All right. Hey, good day, Scott Luton, and welcome to all of our supply chain movers and shakers. Glad to have you here today for TekTok Live, Karin.
How are we doing today? We got up, man. You brought the heavy hitters as always.
I will tell you guys the pre-call. So in our green room beforehand, I learned so much in 10 minutes about our guests today that I did know, and I have known art Mesher for probably going on 20 years in the industry in general, but we are, you guys better buckle up because you're going to be entertained and informed as a result of today's conversation. You
Know, the best stuff always takes place in this pre show. It was a mini master class on entrepreneurship, supply chain and leadership, and then some so buckle up. We're going to talk about the three V's we're going to talk about, uh, what's going on across supply chain. What should be going on across supply chain and a lot more, uh, but Korean, what we're going to, um, for fo for the three folks that may not know the one only art Mesher, we're going to kind of share his background in a minute, but what else, what else, what else we talking about here today? Correct.
Yeah, you know, I, I continue to believe supply team is the place to be. There's so much opportunity for, for practitioners technologists to make an impact and make a difference. You know, inflation is, is a concern, right? And we're hearing daily about stockout shortages, increasing costs. Um, there was a great article that came out today in supply chain dive, and it's on it's specifically focused on the chemical industry. And according to a recent research done by John Dunham and chemical distributors, 85% of chemical distributors say that they are stocked out on at least one item. Wow. Right. It's getting worse and it's getting worse. Now some of our audience might be thinking, oh, I'm not in the chemical industry. That doesn't affect me. It does affect you. If you are a consumer, if you purchase beverages, for example, Gatorade or Coca-Cola, or, you know, any Smartwater products, one of the ingredients is citric acid.
Citric acid is tied to the chemicals industry. And it's one of the shortages that we're experiencing. And I'm, you know, I thought about this Scott, from the perspective of, you know, the latest tech talk podcast series that we, um, that we published was around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the feedback has been just super interesting, but it's been around six strategies for greater resilience. Right. And this is a perfect example of resilience because these companies are having to bring in citric acid as one example, by air cargo versus coming across on container ships because of the shortages and distribution constraints. Right. It's more expensive. Right. But they're trying to meet market demand. Yeah.
You know, I, I was on a really quick, we're gonna move on. I was on this morning, uh, on a one-on-one conversation with the former leader of a very large aircraft manufacturing, uh, site we have here in the Metro Atlanta area. And, you know, the ball, the boards that this individual's own. Now, the board members want to know about global supply chain. They want to know more of the intricacies, not just what they want to know three or four years ago. They want to know some of the stuff we're going to be talking about here today. And some of what you just mentioned, and by the way, just by you saying citric acid, my heartburn gets worse just by seeing that. But Hey, we'll save that for another day. I want to talk about a couple of things before we bring on this big guest here today.
Uh, art Mesher, uh, we wanna make a couple announcements and then we want to say hello to a few folks that are already dialed in. So you mentioned, uh, of course you mentioned a couple of things are digital transformation amongst other things. We've got a big upcoming webinar with our friends at Esker, uh, and Texas Christian university on July 27th, just a couple of weeks away where we're going to talk about how digital transformation, not just accelerates, cause it's really table stakes these days, but it is strengthening your global supply chain. And I think part of what we'll talk about later today is some of the governance of that, of data that of course makes up digital transformation where some of the gaps are there. I think art is going to touch on that, but regardless join us July 27th, where Kevin L. Jackson and I host a great panel discussion.
The link to join is in the show notes. Of course we've got Larysa series big event coming up in September where we're the exclusive virtual host of the digital feed September 7th to ninth, learn more at supply chain insights, summit.com. Oh, I had one more, got to quick on the mouse there. This is, uh, you know, so, so Korean, we talked about this a lot in our team and leadership calls here. And some of the folks that are pictured here are going to be part of this last room, I think, but you know, we get the questions all the time. Hey, how can I find a job? How can I advance? How can I find my way and, and, you know, move them away up the, the leadership, uh, rungs. Well, we want to answer or start answer more effectively. Those questions we get all the time. So we have put together a home-run panel of experts that can talk about a wide variety of really true best practices, very practical, and a three hour live session. And that's free. So big, thanks to Maria and crystal and Peter and Rodney and mark for donating their time to helping folks advance that that's going to July 29th, 4:00 PM, Eastern time, and you can register and learn more@supplychainnow.com. Okay. But
That's going to be a good one. I really appreciate all the work that you guys have put in to putting that together because I firmly believe, I know I said this already today, but supply chain is the place to be, and it's connecting those talent resources with those available opportunities in the marketplace. Agreed.
Agreed. Okay. We're moving fast because we want to protect every minute for this big guests here today are measured, but we got to say hello to a few folks that are already here with us. Of course, namely Peter bullae all night and all day is back, man. He is talking about a mover and shaker. Uh, he's everywhere. I'm convinced there's several clones and Corrine. If, uh, I think you're a proud, and I'm putting words in your mouth. I think you're a proud non culinary passion Easter,
Right? I, I, I don't know that I'm proud of that effect of the fact that I'm not a foodie. I foodie is the word I use. I'm not, I like food, but I don't quite have the skills that many of you out there have.
So, well, I appreciate that transparency. Uh, um, my wife would put me in the same category, especially when it comes to my skillsets, but Hey, we created this, um, this, this Facebook driven food group, just as a departure from all the work and industry and supply chain related to stuff we do as an outlet a bit, what Peter brings it in spades, tons of great recipes and even pictures. If you like food, join our group, uh, Amanda or Claire, Allie, or Jayda, if y'all could drop the link in the comments, but it's really fun. And it's a great way to meet people and, and find more about passions other than supply chain. So hello, Peter Lauren Gibbons with us. And I think Lauren must be invited. Steven, Steven, where are you at? Uh, this is something to watch. Yes. Uh, you take notes, wooing, carry your stuff.
