Latest / Speaking of Supply Chain / Next-Gen Logistics: Young Talent Transforming Supply Chains

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Next-Gen Logistics: Young Talent Transforming Supply Chains · Speaking of Supply Chain

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You're listening to Speaking of Supply Chain, a meboch podcast. This is a
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show for logistics professionals looking to learn more about the latest innovations in supply chain.
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Each episode will feature a conversation on topics such as mitigating supply chain disruption
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and reducing risk, current automation trends, sustainability initiatives, and more. Let's
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dive right in. Hello, and welcome to Speaking of Supply Chain, where
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we explore trends, current events, and innovations impacting the logistics and supply chain
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industries. I'm your host, Ellen Wood. Today we have a studio full
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of young supply chain professionals. We've got Sam Nunez from Procter and Gamble joining
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us along with Claire cons from me Boch, and we're going to be talking
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and chatting a little bit about how and why they selected this particular career path
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and began their studies before before COVID happened. We're in college during COVID and
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the industry that they got dumped out into for their new profession. Welcome everyone
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to Speaking of Supply Chain. How are you guys today? Doing great?
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It's been a missing all right? So I am looking forward to this topic
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today, I think there are a lot of young professionals that are in the
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same shoes as you, and hopefully we can talk about some of the issues
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that you guys have been facing in your early careers. So you guys are
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younger professionals in the industry as opposed to myself who's been around for a while.
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What made you choose supply chain or industrial engineering as a career. What
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appealed to you in I guess in high school that made that such an appealing
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career choice I can start. So I actually did not start heading towards supply
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chain until like a year or two into college because when I went to college,
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and when I started, I was going to be an aerospace engineer and
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I was going to work on rockets and satellites, right like, that was
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my goal. And then I learned about industrial engineering because I didn't know anything
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about industrial engineering before my first year engineering courses. So when I learned about
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industrial engineering and how it's all about optimization and making things better. It used
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to have a professor who said engineers make things and industrial engineers make things better.
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And I like that kind of mindset of continuous improvement. And seeing what
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else can you do? How much further can you push the envelope? And
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so that is what got me into industrial engineering. Of course I'm an industrial
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engineer by degree, but then my internships are really what pushed me towards supply
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chain because I had on internship in manufacturing, but then my next internship was
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in a much more supply chain focused role. It was in a fulfillment center,
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and that is where I was like, this logistics stuff, this is
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really cool, so I want to learn more about that. Sam, what
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about you? What drew you to this particular industry. Yeah. So actually,
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kind of very similar to Claire. I was good at math and high
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schools, so my parents always just pushed me towards engineering. And then Purdue
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had some sessions where people could learn about the different types of engineering, and
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during the industrial engineering one, the head of the department spoke little and kind
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of similar to what Claire said. He said, if you ever see a
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process or see a way of things being done and you think you could do
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it, better, come to ie. So that kind of sent me down
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that road to industrial engineering in school, and then over the course of internships,
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I just found a love for logics and supply chain and kind of just
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again, like Claire said, just getting as much juice out of the lemon
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that you can get. I like that analogy. That's awesome. So you
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both mentioned, first of all, starting your collegiate careers at Purdue, So
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I think we need to acknowledge that elephant in the room boiler up. I
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went to Iupuy, so I got a little bit of both the Indiana schools.
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I don't profess an allegiance to either, but I can recognize that some
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of our listeners will have an opinion on that. But you were both in
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Purdue. Looks like you both graduated the same year in twenty twenty one,
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which means that you were in college during this whole COVID disruption that the world
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experienced, and that had to affect these internships that you guys are talking about.
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So tell us a little bit about what that was like, your second
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and third years into studies and needing to look for an internship while the world
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is shut down. How difficult was that and did that have any effect on
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what you were trying to accomplish getting towards your degree? Claire, do you
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have any interesting stories to share you know, I think the one advantage of
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kind of when all of the COVID shutdowns happened was it was after kind of
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career fair season, right, So I was in a very fortunate position where
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I had gotten a return offer from my previous year's internship, and so I
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kind of already had that lined up and ready to go. The biggest impacts
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it made for me were that that internship was shortened a little bit. Instead
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of it being a ten week internship, it was only eight. But I
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was very lucky to be working for a company that was still saying like,
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oh, we're going to do these internships. We're going to have to modify
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it, but it's still going to happen. My internship was supposed to be
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in Ohio and it ended up staying at the Indiana facility, and so that
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was a little bit unexpected, But I'm glad that I was able to stay
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in that boat of still having an internship in twenty twenty. What about you,
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Sam, did you experience any difficulties or hiccups and having that internship that
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you thought you might have having a different role or a different purpose. Yeah.
