply chain over the last several years. And and that that flexibility then is has done a great thing for reducing prices and increasing margins. And it’s a it’s a great thing for the business. But it also I think this is a bit philosophical, but it’s kind of, we’ve been in great times, you know, over the last over the last several years. And and that the the thought about risk management and about evaluating risk and then putting in good mitigation plans hasn’t hasn’t really been in place. Back to your technology question. So there’s going to be a focus on that going forward that hasn’t been there in years. And this whole just in case logic that we discussed in our webinar is going to be much more tied to the just-in-time thing and there’s going to be a balance there. The new technologies that we’ve that we’ve seen come available, especially in the digital revolution, where we’re able to quickly put data in to a system and be able to get valuable results out of it from partners is probably one of the biggest, biggest benefits. So our being able to see the entire supply chain and then be able to collaborate with the cloud technologies with with partners on on from supplier side as well as in the in our manufacturing and processing as well as through to the end customer. And being able to collaborate is the biggest advantage that I’ve seen here in the technology. And that’s that’s a large piece of that is going from on-premise to the cloud. Right. And those those are the biggest the the biggest advantages. And then the tool sets inside of those that that allow more flexibility and visibility in the analytics that are real-time, where we used to have to wait days, you know, to be able to get data in a place where we could do analytics on it. Those are the main pieces for me.

 

Tom Raftery [00:16:32] All right. Dan, have you anything to add there?

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:16:34] Sure. You know, just as the technology has evolved, you know, most of us hadn’t. Maybe the word digital supply chain wasn’t coined 25 years ago. Now it’s a reality for us. You know, and some of us had been leaders, some companies had been forced to follow that, you know. The expectations of consumers have changed as well over the last 25 years, you know, when you thought of getting a product within a week was good enough. Now, here are the Amazons of the world offering the products overnight or even sometimes the same day. So some brick and morter have been forced to go there as well. What that has done is we all talk about the 3 V’s of supply chain, the velocity of supply chain has been forced to increase big time. The visibility also is required to go literally not just within your own silos or breaking the silos, now we’re talking about visibility across the whole network you know from supplier’s supplier to customers, customers. And then there’s also expectation of variability how do I reduce my variability in my supply plan so that I can assure for Tom delivery of his product that he ordered tomorrow morning or even today evening. So expectation of reduced variability, expectation of increasing velocity and expectation of increased visibility has been forced upon the client companies as well.

 

Tom Raftery [00:17:51] And we’re at to almost 18 minutes mark now and I like to keep this podcast to about 20 minutes. For people who are listening who were unable to attend your webinar. What advice would you give them going forward where we’re headed into a world of possibly 18 months of social distancing. You know, maybe there’s a vaccine comes out sooner and maybe it’s, you know, nine or twelve months or whatever it is. But we’re heading into a world of a lot of unknowns, you know, and we’ve had this triple whammy hit us now, what advice would you give to people who are running supply chains now moving forward?

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:18:33] You know, one of the things a caution is that this priming the pump, once things start getting normalised to a new normal, I mean, is going to be excruciatingly complex and time consuming. So that is something that they’re already dealing with. But this priming the pump, meaning getting back to a new normal, is going to take weeks, possibly months to happen. And that means that we have to now look beyond the short-term mid-term plans to look at the Long-Term Plans, having the business continuity plans in place and also literally doing a monthly new scenario’s of what/if, and to mitigate the risk and most importantly focus on the fact that what you do now is going to redefine your competitive ecosystem as well, because some companies will be able to handle this well, some won’t. And that’s going to create a new normal and a new competitive landscape. So see this as much as an opportunity, as a disruption or threat.

 

Tom Raftery [00:19:32] Ok Odell…

 

Odell Smith [00:19:32] So there’s there’s a lot of companies where executives are down on the shop floor packing warehouse boxes right now, trying to to to be able to just get through this. Right. And and that is absolutely required. You just have to do what you have to do to be able to make to make this work. All hands on deck. But at the same time, there has to be some level of strategy where you do like Dan was saying, where you you look for ways that you can take advantage of this and that you can get out of execution and start trying to do some of that forward planning and being able to being able to focus on the entire chain inside of your corporation with a value chain, but the entire supply chain and work on collaboration, with your suppliers and with your customers, to see what they are seeing right as what their demand is and to be able to figure out how you can best supply that, you have to you have to spend some time on that, even in the middle of, you know, working 14 hours a day packing boxes to try to get things out. And so the it’s not necessarily a time to to go and do a full system implementation, but there are there are ways that technology can help in this digitisation, the digitisation that we’ve just talked about. That was a little bit tough to get out! There are there are ways that that you can use information to help expedite that collaboration. And I couldn’t I couldn’t emphasize the collaboration with customers and vendors enough in that scenario.

 

Tom Raftery [00:21:25] OK. Last question, guys. Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you think we should have talked about? Anything that you’d like to bring up that we haven’t hit on just yet?