Wooing supply chain gurus. You're going to have a ton. You can have 17 pages of notes with art, Mesher and Kerryn here today. So Lauren, thanks for joining us via LinkedIn. Of course, we got a call out clay, Phillips, Amanda Jayda, and Allie behind the scenes, helping us with the production, helping us engage in your comments, questions, and then some so big thanks to the dog clay Phillips. Okay. So with no further ado and by the way, folks bring it here today between Korean and art, they want to hear from you. They want to hear what you're thinking. Uh, we may pose kind of an overarching question at, at, at the, on the front end. Uh, so stay tuned for that, but Kerryn, I'm going to pass it over to you so we can give our guests a proper introduction.
Absolutely. You know, and to give him a proper introduction to give art Mesher a proper introduction, we could actually use the entire livestream today just to talk about what he's achieved. In fact, one of the things that I earned I learned before our pre-show is that art has started or invested in 10 software companies that focus in supply chain that are now worth more than $10 billion. Wow. With a B right, with a B $10 billion in value. And many of them are still continuing to innovate and grow. So that's one of his accolades that I didn't even know about before today. Um, but some others are that he was the first technology leader to receive the council of supply chain management professionals, distinguished service award. And that was in 2008. So the very first one, and there was an uproar around that because it is always gone to practitioners, but he's done so much for this industry that, um, but the council of supply team management professionals, CSC, MP wanted to recognize his contributions.
And, um, he was entered into the supply chain hall of fame in 2016. Uh, he is the former CEO and chairman of the board of Decartes systems, which one of the interesting things about Decart is they were the first on-demand logistics network to talk about vision and putting it into practice. And, and Decart in particular has received a number of accolades as well, best Canadian corporation, best business turnaround story under arts leadership. One of Canada's most admired corporate cultures. So I am so excited to have him join us today and to hear whether he's ready to share with us. So, um, I'm going to ask the team to go ahead and swoosh them in and they're yes. I feel like there should be applause or something happening.
Can I just let everyone know that I started unloading trucks and I don't know what culinary stuff you were talking about, but I like to eat hamburgers and, and I have a ten second drop rule, not a five second drop rule have children. So I'd like to think I just come from the shipping dock and don't mind my food's got a little grit in it. So I love
It. I love that. And, and you're kind of referring to your time as a lumper. We might touch on that here momentarily, but first off are you got to talk about your you're tuned in via Georgian bay, uh, which is you gave us a nice screenshot of the surrounding areas up there. It is gorgeous. Tell us, what do you love about being in that part of the world?
Well, um, first of all, I would say that I have a jail that's made out of gold because I've been here 68 weeks hiding from orbit. Um, for all of you world travelers in supply chain, I'll ask any of you. When's the last time you woke up every day in the same bed for 68 weeks. And my mother told me never. So, um, but know it's beautiful up here. And, and, and, uh, we, you know, in my Gartner days, I used to be at work all day and, but I get up really early morning. I lived in the Eagle's nest in Wisconsin and I'd get up around four 30 and I'd fish the river. And I would think about what I was going to write, but then I would spend the day on the phone. So you didn't write during the day you spent the day on phone, but I would always use my mornings to rough flat, done what I would write it in the evening. Really, you know, as Beth Denzel used to say, when I was getting stale, you need to go fish. So I figured I might as well be up here where they say I do my best work.
I love it. So, so, um, so Georgian bay is where you're tuned in from. And, uh, I know we're going to be talking about so much stuff here today, the three V's and then some, one final question on the personal side, before I turn over to Korean and, and, uh, we dive into more of the heavy lifting. So sport eat. So you mentioned you love food, but when it comes to sports, is there one team that is, that you're the biggest diehard for
Anyone? My son was kicking for really? Yeah. My son was a football kicker in university and finished in the top 15 all time in Canada for many things and wherever he was playing, that was my team. I love it. His first name, uh, Nathan. Nope, no pressure measure,
High pressure, which is who we have with us today. Hey, one
More quick thing. Sorry. I love that. And look really looking forward. I've got my, my notes taking, uh, uh, encyclopedia here. Ready to go. But, uh, I want to give a couple of shout outs to, uh, Jose is with us here today via LinkedIn Jose hope. This finds you well. Great to have you here. Uh, coat rock. Jose is back with us, uh, from Gardner, as you mentioned earlier, uh, Kerryn noontime is now supply chain. Now, Tom, I love that Nanda is tuned in from across the pond. Uh, Nanda. I want to say Norway. I believe I've got that right? Hope this finds you well. And then finally Gregory is tuned in via the Caribbean. Uh, we have deemed Gregory as the Shakespeare of supply chain. I think based on some eloquent perspective, he shared a one of the previous lab strings, but great to have you here, Gregory. Okay. And welcome everybody else that we couldn't get to Kerryn. Where are we starting here with high pressure Mesher?
Sure. I know. I know. And it's he, he, um, he earned that title. It is, uh, it is accurate for sure. But so one of the things about art measure is that he has been in this industry and clearly hands-on, since, as he just shared with us, his very first job, uh, unloading trucks, but in 1998, um, art wrote a paper or put down some of these, these observations that he's had. And it resulted in, um, work around what he calls the three V's of supply chain. So that's visibility, variability, and velocity, and Scott, these things are so interwoven and to everything we do today that I think people don't even realize that his research and his perspective are the foundation for that. But this is as important as the bullet effect.
Um, I'm with you. And, you know, as a, as an entrepreneur, uh, and our track record, there is just captivating to me. And as I think about the velocity, if you're going to scale that velocity and e-course, you got to get it right and all, but you gotta, you gotta keep that at least at least one eye on how fast you're going and how well and how effectively you can scale. So I love this three vs discussion. I'm ready to dive right in Corrine.