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Luckily for me, I also avoided the hiccups. I also worked at
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a manufacturing site, and so I think I experienced something different than a lot
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of my other peers who maybe they were kind of more office or consulting jobs
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where you can kind of do more stuff remote. So that was kind of
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the biggest advantage of mine ship that I was able to still be in person
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versus I know several other people who've kind of the internships either got canceled or
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they were remote, so they kind of didn't have that camaraderie in the office
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or in the plant like I did. Wow. The secret fun fact I'm
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going to tell you here all is Sam and I had the same internship that
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year. They were in the same building. That's awesome, Okay, Well,
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so yeah, I didn't know if I should bring that up. That
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wasn't expected, but that's okay. So, you know, one of the
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other things I'm thinking about is during COVID, and I, of course I
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was already with me Bach for a number of years by the time that all
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of that happened. My COVID experience was very different from a lot of people's
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because I was on maternity leave when all of that happened, and so I
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was at home anyway, that didn't really affect me all that much, but
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coming back to work after that was very difficult because in marketing everything is in
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person. And conversely, for you guys, when you were there in those
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production facilities, production was still a what was it they called it? Like
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essential? Yeah, essential position, Like that's not something that could have been
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done remote. My job could have been done remotely, and in fact,
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we did a lot of remote work for the remainder of that particular year.
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But for essential positions, you know, in those factories, in those production
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facilities, you were still there live, and so you got the opportunity to
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have that internship still and do some of those things. So you didn't miss
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out as much as maybe some of your classmates did when they were looking into
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other non essential functions in in production or in in engineering where they could have
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been just you know, doing this remotely or doing something else other than what
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they had intended to do. You were able to continue on with your intention,
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is what I'm hearing, right. I think one of the cool things
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to come out of the lockdown period was that it did kind of make a
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little bit more space for use your creativity and figure out what are you going
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to do, because you're not going to go out to a bar or something
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after work. You're going to you know, stay in and have a game
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night, or you're gonna work on a new personal project or something. And
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it was it was a really different take on how you spend your personal time,
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even outside of work, and how you create that work bond as well.
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Absolutely, because all of our circles got very very small and the people
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that you connected with, you know, you kept it to those those core
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people, those core individuals that you would see on a regular basis, just
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in case someone came down with something. But when it comes to what it
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was, you were you thought you were doing, and we've established that you
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you kind of chose this career midway through college. But that was still at
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the beginning of COVID and when when manufacturing was a little bit different. Now,
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I'm sure the manufacturing side of it hasn't changed as much, but I
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think about all of the things that we had pre COVID, you know,
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on the grocery store shelves, we had, you know, seven different kinds
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of coke available and now there are only you know, during that time,
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there were shortages on packaging. There were shortages on you know, the aluminum
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for the cans, and that's just one product, and it's I don't even
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neither of you mentioned where you work, so I don't know if I'm even
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in the in the right realm, but I'm going with with what I remember,
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and some of those things are just not available anymore, you know,
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where they've stopped manufacturing things. They streamlined their product offering because COVID made it
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necessary, and then after the fact, they looked back at their business and
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said, is it really necessary? Do we need to bring this product back?
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So there were a lot of major business decisions taking place at these factories
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and production facilities to make what they could with what they had, and then
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to decide whether or not to, you know, bring these these other products
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back. So did that have any effect on what you viewed your potential career
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path to be and understanding what problems you were going to be solving. I
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can talk from Mike Serian, so I would say, looking back at it
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now, like now I can see how that affects things. Even in my
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current job, we're still kind of to your point, like do we need
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one hundred different products when five could suffice and I think that gets down to
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one of my biggest passions in IU, which again is just like trying to
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optimize and say, hey, do we need to offer these can we just
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offer these five products at the best quality, always on time, always on
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the shelf. And it did kind of feed into my internship as my project
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was kind of related to, you know, more space not being available because
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of all the COVID kind of influx and kind of costs and stuff like that.
