 Hello, global supply chainers and welcome to this first life event of SC2x. Today, we have Eva Ponce with us. Welcome, Eva. So Eva is the executive director of the MITx MicroMaster in Supply Chain Management, as well as a research associate here at MIT CTL. She oversees the five online SC courses that make up the MicroMaster in Supply Chain Management program. Her research focus is the design of urban freight distribution models with special attention on omnichannel distribution strategies. She also leads research initiatives on reverse logistics and close loop supply chains. Welcome, Eva. Thank you so much. And welcome global supply chainers. OK, so today's agenda is the following. So Eva will start giving a brief overview about the program. Then we will move to, again, a brief overview of SC2x. So I'm going to talk about this current run of SC2x. Then we'll start an interactive discussion about omnichannel. And Eva will talk about the recent news. And then we'll open the floor to any questions that you might have. So let's get started. Excellent. So welcome again to this first life event for SC2x. I'm going to start with a brief overview of who are I and what are we doing with this program. So you know that you are part of this community of SC2x learner. So the first thing I want to start is with the who are we. So we are the MIT, the Center for Transportation and Logistics. This is a center with more than 40 years of experience in supply chain. We have been working on creating supply chain innovations and driving this innovation into practice. I need to highlight here that the approach that CTL follows for every single thing we are doing in terms of research or education is very industry oriented and industry applied. So there are three main legs at CTL. The first one is research. In this sense, we have more than 15 full time researchers here in the center. The second part that is the second arm is outreach. And this is our relationship with companies, with different actors in the supply chain that collaborate with the center in terms of research and also in education. And the third arm is education and the MicroMaster program is part of the education offer of MIT CTL. In terms of education, I want to highlight that we are offering for more than 20 years the supply chain management master's degree. This is a degree that the director is Bruce Arson, Dr. Bruce Arson. We have been offering this in the field of supply chain management for the last 20 years. We are also offering a PhD program in logistics and executive education for professionals. More recently, starting in fall 2015, we started with the MicroMaster program. And this course is part of the MicroMaster program. So let's move to the next one. You are now as a SC2X learner part of the SCX community of learners. Overall, more than a quarter of a million of learners have taken at least one SCX course since we started offering the first MOOC in 2014. 17,000 of these learners are verified learners. And I'm going to talk about the difference between being an audit or a verified learner. These learners and this program, I need to say that it's a global program. We have students from more than 100 and 90 different countries. Also, the staff is from all over the world. Sergio is from Bolivia, I'm from Spain. We have a postdoctoral associate from Germany too. We have people from the USA. So it's a global program in all sense from our learners perspective, from the staff perspective. We are fascinated about that. We are fascinated about to have learners and supply chain experts from all over the world. And today we have granted 1273 certificates, MicroMaster's Credential Holders. These are the learners who have completed the five SCX courses plus the comprehensive and proctor final exam. A long journey for these guys, most of them spent around 15 to 18 months in completing the program. But finally, they get it and they earn the MicroMaster Credential. So let's move to the next slide. And in terms of the program, the program includes five massive open online courses. SC2X is halfway, is the exactly the halfway course. At the very end, we are offering a proctor comprehensive final exam. This is only for those students who have completed as a verified learner and pass the five SCX courses. I know that most of you have already completed SC0X supply chain analytics and supply chain fundamentals. Since we are encouraging you to take the five courses in sequence, we know that some of you, because of your background, because of your many different reasons, sometimes you are taking at least two courses at the same time. And this is something that we definitely allow to do. I would recommend to take in sequence, but we know that for some learners, work better to take two at the same time. OK, so let's move to the next one. In terms of contents, where SC2X is located in the program, I need to tell you that the three first courses, SC0X, SC1X and SC2X, are more conceptual and mathematical oriented. We are reviewing here quantitative models. Most of you have completed SC0X, you know that, also SC1X. In SC2X, from my point of view, it's a very interesting course, because it's like in between the quantitative goal and the qualitative goal. So in SC2X, we started adding some complexity. More complexity is coming in SC3X and SC4X in supply chain dynamics and supply chain systems and technology. However, in supply chain design, let's go forward, in supply chain design, you are going to use a lot of the tools that we have already reviewed in SC0X and SC1X. You are going to solve network design problems and apply milk models. For instance, you are going also to learn about procurement and finance. The main goal is to prepare you for the real goal and prepare you for more life complications that you will study more in SC3 and SC4X. And at the very end, if you are trying to pursue for the MicroMasters credential that I really encourage you to do that, you need to pass a comprehensive and proctor final exam. So in terms of the course by itself, we have two main spaces. The learning space with the videos, the quick questions, the practice problems and the discussion forums. I really encourage you to go through the discussion forum and try to post there any questions you have related to the contents. If you find a relevant new related to the topics we are discussing, go there, post the article and start a discussion. Start a discussion with your peers. We are very fortunate to have... And Sergio is going to review the latest statistic for SC2X. But we are really fortunate in our SCX courses to have a bunch of professional people, people that are working in supply chain management and they are bringing their experience to our courses. We have also students pushing for a master degree or a bachelor degree and they are also trying to learn more and more in supply chain