Yeah. I want to dive into each of those, but art, when you put that down for the first time, did you think it was going to have the impact on the market that it's had over these years?
Well, I think that's the pressure of trying to be a great analyst. I mean, if you go back into the early, early nineties and mid nineties, the role of the analyst community was different than it was today. Um, there was a gentleman named Roy [inaudible], who was at Gardner who was really doing the pioneering research on message oriented middleware, and, and, you know, we all wanted to do work when we wrote something that would last forever. We were really ERP was invented by John Wiley and, uh, Eric Keller, uh, in the halls of Gartner. And we used to joke because we all know there's no planning in ERP at the time it was enterprise resource, not planning, um, but it was called ERP and, and, and, um, you know, lasted forever. It's still there. Um, so the goal is to do it. And then the performance anxiety is it's never good enough.
I was really lucky that I had some really good mentors at Gartner who basically told me my stuff was horrible all the time and, and made it real. And, uh, so, you know, the answer is, yeah, I wanted to do something that was anthemic and Seminole. Those are the words I use. I want it to be an Anthem and I want it to stand the test of time. Uh, we play a game on new year's what's the most and feminine or Seminole and anthemic rock song, play this on new year's is that, Hey, Jude, is it hotel, California is, you know, what is the most Seminole like lasts forever. And then, so the quest at the time to be a great gardener analyst was to really build anthemic work. I would say it's different today. The internet and content and everything that's going on has changed what the objectives were.
But for me, it was like this. I mean, I went to Gartner, I sold the company. I was an entrepreneur. Uh, I was working, doing some work on developing this thing called Sabre. Uh, I was with the CEO and CIO of American airlines and the CIO of American airlines was on the board of Gardner. And I had sold my company and was doing consulting work. And one night at dinner, as he said, do you ever think you would consider having a job I'm involved with this think tank? And I said, well, you just swore to me twice in one sentence, you said job in think tank, which, you know, either one of those really that appealing to me. I mean, I have a sign out that says, I'll consult for food. I'm standing on the highway. Oh, my company. But job think tank. And, uh, but I, I was really upset about something, which was, I felt that we were all being sold, a bill of goods around supply chain and systems, kind of the great big lie of ERP.
And, you know, I wanted a cause, you know, and, and I thought Gartner could be a great pulpit. And then when I went there, what I realized when I met [inaudible] and royalty and Eric Keller and Chris Jones, who some of you may know, I mean, these people were all experts in their area. That being surrounded by all these really, really smart people was going to be the most amazing opportunity. And then the pulpit that Gartner gave me at the time, what was amazing. And then the business was easy. All I had to do was say, oh, you bought SAP. Do you know what you don't have? Or you bought Oracle, how do you know how you're going to tie all those five disparate applications together? The I, if you remember the IMI mathematics, total bill of goods. And so that was really attractive to me. The problem was, is you'd answer the phone and the phone would be like, hi, Mr.
Gartner group, guy, can you, can I answer your question for me? What should my supply chain strategy be? Or, Hey, can you tell me what, what what's best in class? I want to be best in class. What does best in class look like? And I'm like, okay, can we back up, um, first of all, what you make and how you make it, where you make it, who you make it for, who you sell it, how you sell it, who you sell it through. Okay. All of that really has to do like, is your stuff expensive? Is it cheap? As there? A lot of it is make daughters that make the stock is that process. I mean, like there's no answer to these questions, fishing.
We all know that these are hyper special supply chains are all based on hyper specialization and differentiation and different strokes for different folks and supply chains aren't created equal. And if I have a worldwide shop floor doing discrete component assembly, I'm going to look very different than if I'm pushing fiberboard around the world. And I'm like, but how can I help people? Because there aren't, there's a common triad that we all know inventory, transportation, and warehouse. That was the trade. Those are your governance, right? So those are your equalizers, but was there a different set of equalizers? And when my mind, if I could create that framework, that was generic, then it could apply to anywhere. And that was what I was searching for is a way to segment and dissect and create frameworks. Because if you want to lead, you need to create frameworks. And if you're doing Gardener's job, God bless you better be good at framework. Right. So that was it. And then the three V's, it took about a year and it was a lot, I will tell you, I've written a 20 year update on that. That took about a year. These are very painful for me. People who know me know, I go lock up in a place called the Eagle's nest and I rip stuff up and I'm up in the middle of the night. And, and, uh, yeah. You know, but so
W we want to die. I think we're gonna, we're going to dive in deeper in each of the three V's. I want to share just a couple of quick comments and then CA uh, Corrine, uh, maybe we'll, we'll, we'll, uh, stick with visibility before we move to velocity here, but I want, uh, say [inaudible] is back with us, John, how you been, uh, hope this finds you in the op Tessa team? Well, we have [inaudible] Siaad is back with us. We enjoyed a livestream, uh, with him and his colleagues there in Pakistan feels like forever ago, but probably about eight months ago or so. Great to see you here, Andy. Great to have you back. He says the three V's, that sounds like big data. They can, they can sniff it out. And then co-req Jose says preaching to the choir. Art, start with thinking to lower the anxiety for solution. I love that. Okay. So Kerryn, I know we've talked a little bit already about visibility, but do we want to, um, there's this quote here, uh, that, that I want to get art to speak to maybe a little bit more knowing what it's already happened. No longer offers, advantage
Art. Tell us more. I love it.