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:21:36] One quick comment from me and as I was referring to earlier, it’s one thing to comprehend the big picture and talk about mitigation strategies. I would align that to maybe a 80 to a 20 thousand feet level thinking, but it’s a whole another world translating those mitigation strategies into really what enables us to translate that mitigation strategy into action plans. So this is where the expertise matters. How do you translate the so-called one-liner mitigation strategy into 20-30 action items or tasks, whether they’re on the system side, on the people side, on the process side, on the policies and practices side, how do you come up with the new KPIs for resilience as against traditional KPIs for efficiency and just-in-time because those are the challenges that one needs to really think through.

 

Tom Raftery [00:22:31] Odell…

 

Odell Smith [00:22:31] I think being able to look back at this and be able to think of what worked and what didn’t work is going to what is going to wind up being of value as well. It’s it’s almost impossible to do that while you’re in the trenches. But take take notes about about what’s going on and and what worked and what didn’t work and then where you might want to, where you might want to have things perform differently in the future. Most of our planning solutions are are based on data that happened in the past. These anomalistic times that we’re in are going to cause many, many outliers. But there is also going to be a new normal that’s going to come out of that. There’s going to have to be a focus and an analysis on that data to have good plans going forward in the future. And that’s probably a complete separate podcast discussion around innovations and that type of thing. And, you know, being able to use advanced machine learning and AI to be able to support some of those quick decisions. But that anyway, that’s that’s that’s something that’s necessary to do for sure.

 

Tom Raftery [00:23:52] Gentlemen, thank you very much. If people want to know more about yourselves, Dan and Ordell or MASC Gee, where would you have me point them?

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:24:01] They can go to my supply chain group dot com and they can call us as well. But my supply chain group dot com, one word is the place they can reach out to us.

 

Tom Raftery [00:24:13] In that case, gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and your expertise today. It’s been it’s been a pleasure talking to you.

 

Dr Dan Bhide [00:24:20] Thanks for having us Tom. It’s my pleasure.

 

Odell Smith [00:24:22] Yes. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for the time.

 

Tom Raftery [00:24:30] OK. We’ve come to the end of the show. Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you’d like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to SFP dot com slash digital supply chain or simply drop me an email to Tom Dot Raftery at SAP dot com if you’d like to show. Please don’t forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application to get new episodes right away as soon as they’re published. And also, please don’t forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find a show.

 

Tom Raftery [00:24:57] Thanks. Catch you all next time.

 

[00:28:56] Super. Super. That’s great. Claudio’s that’s been fantastic. Thanks a million for coming on the show today.

 

[00:29:10] OK, we’ve come to the end of the show. Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you’d like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to SFP dot com slash digital supply chain or simply drop me an email to Tom Dot Raftery at SAP dot com if you’d like to show. Please don’t forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application to get new episodes right away as soon as they’re published. And also, please don’t forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find show.

 

[00:29:38] Thanks. Catch you all next time.

 

And if you want to know more about any of SAP’s Digital Supply Chain solutions, head on over to www.sap.com/digitalsupplychain and if you liked this show, please don’t forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. Thanks.

And remember, stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane!

 

 

 

Hans Thalbauer profile pic
Digital Supply Chain, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), manufacturing, sustainability

Industry 4.0, Digital Supply Chain, and Sustainability – a chat with Hans Thalbauer

The buzz around Industry 4.0 is starting to grow so I decided it might be interesting to have a series of interviews themed around Industry 4.0 here on the Digital Supply Chain podcast. 

To kick off this series I asked my friend, and colleague Hans Thalbauer to come on the show to talk about where he sees the relationship between Digital Supply Chains, Industry 4.0, and how they can help organisations become more sustainable.

We had a fun, wide-ranging conversation covering manufacturing, connected assets, and the importance of using data for decision making in supply chains.

Check out the audio of our conversation using the player above, and/or the transcript below:

Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast and I am your host Tom Raftery.

 

TR: Hi everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. This episode is one of the series that are themed around Industry 4.0 and my guest on the show today is Hans Thalbauer. Hans, welcome to the show.

 

HT: Thank you very much.

 

TR: Hans, could you, for anyone who doesn’t know, could you introduce yourself to our audience?

 

HT: Yeah, absolutely. I’m if you will, a supply chain veteran. I was working in the supply chain space all my life. I’m with SAP 20 years. All these 20 years I was in supply chain, manufacturing, product life cycle management, operations areas. I’m working with customers around the world and having fun doing that.

 

TR: Good stuff, good stuff. And we’re, we’re on the digital supply chain podcast on the series that is themed around industry 4.0 for anyone who’s unfamiliar Hans, could you tell us what you think Industry 4.0 means, what actually is industry 4.0? Cos it’s kind of a buzz term that’s out there and everyone’s kinda got their own definition. What, what do you think industry 4.0 is?