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So my internship project at that company was a direct result as of kind
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of what happened with COVID and projects being delayed. So super super cool to
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experience that and trying to again do the best with what you can and trying
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to find ways to make O current systems better. Yeah, So we were
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in an e commerce fulfillment center, so we had this problem of enormous demand,
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right because everyone is shopping online, right, So, like Sam talked
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about some of the problems where we didn't have enough space to put things.
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Our returns volume went through the roof, and we were trying to figure out
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how do you process that efficiently without having this huge effect on the current equipment,
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And so that was definitely a challenge that was incredibly unexpected, But in
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terms of what did it mean for my future career, it really sort of
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showed how essential the supply chain is and how delicate of a balance everything is
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in right, So it has this sort of ecosystem. As long as it
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keeps moving forward, we're good to go. But of course those supply chains
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disruptions really highlighted Okay, where can we improve our systems, how can we
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add more robustness, where can we make them better? And I think that
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for me just made it even more exciting to go into a supply chain oriented
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role, is to know that there are still bigger problems out there to tackle
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absolutely well. And it sounds like your informal training there in those internships was
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even more valuable than the classroom work because classroom was based on certain assumptions and
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certain standards, certain understanding of what the industry looks like and out in reality.
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In that facility, you learn something very different that there are disruptions that
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need to be accommodated for and adaptations that need to take place. So it
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sounds like you're even more prepared than maybe some of your classmates that graduated the
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year before. COVID and then we're thrown into it expecting one thing and getting
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another. Yeah, that change is between the classroom and real life is incredible,
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right, Because you learn all the theory, you learn all the equations,
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the sort of science behind best practices and general decision making, that kind
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of thing. But then when you go to actually put it in practice,
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you start to learn, what is it from your studies that is actually useful?
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How can I apply these different things? How can I tweak what I
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learned in theory to make it more applicable to reality? And that a whole
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other level of engineering challenge when you into the details of it. So what
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are some of those other soft skills that you guys maybe needed to tweak a
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little bit? Because you're talking about the technical skills development, all the math
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and things that you needed to learn in order to you know, go through
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the data and work on paper or on a computer to help with those aspects
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of the job. But when it came to you know, just live being
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in a facility, what kind of soft skills did you develop knowing that you
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had to be six feet away from someone and with a mask on. Yeah,
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for sure, I think it's it just kind of reiterated how important just
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people skills are and like relationship building. Obviously six feet away mask up all
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that stuff, but you can still talk. And still even that I think
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was better than being virtual, just because you still have that human presence in
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the near vicinity. And to Claire's point about building robustness, so much of
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any supply chain as people doing manual labor. Still there's still somebody moving either
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a palette, taking something awful line. So at the end of the day,
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it still is people performing a lot of these jobs. And so that's
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another kind of thing to highlighter kind of thing to improve is how do we
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get them do their job better or what can we do to make their life
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easier? And that really starts with building a good relationship with people. Well,
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and I know that was such a big thing during that time, was
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you know all of these frontline essential workers that we needed in those facilities.
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You know, those of us that were that were sitting at home and ordering
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online to your point, working in an e commerce distribution center, you know,
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they were the busiest people out there, and well aside from the ones
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making the deliveries, so you know, there were a lot of frontline people
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out there that were working amazingly long hours and so many open positions coming out
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and available to people who were sitting at home and out of a job because
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they were deemed non essential. And so now we have all these new essential
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positions. So I imagine that a lot of what you were doing was working
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with people who were maybe new to the company or new to those roles.