Well, I mean, I think we w you know, we all wish we could see around corners a little better, you know, history is history, but I'd like to know if something's going to hit me in the face beforehand so I can duck. But, you know, I think the reality is, is that when we think about visibility, we were all like, where's my stuff. Where's my stuff. Where's my stuff. I don't know how many pictures I saw in 1995 of what they called the glass pipeline. And, and, you know, I think it's 2021. The last time I looked. So, I mean, the good news is twenty-five later years later, maybe we can answer the where's my stuff, but that's really not much of the game. Like the reality though, is 90% of our people can't tell us where our stuff is. Like I said, we can just stick someone to space, but people get, tell us where our stuff is, but you're not going to win anything. Knowing where your stuff is, you're just not going to be behind anymore. Right. And, and we're entering a new world that surveillance and visibility is really about knowing upstream when things are going to happen. And being able to predict things are going to be able to happen and to be, have visibility, to, to see things more holistically, more completely. I don't need to tell anyone in the room that end to end visibility, whatever that may mean is way more elusive than shipment tracking.
It is. And, and when, when I'm talking with supply chain leaders and they tell me their transformation initiative, they need visibility. My first question is always, what are you going to do with that visibility? What are you looking to do? What problem are you solving? Or what time are you taking out because of this visibility? Or, you know, how can I trade visibility for inventory or inventory buffers in the mix? So I do think visibility is really important. And I think one of the things that you touched on in your work is it's not just visibility reporting what happened. It is using the past to better understand the present and future and what my alternatives are. Right. And then you dovetail that with the second view, which is velocity. So let's talk about speed. Let's talk about velocity.
Wow. Yeah. And again, one of my favorite of the three V's here, uh, but elaborate more on velocity, and then we're gonna probably dive a little bit deeper art. So, so for starters, why is it, why does it matter? I play the, I asked a stupid question. Why does velocity matter?
Well, I guess, you know, look, if we think about product cycles, um, or we let let's first start with, with product differentiation. Okay. The time that a product is differentiated based on its unique product attributes is collapsing rapidly. So if you used to get a three to five-year advantage with some innovative new product, you're lucky if you get 18 months. So the, the rate that a product commoditizes is accelerated. So based on that, the way that you differentiate in commoditization environments is creating differentiated services that surround your product like supply chain services. If you're a distributor, obviously the presence of yourself in inventory is somewhat unpreferred for a manufacturer who would like to go direct to the customer and squeeze the margin. And, but the distributor needs to compete by offering all kinds of really cool services that add more value to the customer than the manufacturer can.
And he wraps those commodity products around service. Well, the reality is, is that the speed that you're going to do that is going to matter. So my fundamental postulate is that the visibility of capacity and performance across networks, that we're always on always connected. Now, if you go back to my primary research papers on rating networks, because we're always on and always connected and have this new network awareness in the world, we have the ability to see capacity. And then if we have visibility into capacity, we have the ability to assemble and reassemble trading partners much more rapidly. So what I believe is there's going to be an end to permanence. We used to have very long supply chain relationships with people, but now if you look at all these different network, a marketplace or a supplier sources or things like teal book, or, you know, lots of different vertical, specific aggregations of catalogs, what we're going to be able to do is we're going to be able to source and resource much more rapidly.
And we're going to have less long relationships and more frequent short relationships, because we're going to be constantly recombining with training partners to create unique products, customer channel offerings, especially as we get into fulfillment of want and personalization, you know, we can stretch this down the street, but fundamentally it's the difference in permanence of relationships and that we're going to have a lot more, very short term relationships with people. And then we're going to go get something different. We're going to have a different product, different channel, and the speed of that. That's where the game's going to be. One, the game's going to be one and the speed to re accommodate. We talk about resilience. Oh, you know, I got a supplier in Asia and I got a boat stuck somewhere, and I needed to find a new supplier. That's the tip of the iceberg.
What we're really learning is, is that we, what we need to do is we need to have supplier liquidity. And in order to have supplier liquidity, then we have to change our frame of reference to say, we're not going to do business with one. We're going to have a catalog of 10. And if we have visibility into capacity, capability, and performance, then we are going to determine how to optimize and allocate. And we're going to do that with speed. Now, here's where it gets interesting. 50% of all manufacturing coming in, the fast moving CPG market is coming from micro brands and is coming through contract manufacturers and co-packers who are building unique products and personalizing their stuff. And they're completely outside of the enterprise of the G. So here are your Johnson and Johnson or your Colgate, or you're somebody, and you want to have personalized products of one. You want to compete on variability. You're harnessing variability and local markets. You're giving a personalized product of one, and you're having to do it through all kinds of things that aren't in your enterprise. They're not in your ERP system. They're not in your supply chain planning system. You're the hands of a thousand contract manufacturers. Now these are real supply chain problems. Right.
Right. All right. So one quick followup question on this notion of lossy and then Corrina, I think we'll move to the variability, but you know, you're only, uh, but you're speaking about these big enterprise behemoths, right? Oh, millions of moving pieces. They've got this supply chain ecosystem, right. Well, talk to ha uh, you can only move as fast as that whole ecosystem moves. Right. And I guess one of the things that you're, you're basically speaking to a bit, can you expand a bit on that?
Sure. Look, you know, we all know the stereo system analogy, if not, just go put your car stereo into a pit of good speakers and see what happens, you know, um, we're only as good as these weakest links for sure. Look, one of the things that really bothers me right now is we're shiny object chasing again. And we're back to this world where everyone is saying, you know, supply chain is easy and just sign here and we have a $10 million digital transformation project, you know, 90% of the world's still an Excel. Okay. You can't jump on treadmill, standing still, you know, we need to have some notion of incrementalism here, right. And, you know, the, the, the, the, these issues, you know, come down to really practical gating things here. And w w we're losing focus again, because what we're doing is so important. The good news is what we're doing is really important again.