 

HT: Yeah, you’re totally right. There are many, many definitions about industry 4.0. And if you will, there are also different nuances to industry 4.0 dependent on which region or which country we are. And so, if you just take it from, I think their original definition we are talking about the fourth industrial revolution. We are talking really about a step change in productivity. We are talking about really something significant happening to industries, manufacturing industries. And the digital transformation for manufacturing industries. Industry 4.0very often actually is narrowed down to manufacturing and operations, which is true, right? So there’s a lot happening in these two spaces in these two areas, but it goes beyond, it’s really about the digital transformation of manufacturing industries which is of course much broader than only the manufacturing and operations part. This would be my high-level positioning or, or definition of industry 4.0. So it’s really about the digital transformation of manufacturing industries.

 

TR: Okay. And again, we have a lot of terms here. This is the digital supply chain podcast and we talk about digital supply chain quite a lot, but we also have industrial internet of things and industry 4.0. Is there a, a kind of a natural segregation between those terms or are they kind of the same thing, just you know, different ways of looking at things or how do you see that?

 

HT: They’re the same and they are not. I mean, industry 4.0 obviously started in Germany  with the government initiative about, I want to say even seven to 10 years ago. And really started with the idea of there will be a big change. How can we prepare the industry for this change? The idea is that data are valuable and can be leveraged much different than ever before. Technology like machine learning, artificial intelligence can be leveraged in a very, very different way and really make a big change in how companies run manufacturing. How can actually companies be successful going forward. That was kind of the basic idea and leveraging data in order to do that.

 

In the US industrial internet of things has been created.  Very similar approach going in the same direction. It is broader and narrower at the same time. It has not a strong manufacturing focus. It has much more of a consumer focus and much more these IOT solutions related to consumer products, consumer usage and there are many, many examples of which  everyone is aware around the world from yeah all the products which have been introduced and really have the connectivity and really are consumer oriented. And I think everyone is using them every single day. And so this is kind of where the US discussion has gone much more IOT centric than industrial centric.   

 

If you go to China, there is of course a plan which is called China 2025 which is really also looking into productivity gains in manufacturing. Right? And there it’s really very, very much on manufacturing focus. If you go to Japan, it’s a robotics focus. If you go to India, it’s about Make in India, right? So the big slogan, how to introduce actually a much more efficient and manufacturing industry in India. And so there’s a common thread to all of this. All of it has to do with we get data from machines, from assets, from things, and we want to leverage this data in order to be more efficient, in order to be more precise, to predict outcomes, you know in the future, and really do things differently.

 

By the way, I also would say that industry 4.0 and sustainability go hand. The efficiency in manufacturing. The reduction of energy consumption in manufacturing, the reduction of water consumption during the production processes, all of this actually goes hand in hand. And so both topics for me are connected.

 

TR: Right? No, it is interesting you bring that up because sustainability is obviously a topic that a lot of people are interested in at the moment. It’s, it’s quite a hot topic, but a lot of people may not be aware that obviously sustainability is about doing away with waste. It’s about maximizing use of resources for the, you know, maximizing the, the outcome or the output using the minimal inputs. So it’s getting rid of waste. So to your point, yeah industry 4.0 is all about that, it’s all about getting the best outcome for the minimum inputs or the least waste.

 

HT: Yeah. It’s, it’s really perfectly defined rates are, and what you discussed is perfectly correct. Because when you think about it in the context of sustainability, we are talking about the circular economy. What does it mean? I need to be connected. I need to be connected to the business partners I need to be connected to the things, the more connectivity I have, the better I can manage actually their efficiency. And efficiency in transportation where I really make sure that the truck is never empty. That the truck really has actually the  shortest route to between point A and point B. So it’s all about reducing waste. It’s about water consumption, right? So water consumption, a big, big topic actually during production processes. If you can reduce that also in the product itself, if you can reduce the water in the products, big topic. If you think about energy, it’s biggest topic by itself, right? So with using the energy and then you see actually what companies are doing around the world and especially in the manufacturing industries how they go about  sustainability. It’s really taking the  idea of how can I reduce the carbon dioxide impact? How can I reduce the energy by itself or their consumption by itself. So all of this actually plays hand-in-hand with if I’m more efficient and I can be more efficient with industry 4.0 concepts, then I’m better off not only in my productivity but actually also in my sustainability efforts.

 

TR: Yeah, absolutely. And so  you mentioned different regions like Japan and India and America and Germany. Everyone has kinda got a different focus on it. Are they all industry 4.0? I mean what I’m saying is we’ve, we’ve titled it in some kind of way, IIOT in the U S Industry 4.0 in Germany, but is it all really the same thing? Is it all about maximizing our outputs and minimizing our inputs to get the best results for everyone?

 

HT: I think there is, there is something common around this, right? And then the common things around this is really connecting the assets, connecting the machines, getting the data. So now we have the data, now it’s about getting insights, right? So, okay, good. Now we can see actually much more. It’s a big step forward. I built these data lakes andand, and. The next step needs to be that I really learn from this data. And so there’s a massive amount of data. If you just think about every using the machine, every single assets delivers every milliseconds, hundreds of data. And so you get really this big, big data lakes. So we need machine learning, we need actually algorithms which are able to deal with this data. And I think technology made huge progress there.