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I mean, you're working as an intern, but they're coming in as frontline
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basic entry positions to work in these facilities and support the massive operation that was
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going on to keep products available to the consumers out there. Yeah, I
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think even we're seeing impacts of that still now, Like even in my current
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job, a lot of our sites are and I think just broadly across the
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industry is just new people. You know, people were retired because of COVID,
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people changed or moved for family because of COVID, and so I feel
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like a lot of new are a lot of manufacturing companies are dealing with new
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people. So again it's to the point of how do we make things simpler,
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how do we improve the supply chain through these people. Yeah, it
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seems like the robustness and the detail of a training program has become more important
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than ever because you are you want to make sure people have the right skills
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for what they're trying to do. And I even found that as I was
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onboarding here at Mebak, right, is what do I need to know to
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be able to do this job effectively and to be able to be in this
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role even though it's not necessarily a manufacturing role, right, it's consulting,
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but there's still a key set of skills that you need to learn to be
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able to be effective at your job. Well. And I know one of
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the other things that has come out of COVID, because I've talked about it
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on other episodes with other guests, is you know, the labor market and
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the constraints that are there given you know, Sam, some of the things
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you were talking about in regard to, you know, early retirement because I
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can and might as well, or moving and going to live in different geographies.
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So there's been a lot of shifts in the labor market for the logistics
18:00
industry. We've seen strikes in the past couple of years. What does that
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look like in terms of your individual versus a company mindset? I know that
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a lot of younger professionals the advice is, you know, you need to
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be looking for a new role every few years, versus those from my generation
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or even before that, they would come to a company and stay there for
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a very long time, and loyalty. Company loyalty was something that was maybe
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not expected, but was more prevalent. Do you guys see that in your
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roles or in the jobs that you've had after college, that that's a definite
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generational rift. It has been really weird being kind of the like age that
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we are in coming into the supply chain industry while the labor market has been
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a little bit all over the place, right because there have been huge swings
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between we don't have enough people and we have too many people in all kinds
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of industries. I mean, you're seeing that with tech industry layoffs, and
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you're seeing it with manufacturing not being able to hire enough people, and so
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it's really weird to be in that environment where that swing is really broad in
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terms of kind of what we're i guess being told about the industry and kind
19:25
of advice we're getting to be able to have the best career path. We
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are kind of getting that advice of changing your role kind every two years right,
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And so every two years seems to be what's going to get you to
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move up the highest or the fastest, right, and to kind of help
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you make the most money. And so it's up to each individual to prioritize
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do you want to work at the same company, regardless of the role.
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Do you want to optimize your earning potential? Right? Because it seems like
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and in my experience, the fastest way to do that is to move roles,
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whether you're moving up in your company or moving out to a different role.
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That's kind of the shift in the trend of how do I format my
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career? Right? And so it's a little bit interesting to really reflect with
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myself and look at, Okay, what are my values here? What is
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important to me here? Because at least for me, that hasn't been the
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pay right. It's been a lot more about the environment because I've worked in
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some environments where the work necessary wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do. Oh
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and I've also worked in some environments where I didn't necessarily gel as much with
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the people, And the difference that those two things make on your quality of
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work life is enormous, Absolutely, Sam, what about you, Yeah,
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no, I agree. I definitely see people around me, friends, coworkers
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moving like every two to three years, whether it's in the same company or
21:02
different companies. I think the biggest thing I've been seeing is just you really
21:06
have to be your biggest advocate. You have to clearly and plainly talk with
21:10
your manager or two up kind of what you want. And I guess,
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first of all, like Claire said, to figure out what you want.
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Is it pay, is it location, Is it a good team because those
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aren't all necessarily going to be in the same role or company. But yeah,
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I think it's it's been a weird push, but I think it's a
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good push overall for people coming in and just starting their jobs to have that
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freedom and kind of it become more socially accepted to you know, change companies
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if you're not gelling well or if you want something different. Yeah, it
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is just a completely different mindset. I know when I was starting out in
21:44
my career, and that was in restaurant management, and that was many,
21:48
many, many moons ago. But the career advice that we were given back
21:52
then was, you know, be prepared to change jobs around seven times in
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your working career. Well, now that's probably double, if not triple for
22:03
young individuals given the time span. If you're changing jobs every two to three
22:07
years, that's a lot of change. And that's even still further removed from
22:11
perhaps my parents' generation, where you went to work for one company and you
22:15
probably stayed there the entirety of your career until you were able to cash out
22:21
your pension and go home and be retired. You know, of course,
22:25
that also has to do with retirement age changing and people staying in the workforce
22:29
longer. But at the same time, that's such a different mentality of I
22:33
need to keep learning. I need to keep adjusting what my capabilities are.