Yes. Like front and center, the bad, the bad news is the big lie is back. We'll, we'll do a separate meeting on this, but there, there, there is really what happened in 1999, for those of us who lived through the, that, I don't want to name the names of all the vendors in the billion dollar market caps and the shelf where that ended up, but we're getting back to the same thing where 10% of the deal is real. And 90% on PowerPoint, there's enormous, shiny object chasing. And the reality is I, I have more faith in the little guy than the big guy, because if you understand how a little guys win, they win by being nimble anyway, right. The mid-market and upper mid-market person wins because they're fast, they're quick, they're nimble, they're responsive. They're unique, right? And so this is where I think there's great hope. Uh, I'm a little less hopeful for what we might call the Gardner 25 and no disrespect to Gardner or those 25, but you know what everyone thinks is great. Uh, isn't not necessarily winning differentiation. And if we want to really study supply chain winners, who pick companies that used it to just kill their customers and own their market
To make one connection, not kill your customer, kill your competition. That's, [inaudible], we've talked two of the V's so far we talked about visibility. We talked about velocity, but you just, you do this in such an integrated way. You've already talked about the third V just a little bit, and that is variability. So when art, when I hear you talking about supplier liquidity, right. That is, that's a mind blowing, um, you know, just aspiration for a lot of businesses. But the first thing I think of is what about the variability that, that brings in to my planning process. So maybe we'll come back to that, but we've talked visibility, we've talked velocity, let's talk variability, because I think this is one of the biggest challenges. And certainly with COVID with port closures, with container shortages, with ships, that block the Suez canal, I mean, we've had nothing but variability that's had a global impact for the last 18 months.
Yeah. I think that that's a plane to discuss, which has to do with reaction time and, you know, look at any, you know, I, I don't remember which general Senate, but he said the plan was that planning is nothing. You know, the planning is nothing. And the plan, the plan is nothing planning is everything because it's broken five minutes later. And, you know, we learned from the military systems, we built that, you know, nothing went right. Um, you know, on the battlefield. And, but, but that's, that's not, that's at a TCO level. What I call total cost of ownership level. Let's talk about total cost of opportunity. Let's talk about big TCO. Okay. And where variability really matters is isn't the following is, is that enterprises are under enormous pressure to simplify. So many companies that are on this phone are working in practitioners. Their businesses are trying to standardize and simplify, and they have the ERP or the architecture police, or whatever systems programs they're in their black belt, six Sigma, whatever the fact is is that standardized and simple.
But by the way, I'm a big fan of standardization, right? You gotta be careful about simple. [inaudible] simplifying though, because you buy three different companies, you put them all together. You say you want to standardize and simplify, but one of those companies was competing on a very differentiated and diversified process that you really actually need to support. And so here's what it is. Companies have been running from variability, there've been afraid to integrate. So they minimize integration liability. That's a philosophy of a CA gee, I'm afraid to, I don't want all these trading partners on allowed. I want one system. And I want just as little trading partners, like integration is really hard. And I just want to buy the thing from SAP, Oracle in for whoever it is. And I want to just do all the work and they want to minimize their integration liability.
And then they're like, oh, well, we need to go through SKU rationalization and we need to clean out our portfolio folio. And the reality is, is we're running from the one thing that we need to harness. What we need to do is we need to maximize our integration ability, okay. Not minimize our liability, but maximize our ability. And then with that, we embrace the variability. We embrace the trading partner communities at large, we network with other networks. And when we harness variability to allow us to have access to customers and markets and using velocity to assemble and reassemble with speed and grace, to create this notion of competitive differentiation, which is I can put it together faster and cheaper and better than anyone else, because we got really good at putting it all together. And you know what, that's what you gotta do today. You gotta be really good at putting it all together, discovery all the way to delivery discovery back to surveillance.
And what are people looking for before they're going to buy it and shaping what they may want to buy when they buy it, having digital probes all out there on that front end, understanding of behavior and buyer behavior and consumption, and forecast and weather and all of those things. And then all the way down to delivery, which is, did you get what you want when you wanted it? And what if you want to return it right now and putting it all together is the game. And to this heart, we got to change the mindset that we're not running away. We're not trying to minimize integration liability. We're not trying to minimize variability. We do embrace and harness it. Hmm.
So, uh, uh, before we continue Corrina, I want to share just a couple of comments here. I'm going back a little ways. Um, so, uh, first off, Charles, great to have you back Charles heater. Uh, thanks so much for being here in the cheap seats as he calls it, the sky boxes or the Lowe's seats, uh, which I believe is, um, uh, French. Uh, let's see here, Greg Gregory says enhanced visibility through intelligently integrated technologies. In the instance of those in the shipping industry, certainly impact to the prevention of loss in commodities due to faulty equipment, lost to instance at sea. So all parties can make better and more informed decisions. And we're seeing more and more losses at sea. Just one more, uh, complicating factor here in the age, we're living in a great point. Sarah Gregory, I want to add, um, as Peter clarifies, Loge is the French term low seats, and he says most expensive seats, any venue. We're just that valuable. That is right. All the comments are just that valuable. Hello. [inaudible] great to have you here today. And John B is a big fan art of what you're laying down as is, uh, Charles heater. Great. In end perspective, and co Kariah says variability equals ecosystem equals no single point of failure. Yep.