 

So we do have technology in place in order to really understand the data and have machines telling us what it really means. So machine learning and artificial intelligence plays a huge role in this context. Why? Because what this leads to is that I really change the way how I run my business. At the moment every single supply chain in the world is an alert driven, reactive supply chain, which means something happens and I need to correct it, right? I’m always actually running after the fact something happened and I always tried to correct it. This is the thing. Exception-based management, exception-based management, alert driven, supply chain, whatever you want to call it. And this is really what, how everything is built up. But what if I can turn this around? What if I can use this data now in order to predict an outcome? Right? So, and this is a big thing and I think it’s not yet well understood in the market that this means all the supply chain around this world become predictive supply chains. So I predict not only the maintenance, I predict the quality of a product while I am producing the product, right? So reduce waste dramatically. It doesn’t go through the entire production line anymore and at the end I find out in quality control that well, it doesn’t meet my criteria. I can do that while I’m producing. I do the same on, on transportation. Right? So I don’t waste the time of, of waiting for a delivery. I can predict actually it might come exactly at this time. Right. And I predict that something might be in the way which doesn’t allow me to deliver at this time. And I can inform all the people who are involved before things happen. Right? And it’s always about, I really am enabling people and companies to look into the future and predicting outcome. And with that, reducing  inefficiencies on a very, very dramatic way.

 

TR: Interesting. I’m intrigued that you’re talking not just about manufacturing, but also about the logistics and deliveries because traditionally I think a lot of people would associate industry 4.0 with manufacturing, but not necessarily with the logistics, with the deliveries, with all that kind of stuff.  How, how does that fit in? Well,where, where does, let me ask an even broader question – where does the scope of industry 4.0 start and end?

 

HT: Like I mentioned before, right? So it’s really for me, the transformation of a manufacturing industry and not of manufacturing only, right? So the manufacturing processes, yes, of course. The operation processes. Yes, of course. But it’s really about the end to end processes in manufacturing. Right? We are talking about here, it’s really the digital transformation for the manufacturing industries, which would be, would be, I think, my description of it. And so where does it end? Where does it stop? I don’t know.  It’s really the whole design to operate process.  If I’m more efficient in designing a product if I have feedback and input at the, at the very beginning, if I introduced this idea of… I reduce whatever plastic consumption while I’m packaging my goods and all these kinds of things all go in design direction, right? It’s, it’s actually really about building an environment where I’m allowing companies to really look into the future. Like I described it before to start predicting an outcome before things happen. And with that running actually in a very, very, very different way than before.  So, yeah, that’s how we would describe it.

 

TR: Okay. Okay, cool.  So we’re getting to, I got to say, this is a journey, you know it’s, for any company it’s gotto be a series of projects to kind of roll out industry 4.0 technologies, it’s not going to be one individual project. It’s going to be a series of projects and it’s going to be an ongoing journey to get there. But where does it end? I mean, for many people, they’re still very analog, so they have a long way to go. For others, they’re further along the journey, but you know, will it ever end?

 

HT: It is an ongoing journey. It is a transformation. I wouldn’t put an end point on it. It’s really because we get smarter and smarter by the day by learning more and more and using data in a very different way. I would maybe an idea to describe it is we are still living very much in a transactional world, right? If you run the business processes in manufacturing, operations and logistics, it’s very much a transaction. I have a delivery and I transact the delivery, I execute on it and so on. And we changed it around and create a data-driven world  where I analyze I simulate and I just make my decisions based on this information. Right? I’m not just blindly executing a transaction anymore, I start simulating. And now if you, if you start doing that, it’s not necessary to do it for everything at the same time.  Of course, you start in certain areas and then you grow from there, right? And then you find out all of a sudden that, well, if I connect these data, I can be smarter. Right? So I give you an example.   If I’m, let’s say starting in predictive maintenance and I find out in this product, yeah, if I predict maintenance, if I reduce here, the maintenance schedule ends on, I really can save a ton of money by doing that, right? So I’m predicting I’m not just doing blindly scheduling, my maintenance for the asset, I’m really predicting when I need to do it and then I do it. So that saves a ton of money. But then the, the thing is if you really go to this data and then you find out what if we would design this asset differently, if the product would have been designed in the first place in a different way, the product would be more stable, more robust. And so therefore I wouldn’t even need to maintain this, this part which always breaks, right? So now you could start to connecting from maintenance you start now connecting the engineering world, right? So it becomes a maintenance driven engineering process, which doesn’t really happen at the moment. Right? So and now you can build these connections also to manufacturing and to logistics, right? If I understand from these other departments what they need, what would be the impact? What is the influence? If all of this would be much more harmonized, then actually I am better off in total. And so my recommendation is always, okay, start in the area where, where you, you think actually there is the biggest value for you, right? In many cases it’s in the maintenance or in the manufacturing area, but then really think about the possibilities you have. Learn from this data and now start to connect to the other areas, connect to engineering, connect to assets, connect to logistics. And by doing so you become much, much more efficient overall.

 

TR: Sounds like it’s a lot about breaking down silos and making organizations more horizontal.