22:40
I need to keep working on what I need to know next for that next
22:44
role, for this next organization in order to be on top of my game
22:48
and keep my career moving in a forward progression rather than being stagnant. So
22:52
what does ongoing education look like for you? Guys? You're not that far
23:00
out of school. It's only been a few years into your first or maybe
23:03
second jobs by now with your new companies. So what role does ongoing education
23:10
play for you in your career journey or your planned path? You're totally right
23:15
with that, new jumping jobs every couple of years, requiring so much extra
23:22
skills prep or skills learning. Whether that's soft skills or technical skills, it's
23:29
a little bit all over the place. I think for me, being able
23:33
to learn and grow and test my skills and expand upon them and have a
23:37
little bit of autonomy is really important because I learn best by doing right and
23:44
seeing what's possible. Can I do this? Can I push this program or
23:48
software to do this thing that I think it should be able to do right?
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But on top of that, I also really want to learn what I
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don't already know right and figure out what is it that I don't know?
24:00
What do I want to learn more about what doesn't seem like it's for me,
24:03
and have the flexibility to sort of play around in that sandbox and find
24:08
something that is interesting to me that I want to run with as well.
24:12
Right, So, even through this job, I've learned so much just from
24:17
being on project work and having the different trainings that we get to go to,
24:21
and I think it's really important that those trainings and those things that I've
24:23
learned haven't ignored the soft skills, right, because especially coming out out of
24:29
COVID, and being new to the workforce in general. The soft skills that
24:33
you need in business to be able to effectively communicate, to get your point
24:37
across, to sort of influence people, whether you have any kind of like
24:44
poll or not, is really important, and learning those on the job has
24:49
been very effective. Yeah. I think for me, it kind of starts
24:53
with being good at the base role, and then you know, once you
24:57
kind of have your base roll in, your base roles and responsibilities down,
25:00
you kind of just I guess it's probably easier so than don but just kind
25:04
of explore what you can do beyond that. I think Purdue has set me
25:07
up well. I think my past internships have set me up well to ask
25:11
the right questions or be curious, and so to this point, I think
25:15
after you kind of get your core down, you will start asking, okay,
25:18
like what don't I know, Like what part of this process am I
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just you know, pushing a button where I could learn more about what actually
25:26
goes on behind the scene. So for me, a lot of kind of
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the stuff I do outside of my base roles have just been based on kind
25:33
of things that I can see that need improvement or things that people have talked
25:38
to me of, hey, have you thought about making this better or can
25:41
we try something new out? So that's kind of where I kind of try
25:45
to grow outside of my base work. So I know that for me personally,
25:49
I've had a number of different base roles. I mean, if I
25:53
started in restaurant management, this is clearly not a restaurant So I've had to
26:00
relearn, you know, different roles and different skills over the years as I've
26:06
fallen into the marketing role and really enjoyed that and built up that. But
26:10
even then, you know, marketing has changed so much over the past ten
26:14
fifteen years that the things I initially learned have absolutely very little to nothing to
26:21
do with what I do today. And the things that I'm learning now weren't
26:25
even heard of back then, like search engine optimization. When I went to
26:27
college, that wasn't even a thing, and now it's been a thing,
26:32
and it's a kind of a has been thing now. So what do you
26:37
think about your roles right now, what it is that you're doing, What
26:41
do you predict is not going to be around in twenty years. Ooh,
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that's a great question. I think you have to bring AI into this conversation,
26:52
especially in a kind of consulting role, right, because how are you
26:56
able to use different kinds of software, different programs, different artificial intelligence to
27:03
do the data aspect of it? Right? So a lot of my role
27:07
is data crunching and currently right, and so how can you use those softwares
27:15
to do the actual data crunching and then will they get to a place where
27:21
they can find the meaning in that data? Right? Because data is information,
27:27
right, But turning it into knowledge requires an additional deeper thought of like
27:32
what is this connected to? And so it would not surprise me to see
27:37
data at like actual number crunching leave the role, but have it turned more
27:42
into a what does this data tell you? Kind of role? Okay,
27:48
Sam, what do you think? Yeah? I think for me that's it's
27:52
actually scary thought. So I think we mentioned I work for P ANDNG,
27:56
so I work on the supply chain for so a lot of the decisions I
28:02
think that I make are parts of the job that I do. A lot
28:04
of it is just due to a lack of connecting data, like just things
28:08
that people just know because you know, it's just not the most convenient to
28:12
have data for it or to record it. And so I imagine in twenty
28:17
years that a lot of the information that just you know, just because different
28:21
vendors or different equipments or stuff like that. You know, maybe in twenty
28:23
years they'll have a way to just sync up all this data and things that.