Comment on one of the comments that he made about visibility, tip containers and everything. Look, we can dumb this down and do you know, or I call it abstract up to something really simple as if we want to make better decisions. Okay. We, we need to get more information from sources are outside of our enterprise. I call it the shift from me to, we, it's really simple. If we want to make better decisions, we need to get better. So here's the question that I want to ask that you, in your polling thing, or love to hear a response, if we want to make better decisions, we need to get more data from the outside. Right? So with that said, I'd like to understand if companies have formalized data sharing policy, have they actually gone through and determined what data they think would be private, what data would be semi-private and that they would share it with some and what data would be public. They're willing to share it with everyone. I mean, again, if I can see your capacity, like if I want to buy manufacturing and I can see 20 people's capacities, I'm more likely to do business with someone who would show me that capacity availability. If I had quality viewpoints of them, I might pick them. But if they won't share it, they're not on my list. And I know lots of people who say, I don't want to share capacity. Right? Yep. There's a tag along to this. And do you have a formalized IP policy? So,
Um, so folks, I'm gonna turn it back over to Korean here just a second, but Hey, we'd love to get your feedback, um, during the rest of the 20 minutes or so, we're going to have art here, uh, around formalized data sharing policies. What's public, what's private was shared, uh, IP, uh, ownership, IP, uh, considerations there. And Hey, if you don't get it in, if you don't get your POV in here while we're live, still send it to us, send it to us, uh, via social. And we'll get that shared with art. Okay. Corrine.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, there's so much good stuff. There's so much good stuff I want to dive into, but are, you've really hit on something that I think is important. So as technology has evolved, right. And where you all talk about machine learning and artificial intelligence, these techniques, these algorithms, this mathematical approach is data hungry. Right. So what you're talking about in, in the context of, are you willing to share your data and can you harness new data outside of your enterprise to use as market signals as well? You know, R w when I look at a 20 year 25 year stretch, we've made progress, but hasn't been enough. I mean, has it been enough when data is really the oil that's going to help to move and accelerate what's happening in supply chain?
Well, okay. Um, let me take it from the top. I don't believe data's the new oil. I believe it's kryptonite. Okay. So it, you know,
That's why I'm a Titan ladies and gentlemen,
I can use it. I can use Luther. I can pull Superman data is the new kryptonite, right? It's not just the new oil because everyone uses oil, but w w you know, Amazon, and it is, is an example of a death nail, uh, to some Superman, uh, um, who would have thought an online bookseller would take down Sears. Um, so, so, yeah, so, so look, let's get through the funnel. This is the problem. The problem is, is that our data is bad. Everybody's data is maybe somebody got really great data out there. If you do, please let us know here so that we can give you awards. And, you know, we can talk whatever you do. I want to copy it a hundred times over again. So if any of you've got great data, please let us know. But, you know, the reality is we need like a data spawn, hygiene service, and everybody needs to go there and, you know, get shampooed and conditioned and get their data cleaned up.
And, and clean data is really, really hard. And it's really a lot of work. And all these people are saying, just pay $10 million. And three years later, your digital transformation process is going to kumbaya, take care of everything. And you know what? I can tell you the one thing that's going to kill it all is the same thing as skilled at all, all the time. And we need to get focused on this, which is about our data and then, and cleaning it up. But there's also something else that's very institutional. And I wrote about this in the late nineties, which is the speed that this data is going to be moving, is going to create what I refer to as a data velocity discontinuity, where the data's moving faster than the systems can support. So how many systems are really network aware event driven and real time?
Okay. Most are not okay. Unless it was built in the last three to five years. It is probably not really network aware. It's probably not really distributed to a notion of true on with the all time, real, never down, highly distributed. You know what we really need today to deal with the speed of this data. Um, doesn't exist in a lot of places and by the way, because we're always connected and always on, and we now have so much more data. We have 10 times more garbage. Right? Right. You know, so the noise is hyper amplified, which means we have to do more work to make sure we have clean data. Now you talked right at the beginning about inventory. And right now we have stockout and allocation situations. You know what? I love this because now good customers are being rewarded. And if you've been a bad customer and you've been jamming your supplier, and you've been paying them late, and they're like, what you want?
What, uh, w uh, no, I, you know what? I got eight other guys. They're a lot nicer than you are getting it before you are. Or they make it what I call strategic inventory. And they say, oh, you want that? I got that. But you got, you know, those three competitors. I need you to give me all those orders next year, if you want that little bit. So we're actually going to go through, I think we're going to have a bullwhip effect here. So what we're going to have is everybody's going to be so concerned about this stock up thing that we're going to start bloating her all up again. And then we'll see a muted demand pattern. After we get through this euphoric, oh my God, I can go out to eat and party that everyone's excited that we're doing every day right now.
You know, I want you at our next party, art meet our next party. You know, by the way, it's an acronym for software, hardware, integrated with telecommunications, and both have a pile of software, hardware integrated with telecommunications. But, but you know, so this is really, this is where with the quality of data cleaning data, you can't jump on a treadmill standing still. We got to get back to these real fundamentals and we got to get back to incrementalism, right? This big bang. Three-year digital know we're going to be bad. I predict right now that everyone will get 20% of the PowerPoint on any deal. That's over $3 million right now. And lots of enterprise. I see what's going on again. And it's the same thing, recycling itself. I just hope we can keep people focused on doing what they need to do, figure out how to differentiate yourself, clean up your data. All right.
I'm with you and Kerryn, I'm going to share some comments and then in a remaining 15 minutes or so, I'll let you decide exactly where we go next Korean. I want to share though, uh, Peter really enjoys a art. Interestingly enough, it is a top question. When I did site visits and often discovered they were under utilizing their potential capacity. Um, Nearpod is very optimistic. He says, I think full end to end visibility will be actualized a hundred percent by the fiscal year, 2136, Amanda precise there. Okay. Charles says we need growth in data analytics jobs.
And of course you mean by that? Yeah.
Charles, elaborate a little bit more on what your, what you see is the need there, Peter data. Yes, but it needs to be clean data as you alluded to earlier. Art because garbage in is garbage out. Excellent. Um, co-req Jose says, Hey, check out the German automotive data sharing initiative called Katina X seems that the coin has started. That's right.
That's a very good example. Yep.