 

HT: It is right without necessarily an organizational change. Right. So I think, I think actually what is always in the way is if systems or processes would require, we introduce that and this means also do I need to change my organizational set up of the company? Not necessarily. Here what we are doing is we connect these organizations with data. What we need to have is really the data needs to flow. We need to have a data model which allows that. We need to have a data lake where we not have only a data lake for operations and one for manufacturing and one for logistics. No, we need to have the possibility to correlate the data and connect this data and with that actually make every single organization unit in the company much smarter.

 

TR: Okay. Yep. Makes sense. One challenge I guess I see for for organizations is a lot of organizations are still not thinking data first and obviously to go down the route that you’re describing, that’s a mindset then that they need to switch to. And I guess that’s more people than technology thing, but how do we convince organizations to to make that change?

 

HT:  I think actually people would be and are willing very much so to switch to a much more data driven approach. They would be happy to get   the information they need in order to make a decision immediately in real time. They don’t have it right now. It takes a day in order to get a report. By then they have already made decisions hundred times during the day and transformed and executed on a transaction. So what do we need to get to is we need to get the information to the people so that they can make these decisions and I’mabsolutely convinced, I haven’t seen it once where people would be hesitating adopting this type of approach. They really like this approach. There is of course, one aspect, which is very important when you talk about this whole aspect of automation, the whole aspect of everything runs by robots and so on. There is the fear that it takes jobs away, right? And it’s not just a fear, it’s a fact, right? So in manufacturing on the shop floor in their houses what do you see right now is a lot of robotics are in there  and less and less people work in this environment. But you also where it’s very interesting if you look into statistics, the last 10 years, many new jobs have been created. There are new job titles which were not existing before. A chief digital officer, something 10 years ago, if you would’ve said, where’s your chief digital officer? Everybody would have said, what? What, what is that? Now every company has a chief digital office and not just the chief digital officer, but the whole organization around it. Right? Which, which really tells me this digital transformation really opens up completely new jobs and job titles we haven’t seen before, which tells me also that there’s a huge opportunity actually for people. Of course it means education, it means training, it means different skills, but in the services part of it, so operations, maintenance part of it, this is a big job area. And also in this whole data part, it’s a big, big job area with like I said, many new job titles, which we haven’t even seen before.

 

TR: Indeed, indeed. Hans, we’re coming towards the end of the show. We’re up on around 20 minutes now. Is there anything that I have not asked you that you think I should have?

 

HT: No. I don’t think so. I think  the discussion is very, very important. The discussion also needs to be that we need to understand how we really can leverage data, make this transition from transaction to a data driven approach that we go into this  predictive way of running a supply chain. So looking into the future instead of looking always into the past  this will have big impact in how companies run their businesses. Also, I think what is very, very important, it’s not just a hot topic to talk about sustainability. I think actually it’s essential to talk about sustainability and we need to have that as another dimension in this industry 4.0 discussion because this really enabled, Industry 4.0 enables us to be more sustainable and we need to measure it, we need to control it in a much better way and we need to leverage all the concepts which are being created from sustainability, circular economy, the whole waste reduction concepts and so on as part of the Industry 4.0. So it really goes hand in hand in my mind.

 

TR: Super. That’s great. Lastly, Hans, if people want to know more about yourself or about  Industry 4.0 or any of these things, where should I direct them to go? Where should they go?

 

HT: Well, go to sap.com. There you’ll find actually Industry 4.0 on the top where it’s a big theme and where you find a lot of additional material about Industry 4.0 and the approach SAP is taking. Yup.

 

TR: Okay. Super. Hans that’s been fantastic. Thanks a million for coming on the show.

 

HT: Thank you.

 

 

And if you want to know more about any of SAP’s Digital Supply Chain solutions, head on over to www.sap.com/digitalsupplychain and if you liked this show, please don’t forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. Thanks.

 

cybersecurity, Digital Supply Chain, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), manufacturing, Podcast

The advantages of Digital Supply Chains – a podcast with Johannes Drooghaag (aka @DRJDrooghaag)

I started a podcast series called The Digital Supply Chain podcast over on DigitalSupplyChainPodcast.com (because I have no imagination and that can’t hurt the search engine rankings!).

For the most recent episode I used Lately‘s transcription service to output the text of the podcast so I could add it into the post but Buzzsprout, my podcast host doesn’t allow posts with a lot of text, so I decided to post the podcast, and the full text of the conversation here. I hope you like it – do let me know in the comments how I could make it better.

This is episode 17 of the Digital Supply Chain podcast. In this episode I interviewed Dr Johannes Drooghaag (also known simply as JD, and @DRJDrooghaag on Twitter).

We had a wide-ranging conversation on Digital Supply Chains covering many aspects including Manufacturing, Industry 4.0, and cybersecurity.

Check out the podcast above, and the transcript below:

TR: Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast and I am your host Tom Raftery.

TR: Hey everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and my special guest on the show today is JD. JD would you like to introduce yourself?