28:27
You know, we work on my team to decide, you know,
28:30
best kind of sourcing starateties for certain products that'll be more streamlined. And you
28:36
know, maybe AI will will take over my job in twenty years. You
28:40
know, as long as there is going to be a decision that has to
28:44
be made, AI is never going to replace people. I've had this conversation
28:48
on other episodes where we're talking about the artificial intelligence, and you know,
28:55
I love the Matrix movies. Those were so interesting, But we're never going
28:57
to get to a point where people are just the batteries that are running the
29:02
machines and the power source. That's the fiction part of science fiction. But
29:07
I love that we can still use that intelligence that can be harnessed and that
29:15
is self learning. So as these programs go through more and more data and
29:22
they're able to say, okay, well, statistically when we look at dispatchup
29:26
numbers, and it does this over and over and over we can extrapolate that
29:30
that's going to be the ongoing trend. But at the end of the day,
29:33
a human has to look at that data and say that's right, this
29:36
is the data trend. But that means I have to choose a ARB,
29:40
and AARB could depend on any number of different factors. It's not just the
29:45
math. It's not just the trend. You know, there has to be
29:48
a human they're participating in it, which means that the human has to level
29:52
up too to understand what that data means and to understand what the implications are
29:57
of either the dis vision A or B. So I think that that is
30:03
where a lot of your roles are going to change with AI. But also
30:07
another aspect of this is, you know, the sustainability aspect in a lot
30:14
of the work that we're doing, and we're trying to to Clear's point,
30:18
you know, do things better, do things more efficiently, and do things
30:23
with fewer resources or with less waste. And that's where a lot of the
30:29
human element is going to come into it for those creative ideas of you know,
30:37
what can we do, where can we find a different a different possibility
30:41
or a different option to go forward that a computer is not going to have
30:45
all of those ideas. It's not going to be able to look at everything
30:49
and come up with a potential or a concept that is going to be nearly
30:56
as good as a human with an imagination and eyes to look at what's going
31:00
on? What do you guys think? That's one of the things that excites
31:03
me the most about the direction that computers and software and just computing ability are
31:11
going is to be able to kind of make more time for the creativity,
31:15
right, make a little more time to be able to look at things through
31:19
more angles. And oftentimes the top constraint on a project is time because you
31:26
only have so much time before a decision deadline, or something has to be
31:30
done or something needs to get started. And so to be able to have
31:34
more space to use the creative part of your brain and to think through a
31:40
solution from multiple different angles and look at, oh, what if we try
31:45
using this in this different way? Like do you think that would work?
31:48
I think that is where we're going to be able to kind of skyrocket that
31:52
innovation piece of the business. Absolutely, yeah, no, I agree.
31:56
I kind of have something like that pop up this morning. Actually, just
32:00
trying to decide kind of you know, what product need to be made at
32:04
a certain manufacturing site, and just through in my head I was thinking,
32:07
oh, there's like ten different ways we can solve this, but because of
32:10
time and because of needing to produce the product, I can go down all
32:14
those different paths. So yeah, I think that when that comes, that'll
32:17
be super Hopefully I'm still working and still around then, but that'll be super
32:21
fun to just either put in you know, for example, maybe saving CO
32:25
two missions is your top priority, or fulfilling customer orders. Like, being
32:30
able to map out all those different variables is really exciting and really excited for
32:34
that to happen. Yeah, and those variables are the decision pieces because there
32:38
are multiple, you know, factors to every decision and we have to weigh
32:43
which ones are more important at that moment in time. The computer's never going
32:47
to know that, it's never going to be able to prioritize that importance the
32:52
same way a human is by looking at everything on the table. Yeah,
32:55
for sure, I think computers are helpful for building out what are this scenarios
33:00
that are possible, But then you kind of have to pick what do I
33:04
want to optimize for? What do I think is the most important to me.