Pill equals bucket equals container equals vessel equals a big mess is a new equation. Peter is Sharon. Um, let's see here. Uh, Charles says sometimes data is tailored for a segment where for logistics, can't use reverse logistics, but procurement might along with analytics jobs. They need governance too. Okay. I'm gonna pause there for a second because we shared a lot of different comments from a lot of different places, except this one Cara says I should have brought popcorn. These are great insights. I agree with you. Co-write art and art. You're very, um, entertaining guests and, and I love the, the knowledge of dropping, but you do so in a very entertaining manner. And that's, that's like the, um, you get your cake and eat it too. But Kerryn with our time, we have limited here with art. Where do we want to go to next?
Yeah. So, so it's magic actually. Um, and art makes you think, and, and our listeners an hour from now, two from now, or when they get up at four o'clock in the morning to go, fishing are going to go, you know, that guy art said this, you know, and so it's going to come back to either inspire you or haunt you one or the others. Um, so it'll happen. But you know, one of the things that we've talked around a little bit, and some of these last group of, um, of comments from our community, you know, is about the people element art. So we, we are facing, so before COVID, we were facing a looming talent shortage, right. And opportunity, right. For supply chain professionals, for data scientists, for technology developers, you know, the exponential growth that I think we're gonna see, um, is still out there post COVID number one. But I think the talent profiles are going to be changing would love to get your thoughts on a matte art, because you've seen so much evolution, um, and have the opportunity to see it from an investor and advisor perspective each and every day.
Well, look, first of all, the great news is there's a lot more keeners coming into our industry. You know, when, you know, I remember the first trade shows for technology, the DC expo, if anyone is ever old enough. I remember when there was three of us at the first one, um, you know, the biggest problem I had in 1999 when a certain vendor told me about their constraint based planning and scheduling optimization with their oil modeling engine, that would allow everybody to self configure their supply chains. And they was, you know, went through a gazillion dollar evaluation and everyone was buying their stuff is, I didn't know, 60 people in the world that understood what they were saying. Like, I know Elliot go gold or at, uh, you know, I knew Ken Sharma before he passed away. I know a lot of these people, you know, I spent a lot of time in the universities.
Yossi Sheffi is a very dear friend of mine. And I can tell you, there were less than 60 people in the world that understood what these people were talking about in 1999. And they sold a bit, you know, tens and tens and tens of tens of millions of dollars with the deals. But then who was going to implement them, who was going to train the people, who's going to run these things for crying out loud. How many people who understand everything they just said wants to go work for like, you know, pick a name. I don't want to say one or offend somebody, but you know, why would you work there when you could go work somewhere where people understood what you were talking about? And, and, and so you see when, when, when, when a center, when, when SAP brought our three over from Europe and were selling global financials, there were thousands and thousands of accountants who just wanted to stop the shoe box from showing up at their office.
And the, if they get electronify, the global financial records of their customers, their cost per audit would collapse and their margins would go to the moon and they could make all kinds of money in the other division called the consulting division of the audit firm with the name Arthur. And they could, and they could, then they could then bill a gazillion dollars putting in this configurable system for financials, which they understood because they all understood global financials. So there was this giant channel of people waiting to do work, but there isn't a giant channel of people who can go do all of this supply. Now we're talking about digital autonomous self-driving digital brain, you know, black, black box, bingo is meeting a Blackbox BS a bit, you know, and, uh, you know, the, the reality is, again, how many people I saw a press release the other day that someone's hiring 500 people.
And I looked there, they're all data scientists, which by the way, it's great. I am, I think data scientists are great. And we, and I'm glad that we're bringing a lot of data scientists into our business. I tell every CEO that I know that they should hire their own data. Scientists is, should report directly to him to keep their own it department honest, separate. We gotta be really careful again, because we are selling real supply chain is hard. It's really complex. And you can understand all the math in the world. You can understand all the data science in the world. You have to have a cognitive understanding. You have to have a real understanding of what's the business. What makes the business different? What a customers care about, how you're going to compete. And then how are you going to use this supply chain to differentiate yourself and make you more competitive, or at least stop you from dying and bleeding and get costed out and not, you know, we can hire 500 people, but they don't know these things. They're still, we don't have these armies of people. So the good news is we have a lot of demand. The bad news is we still don't, can't meet that supply. Right. And the thing that we're really missing the most is the business analyst that has data skills and context and
And context. That's right. And, and, and, you know, so if I could tell someone what they should do to get a skill set around here would be is, you know, the go, go get your industrial engineering degree, add to it, a master of science and data engineering, and then go work somewhere in three years later, go get an MBA, right? So that you understand business planning, business strategy, you start off with industrial engineering, so you can put a number to anything, and then go into your data science and your tools around Python or whatever your tools and techniques are. So, you know, go get the fundamentals and industrial engineering, Golar tools and techniques go to work, get some knowledge, and then go get you, go look at an MBA or something, you know, an Ms. You know, something that is, is, is specialized in.
All right. Well, I wait a minute that that is a lot of education background. And I personally just learned earlier today that you didn't have that education background, but you got in saw problems and started fixing problems. And that's the one thing that I would encourage our audience to be sure that they're doing is look at those business problems, look at opportunities to improve or remove those barriers to streamline, to touch as few times as possible and solve real problems, use technology to solve real problems that offer differentiation for your business
Incrementally. Yeah, listen, I do want to apologize. Look, I never went, I dropped out of university to start a company and, and, you know, I didn't grab any of these skills. Um, but I would tell you, I surround myself with these people. Um, you know, and, and that's what I learned really early is, you know, um, I, I find industrial engineers invaluable in the supply chain arena. I wish we could make thousands more of them. I think that's the fundamental grounding that we, for people that want to do transformation work, we really need more industrial engineering type of context in our businesses. Um, so when, so in, you asked about that, but there's great opportunity to do for anybody. Um, you know, in this space that, you know, because I said there's, keeners everywhere. People really believe in what we're doing, and we do make world a better place. Right. You know, people want to work somewhere where they can make a difference where, what they do makes a difference in the world and, you know, supply chains, the backbone of commerce, you know, I mean, you know, what we do is really important. It matters a lot. It can change the world.