JD: Well, thank you Tom. First, first of all, thank you for having me on your, on your podcast. I’m really appreciate this opportunity. Um, my name is Johannes Drooghaag but it’s shortened to JD because that’s much easier and it doesn’t hurt so much to pronounce. Um, I started my career in industrial automation, the classical way, putting a lot of robots and a lot of sensors and a lot of PLCs in a factory. And through time I learned that there are other options and that we can do a lot more with the, with the data we are collecting and turn it into information or what I prefer actionable information. After some 25 years career in corporate roles, I decided to start my own consulting company and I’m focusing on those two fields on the, on the one hand and the organizational side, do human being that is working with the information. And on the other side, the technology that is creating the data out of which we can create that actionable information. I’m 30 years on the, on um, on the road now and I keep learning every day. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m with you today, Tom, to keep learning from you as well.

TR: Oh dear. No, no pressure on me. So no. Okay. So I, I typically start the show asking the guests on the show to give me their personal definition of what a digital supply chain is. Because you know, everyone has a kind of a slightly different approach to it. It’s a broad topic. So how do you define digital supply chain JD?

JD: Well, for me, the digital supply chain is basically the digital twin, so to speak, of the classical supply chain, which as we all know it with, with all the parts moving and the orders. And the digital supply chain is, is the digital twin in which we can do two things. We can constantly respond to what is happening because we need to respond much faster than we used to do in the past. In the past we had mass production, we had large batches, we had orders which were sent out months before we start producing. Nowadays we have to, we have much more dynamics. Orders are changed, we have smaller volumes, we have smaller production batches. We even want to avoid production batches. We want to create, um, single piece flows in our factories. And the second thing we can do is we can start simulating in our digital supply chain. We can do real what scenarios without actually having to touch the process. So we can start looking for opportunities and for optimization, uh, items. We can also look back to the past and see what failed, what didn’t do, what we were expecting that it would be doing and how can we prevent it and what can we learn from that. And that for me is the digital supply chain. The information that we on the one hand get from the existing supply chains, which are much more complicated than they were in the past. And on the other end, the learnings, the organizational handling of that digital supply chain.

TR: Excellent. Excellent. Very good. Very good. You, um, you started off saying that there were kind of two aspects to, uh, your, looking at digital supply chain. One was the human side and the other was the actionable items. Uh, you know, I’ve, I’ve often said that, in these kind of scenarios that the technology is generally very straightforward. It’s getting people to change because the hard part is, is that, is that your, inkling as well that, you know, technology is generally straightforward. People are hard?

JD: Well, we can make the technology as complicated as we want, but that doesn’t lead to anything, right? So if we put, if we start with a straightforward concept and then make sure that the people who we expect to work with it also actually understand what we are expecting from them, which, which kind of responses we want, then we see that there is a, um, an enormous gap because most people are already pretty much loaded with their actual work. Um, and, and we need them to first of all have the mindset then what that when the system is telling them something, they should take it serious. And now on the other hand, they need to understand what the difference is between some kind of general status update and an urgent item that they actually need to respond to. Now having three decades of experience, I have learned a couple of things. First of all, people do not really trust the system because there’s always something which is not right. If we take a closer look, that means we can learn and we can say, okay, we found something in the system, which is not correct. Let’s improve it. Yeah. But the human behavior is to use that as an excuse almost to also ignore all the other things that they see in the system. And the second thing that I’ve learned is when you’re busy going from A to B and somebody is telling you there’s a smarter way you could go through C and then to B, okay. You were focused on going to B, so you’re not paying attention to that additional information. And that’s an enormous challenge on top of the normal change management and organizational challenges we already have.

TR: Yeah,indeed. And how do you overcome that?

JD: Well, the first thing that I always do with my clients is start with the people and look at what their routines are and look at what kind of information they would need instead of the information that they have. Because what I see in my experience is that most service providers make the mistake of just sending more information to the already available information. And production manager or a scheduler or a planner doesn’t need a new report on top of all the reports they need to report or an information overview that tells them what to do and where they should respond to. So I start by filtering. I start by asking them, if you have 20 reports and I take 10 away, which one would that be? Yeah. And the interesting thing is that in most of the time when I ask for 10, they give me 18 because they’re going to use me.

TR: Yeah. There’s a professor of journalism New York whose name is Clay Shirky and he’s got this great quote that I love. He says, there’s no such thing as information overload. There’s only filter failure.

JD: Exactly. I love that.Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s great. That’s great.

TR: You, you talked as well, uh, not just about the, the people aspect, but of the actionable items. What do you mean by that?

JD: Well, an actionable item. I always take the example of the, of the scada world where I’ve, I’ve spent five years, um, all over the world. If you look at the scada system, you will always have a state to screen where where the operator can see entire refinery or the entire pipeline or any other utilization of that scada. But as soon as the operator is expected to take action, that is automatically put in focus. So at the moment that the operator is expected to take action, the operator sees that action item and that can be a small decision. That can be a big decision, but the system automatically, um, focuses the attention of that operator on that particular item where an action is needed. Okay. Providers of SCADA systems have learned over over the years and they have learned that if you keep that action item in the entire status screen of the refinery, operator won’t notice it because it’s just one little thing in sometimes they have up to a thousand different aggregated devices in the overview and an actionable, actionable item. And an actionable, actionable piece of information means that first of all, the person who shoots take action is informed in the proper way without any kind of distractions. And secondly, the person has a couple of options or has supporting information to make that decision. Now, if I then compare it to what I see, especially in production facilities, that there’s an operator is overloaded with a lot of status written information, which that person should not respond to. And hidden in that stream is that one item where the person should respond to, well then I cannot blame him for not seeing it or ignoring it or pressing the standard button. So the, the popup goes away. Actionable information means to me, I see it when I need it. I get the information I need to take a decision or that actionable information informs me that something is not the way we wanted it to be and I need to do some, some optimizing or it means I need to get some additional resources.