33:08
Absolutely, all right, any last thoughts before we close out for today.
33:15
I think this is a really cool industry to be in, simply because
33:19
it's forever changing, right, Like we've talked about how it's changed, just
33:22
in Sam and I have only been graduated for three years, right, and
33:25
even just in those three years, the different types of problems we're encountering and
33:30
the justsane difference in how these roles have developed, how different supply chain roles
33:37
have become available, is so interesting. And so with that kind of ever
33:43
changing environment, I don't anticipate really having a lot of boring things so which
33:50
which I think just bodes so much better for the future of supply chain and
33:54
being able to always find something that I'm interested in learning more about, interested
33:59
in doing more with. Absolutely that should be one of the you know,
34:02
the major speaking points about coming into a career in supply change. You will
34:07
never be bored. You will always have something interesting to do. Sam,
34:13
what about you? Yeah, I think having a role in this industry and
34:17
internships, it kind of just like it makes me look at everything different.
34:20
Like I go to the grocery store, I'm like, wow, like so
34:22
much went into getting this banana here or whatever it is. Or now that
34:28
I work in PNG, I like, it's super cool to see all these
34:30
different PNG products and kind of know all the work and all the people that
34:35
made it possible to be in my local Kroger. So yeah, it's super
34:38
It's a super exciting industry and like super impactful obviously everywhere healthcare, food,
34:44
clothing, anywhere supply chain is involved. It's absolutely surprising to realize and I
34:50
didn't I didn't experience that from your angle, but just from from a consumer
34:54
and then coming into this industry and realizing the scope that logistics and supply chain
35:00
has on just everyday life that you don't even recognize. I mean, yes,
35:05
you're driving down the highway and the semi trucks are going slow and you're
35:08
annoyed by it, but then you start to think about what it is that
35:12
they're actually doing, what they're accomplishing, all of a sudden you're a lot
35:15
nicer to them, for sure. Or like if there's like some bananas out
35:20
or some toilet paper out or anything like eggs out, it's like, oh,
35:23
it's such an inconvenience, where like for those companies it's like probably such
35:28
a big like red flag, like they're trying their hardest to get it on
35:30
the shelves. For you, Yeah, they've got alarms going off and lights
35:34
flashing. You know, Kroger doesn't have toilet paper. I think to your
35:38
point, Sam, just the incredible amount of effort and like number of steps
35:43
that it takes to get a product onto a shelf, or to get things
35:47
from A to B right to go from a manufacturing site to distribution is a
35:52
lot of steps, let alone to the final consumer. And so when those
35:55
disruptions happen, like, yeah, they're frustrating, but you also got to
35:59
think that there's probably dozens of touches on that one item before it ever even
36:04
hits the shelf. For sure, for sure, absolutely all the people throughout
36:07
that chain getting yelled at that day because there's something not on the sholf,
36:13
or all the people sitting in an office trying to figure out, how do
36:15
we fill that shelf, how do we make sure this doesn't happen again.
36:19
That's where all of these people are connected, and they come into the equation
36:23
and yeah, AI is never going to take over our jobs, I promise
36:28
you that. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode.
36:34
Thank you so much, Sam and Claire for sharing your experiences and insights with
36:38
us today. I know I will have your LinkedIn links on the episode information
36:45
in case any of our listeners want to get in touch with you and connect
36:50
and you know, maybe trade some war stories about their own experience coming up
36:55
into this industry in the last few years, because it has been a wild
37:01
ride. If any of our listeners out there have a suggestion for a topic
37:06
or would like to be a guest on the show, we'd love to hear
37:08
from you. Please reach out to me at podcast at meboch dot com at
37:13
any time. As always, thank you for listening to Speaking of Supply Chain.
37:16
If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on whatever podcast
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and be sure to tune in next time. Meeboch Consulting is one of the
37:34
largest and most globally recognized supply chain consulting, engineering and advisory firms. For
37:39
nearly fifty years, we've helped clients achieve supply chain excellence and sustainable competitive advantage
37:45
across the entire spectrum of the supply chain by delivering improvements and innovation strategically,
37:51
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