Wait. So I want to just Amanda Nye, who is behind the scenes right now, one of our producers, she's also, uh, my better half for sure. We might see this topic a little bit different. So if, if, uh, you hear me shouting is because she's breaking my leg as I share this art, but in current, but, you know, I think it's really important, uh, art, I admire the fact that, um, you know, you just college wasn't for you. You had a passion to build and build, and, and, and clearly it, that decision has worked out really well. 10 supply chain, tech companies, $10 billion in valuation. And I think, you know, we prescribe as societal doctors, college, college, college as prescription we're writing, writing, writing, even when it's not the right one. Right. And college is a great thing. Like I've benefited from my time for sure. But there's so many other opportunities outside of that, that traditional four year college degree, whether it's two year, whether it's, um, technical degrees, whether it, whether it's just chasing a profession, you know, with, with, uh, outright, uh, abandoned, I think that's, that's the message. I, I believe we need to, uh, instill more and more in the generations coming up Korean is that, um, what's your take there
Now, you know, I totally agree. You and I have talked about, uh, about my background and, and college was for me, but, um, but that work ethic, but one thing that comes across and I know we're going to have to let art go here, but the one thing that comes across, I think loud and clear is art Mesher has passion around solving these complex challenges. And today we discuss those three V's right. We talked about visibility. We talked about the last day. We talked about variability. These themes are still as important today and offer tremendous opportunity for differentiating your supply chain from your toughest competitor. So art, I want to thank you for joining us today and reminding us of that. And Scott, I think we need to have art back. I think we need to bring them back and have another conversation. Um, on many of these other topics that he's brought up today,
I think we should talk about the great big lie again, and everybody knows it. And I saw somebody type in here. I'm talking about what everyone's thinking. It's really real. I don't want 15 years of scorched earth again. The last time this happened, it took 10 to 15 years for people to not be afraid or have anxiety to take on supply chain projects. Finally, everyone wants to jump in again and they're being sold the same bill of goods.
Well, Hey, before you leave, I just want to share a couple of, you got a lot of standing ovations here in the comments here. Uh, Peter, oh my gosh. What a great rant that was, uh, the black box bingo, new t-shirt ism Charles says build it and they'll come Russ who formerly led a supply chain and group here in Atlanta, this rocks. He says, I love that. Um, and, and plenty of other comments here, um, really appreciate you. Yeah. As be as busy as you are, whether you're, um, uh, leading, contributing fishing, riding you name it to spend the last hour with us was home run stuff. We'd love to have you back. So art, uh, pleasure, high pressure Mesher, a pleasure to have you here with us today. I'm sorry.
It's been good. And, and everybody, uh, please stay safe and maybe there'll be a day where we can see each other in person. Awesome. Thanks have the chart. Yep.
Wow. Do you think Scott now you've met art. I think
Those 10 businesses are plugged into art and he powers it through his sheer personality, electricity and, and knowledge. Um, really it, those kinds of, um, yeah, I think what really stands out there beyond all the intelligence and had been there, done that is the passion, you know, is truly the world of supply chain and global business excites art. And when we can get folks excited, that's how we can solve and make progress on the challenges of our day and time that that leaves engagement. It leads a real meaningful innovation, um, and that's what we need. So I love, um, really appreciate you bringing art here today on the tech talk live stream here on splotchy. Now,
Thanks so much. I really enjoyed it. And, and every conversation I have with art feels a little like what we just experienced today. So that's the way he is guys. Daisy day in, day out. Um, that brain is always working and, uh, and those ideas are always, always evolving over time.
Before you make your last point here in, in, in close this out, I want to, I think one of the many big lessons learned here today, one of the many is that art is we've got a ton of more data, right? We're we're the world is a data factory these days, right? It started back when big data started becoming more and more, um, uh, I'll say affordable, but maybe more and more commonplace, the ability to be discerning as business leaders and really understand what's important. What isn't important, what a true signal is, uh, out of the tidal wave of data. I mean, it's only gonna become more challenging as we get more information and data at our fingertips. And I think that's where maybe we're Charles heaters coming into this, you know, a couple of comments we had as a group around, uh, the power of context. I mean, that's going to be a buckle up because I think we're all going to have to become better data analysts certainly now moving forward.
Well, and so, you know, my, my father on that is that we have to harness the data, find the signals in all of that data, that growing data in order to transform data into information and then into action, right? So it's what we do with those insights that come out of better analytics, um, a better understanding of our business and the ability as art said to change partners or to move and be more resilient over time. So lots and lots of opportunity around that. Totally agree, Scott,
Awesome point. Well, Chris, thank you so much. What, so how are we going to close out here today?
Um, you guys, this is your it's going to come back over and over again. Be sure you share this one with, uh, with your network as well and come back and listen to it again. I guarantee you you'll hear something that, that you missed in the wisdom that, that art's shared with us today. And hopefully you'll get some inspiration out of that as well. But on the topic of raising your supply chain IQ, I want to encourage everyone to go out to supply chain now.com, tap into the many resources that are there and share those with your network as well. And while you're there, please find tech talk. That's T E K T. Okay. And hit subscribe. You don't want to miss a single episode. So until next time, this is Corinne bursa. I am the host of tech talk, digital supply chain, and I'm here with the one and only Scott Luton, founder of supply chain now. And I want to thank our special guests today. Art Mesher industry Titan. I don't think I can add anything else to that. So, um, we're gonna you next time on tech top powered by supply chain. Now the voice of supply chain. Thanks your buddy.