TR: Right. A lot of that sounds like it’s, um, it’s design led issues potentially are maybe not maybe issues with the wrong word, but uh, properly designed screens and user interfaces should do away with a lot of these issues.

JD: Exactly. And then it’s also a system thing because if you look at a supply chain, then it’s not just a screen on a, on a machine. It is a whole stream of information. And if I have somewhere in my supply chain, the change, which was not part of the current, um, planned activities, I cannot wait until that arrives at my facility. I need to respond to that with the appropriate lead time. And if that means a change over in the production planning and that means that I need to schedule some additional machine change over, I need to know that in the proper appropriate time. So we also need to add some intelligence to it. We need to add, um, which timeframes we need. We need to add which kind of materials we need. And if we start figuring that out at the moment that it has already happened, well we are too late, especially when our supply chain is a bit more complicated then the local grocery shop.

TR: Okay. And so you, we have some customers with some very, very complex supply chains. So yeah, like tying all those disparate pieces of data together can prove challenging.

JD: Exactly. I always use this, this lovely example from my own automotive experience. If we look at at the classical, at a car, we have up to 40,000 components. If we look at an electrical vehicle, your favorite topic, we still have about 10,000 components for just one car. Yeah. Now if make one change, just one change, we might have to reschedule, um, a couple of, of those components in the assembly. Now the further we go down the line in that supply chain and we make that significant change, well the more others will have to respond to that. So supply chains are complicated and supply chains are no longer, um, single or dual parties. The same car with, with 40,000 components has up to 1,500 suppliers of those components. And that needs to be managed and it needs to be managed very actively.

TR: Yeah. Yeah. If I needed them or delayed and getting parts to you. Maybe there’s a Coronavirus outbreak and they can’t get their workers to their factories and they have to hold production. It throws everything out.

We are managing the past. With a digital supply chain we are capable of learning how to manage the future

JD: Exactly and if you do that in a in a smart way, and this is what I really enjoy about the digital supply chain because the Corona virus is an example. We have a crisis that might impact our supply chain. Now if we have a properly built and properly designed digital edition of our actual supply chain, that’s the moment where we are capable to say, okay, what happens if we, for example, slow down this line of supply and what does that mean for the other parts? Can we make changes in the capacity or can we increase some full human from another supplier and decrease some folio with this supplier and navigate around that crisis and that crisis never establishes the way we thought. So we can then the next day updated again and we can really start looking forward instead of what most people in the supply chain business always tell me. We are managing the past. With a digital supply chain we are capable of learning how to manage the future.

TR: It’s a, it’s an amazing change isn’t it? In in going from older, more analog technologies where as you write these, say people ran a lays in the past to the digital where we’re analytes in the future. It’s, it’s, it’s, um, I don’t know how to, how to phrase that exactly, but it, it’s, it’s, it’s a huge, huge change in the way people are now able to do business.

JD: It’s, it’s an amazing change and it’s, there’s the simple, in English, we have a wonderful, in German it’s, it’s, it’s almost as wonderful in English we can say, it makes the difference between reacting and acting in the classical analog supply chain management, UI reacting. You’re always reacting to things that have already happened in a digital supply tent. You can act based on the things that you know that will happen because that’s the information you receive. And that’s how you can build your scenarios.

TR: Yeah, that’s it. Exactly. Um, JD. Looking forward the next five, 10 years, where do you see the, the, the biggest, we’ll say potential for change. Um, where do you see the biggest changes that are going to happen? How will they impact?

JD: Well, the biggest changes that I will see, there’s one thing that we are not yet aware of the up to 80% of the production facilities we currently have are built in the previous century classical, uh, built for big batch batches built to, to produce a lot of the same. And companies are starting to learn that you can still use those industry 4.0 and the IOT and the smart supply chain solutions. You just have to be a bit more creative about how to implement them for those, those classical old things. So one of the things that I am already seeing and it’s developing, fortunately that companies are moving forward with their infrastructure, which is in some cases they still plan to use it for the next 20 years. So people stop. I’m believing that all those, all those, those technologies are only available when they build something new or Greenfield facility or to purchase a new machinery. We see that rolling out into the existing infrastructure and that I believe is a wonderful change.

TR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we had an example, I mean, we have, you know, a bunch of examples with different customers, but there was one that, uh, really kind of blew my mind and it was with Harley Davidson. It used to take them 21 days to create a custom motorbike and when they shifted over to digital manufacturing, they brought the time of manufacture from 21 days down to six hours. Just incredible.

JD: That’s incredible. But, but that’s possible.Yeah. Yeah. it’s going back to what you were mentioning, uh, going from facilities which are built to just build lots of, one type of thing. And then when you try and do custom, in this case, motorbikes, it takes a lot more work and takes 21 days. When you switch to a facility which is built to be completely customizable and your lines could be completely fluid, uh, then you can do mass customization and then kind of lot sizes of one and you can drop the time to manufacturer again, in this case of bikes down to as six hours for a custom Harley.

TR: It’s, it’s, it’s really impressive.

…that’s also what industry 4.0 is about. And that is what, what a smart supply chain is about. It’s not just about more data and more technology, it’s especially about becoming more flexible so you can respond to what happens on the market

JD: That’s, that’s, that is really impressive. But it also demonstrates what is possible if you move away from the classical, from the classical patterns. In some cases, that will mean that you actually need to invest in your existing machinery in some cases will mean that you, uh, that you must must reduce some capacity for the mass production, which you don’t need any way, uh, anymore. And in some cases it means that you actually discover that your equipment is doing, is capable of doing much more than you thought it could. You just have to sit down and, and with, with concepts like design thinking, most of it is logical thinking. You need to be able to investigate, to explore, um, to do some, some testing and discover how flexible you can become. Because that’s also what industry 4.0 is about. And that is what, what a smart supply chain is about. It’s not just about more data and more technology, it’s especially about becoming more flexible so you can respond to what happens on the market. Right?

TR: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. And in the case of Harley, it wasn’t that they did it in the same facility, so they kind of, I won’t say they cheated, but it took a kind of a hybrid approach. Uh, they built a second facility beside their existing facility and then they transferred all of their staff and all their machinery into the new facility. But it was two thirds the size of their existing facility. And yet, and yet, because it was completely digitized, they were able to then, as I say, bring the, the lot times down from days to hours.

JD: Yeah. But, but this is, this will happen in, in many cases and sometimes you have the luxury to say, okay, I’ve got a second production facility and I can basically redesign my existing process with a single piece flow concept in mind instead of batches and long production. In other cases you will have to do that. And we did it at one major automotive supplier, which unfortunately I cannot mention by name. We did it. We did the same thing we did in the existing facility. We started with machine number one and, and eliminated all the batch containers and, and uh, the batch flow, um, and created a single piece flow structure around that and then took it to the next level. And it was very fortunate that we have a very good tie in of the ERP system from, from SAP at that moment. So we could get all the production data, we could get, um, all the, all the settings, uh, the proper product identifications from the system. And we were capable of building a single piece flow throughout the production facility. It took two years because we had to do it step by step and we could not, um, go from, from, um, from the old school to the new school, uh, by just closing down the factory. But one of the results is, is that we decreased the capital on hand to time, which was around 18 days. Um, we’ve decreased that to two days. So from purchasing the material to shipping it to the next facility was reduced by, by more than 80%. That is serious money.

TR: That’s a lot, yeah. That’s impressive. That’s really impressive. Yeah. That’s amazing. Okay. Look JD. We’re coming towards the end of the podcast and uh, typically at this time of the podcast I’ll ask people, uh, is there any question that I haven’t asked you that you wish I had?

JD: Um, one question Tom, and that’s my favorite second topic. Cybersecurity. Um, so if you ask me, um, JD, what would be your top priority in digital supply chain? Besides all the technical opportunities we have and the organizational opportunities we have? I would say cybersecurity has to be the top priority because the more digitized we get, the more risk we have that something bad happens to the digitized world. So cybersecurity, big picture approach, make sure that it is by design and not by coincidence.

TR: Very good, very good. Very good. Yeah, no, hugely important. As we are, uh, opening up our manufacturing facilities and our logistics and everything as we’re opening them up to the internet, we are massively increasing the threat landscape. So yeah, absolutely. Very, very important to consider cybersecurity from, as you say, from the design phase, right through not, you can’t be something that you kind of cobble on afterwards dead right?

TR: So JD, if people want to know more about yourself, what’s the best place they can go to find information about JD?

JD: Well, they can visit me always on my LinkedIn profile or on my website under your JohannesDrooghaag. My website is JohannesDrooghaag.com. Unfortunately, jd.com was already taken, so I kind of,okay. Um, I am on Twitter. I am on, on Facebook, Instagram. Twitter is my main social media exposure. They can find me there under JohannesDrooghaag as well. Um, and otherwise, uh, drop me a note at my website and I will, uh, reply as soon as possible.

TR: Superp, super JD. I will put those links in the description of podcast when I publish it so everyone can have access to them. Thanks a million for taking time and joining me on the show today.

JD: Well, thank you for having me, Tom. It was a great discussion.

TR: Okay, we’ve come to the end to show thanks everyone for listening. If you’d like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sap.com/digitalsupplychain, or simply drop me an email to Tom dot raftery@sap.com.

And if you liked this show, please don’t forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. Thanks.

This episode was originally published on the Digital Supply Chain podcast.