management. So it's a great community of learners. Take advantage of that. Every single time I go through the forums, believe me that I learned a new thing. Then we have the assessment. Since we are offering a certificate in SC2X as part of the MicroMasters credential, we need to evaluate. We need to assess your knowledge. That's why you have graded assignments, midterm and final exam. For this, you have the SC2X help email account. Bilal, our teaching assistant, is going to be helping you through the email account. So any questions you have related to assessment, please direct this directly to the email account. This is an example of the forums. I really encourage you to move and go through the forums. We also have been reviewing some of the research studies and these research studies demonstrate that people that are engaged in the forums, their performance is higher and also the dropout rate is also lower for those that are really engaged. So just a way to ask your questions and to interact with your peers through the platform is to go through the forum. Okay, in terms of how to interact with the course team, so the forum in order to, as I mentioned, in order to post your questions, in order to look for some collaboration in videos, quick questions and practice problem, do not post anything about the assessment. For that, you have the email account. If you have any questions related to assessment, as I mentioned, send a note directly to SC2X help at MIT. So Sergio, the course lead for this course and also Bilal, the teaching assistant, will be there helping you. Any suggestion, feedback, or idea to improve the course? Send directly to SC2X help email account. We are very happy to receive your feedback, your constructive feedback. We are really taking this into consideration and trying to improve our courses based on this feedback. Correct, so let me just add something. So the SC2X help, the email help is meant only for clarification questions. So no question related to the content itself. So we won't be providing any hints, okay? Only if there's something that is not well understood and we'll be trying to clarify the question, what the problem is, is asking. Yeah, if you identify any issue or you have any concern, do not hesitate to bring there because if we identify that something, let's say we can add a clarification, we will do that. So do not hesitate to share that. We are not going to, let's say, to bring or provide any advantage to any singular individual, but if we identify something that can be improved, we are going to do for all of our students. Correct. Yeah, great. Okay, so there are two different ways to take an SCX course. One is the verified track and the other one is the audit track. Audit is for free. You just need to enroll in the course and you will have access to the videos, the quick question, the practice problems. Verified learners are those that are interested in earning a certificate. So if you are pursing for a certificate in SC2X or you are pursuing for the MicroMaster Credential and Supply Chain Management, then it's mandatory to take this course as a verified learner. What does a verified learner, let's have a look first to the, yeah. A verified learner means two things. First, you need to pay $200 per course per run. That's not, if you already took it, if you already paid, unfortunately, this fee cannot be transferred to another run. So you need to pay $200 per course per run and you need to go through the ID verification. Before going through the logistics and how to do that, let me highlight the benefits of being a verified learner in SC2X. The first thing, as I mentioned, if you really want to earn a certificate, the first step is to become a verified learner. This is the first thing. The second thing, you need to go through the graded assignments, the midterm and the final and you need to pass. The pass bar is 60%. So you need to at least get a 60% of your final grades in order to earn the certificate. Also, if you are pursuing for the MicroMaster Credential, this is only for verified students who pass the five courses. We are also offering extra service that is the life events. So this first life event is 21 that is enrolled in SC2X. However, the second and the third life event is only for verified learners. And also we are offering a specific supplemental material, specific problems. We are sharing some master's thesis that our residential student have completed here at MIT. So we are sharing additional and supplemental material only for verified learners. This is not part of the core content of the course. So any audit student have access to the core content, the videos, the quick questions and the practice problems. But these are some like, if you want to go further or investigate a bit more in certain topic, I would say that this supplemental material is intended for that. We are, as I mentioned, offering the second and the third life event only for verified learners. Typically, we invite industry experts from industry. We invite Dr. Chris Caplis, one of the main instructor of the McMaster credential and in SC2X. We also, last year, we invited Jim Rice to discuss one of the cases studies related to the finance part. So it's going to be fun and it's a way to bring reality, to bring an expert and to discuss some topic related to the course. Excellent. Okay, so to become a verified learner is just to go to supply chain design, to click on the upgrade your status to be a verified learner. If you already buy the coupon code for the pro-enrollment, you need to add here your coupon code. If you just are decided to enroll in this course, it's just a way to use the PayPal or Visa or whatever, allow it payment method through the platform. So the first thing is to pay this $200 and the second step is to go through the ID verification. This is just to verify your identity and this is mandatory. Every single learner in any SCX course need to have only one email account and let me highlight that. It's one user, edX account, one username and this username, this person should be ID verified. For that, you need to bring an ID card with your picture, your full legal name and this official name need to be exactly the name that you have included in your profile through the edX platform. At the end, we need to have a real person behind the edX email account. So that's the purpose of that. There is some videos, there is some documents that edX has prepared that might help you through the ID verification process. Okay, so let's move to the next one. If you have, yeah, let's go back one minute. If you have any issue with the verification or the payment process, you should contact directly with edX at info at edX.org because all of the payment refunds ID verification process relies completely on edX. So in terms of the benefits of being part of this course, I really like SC2X. I think it's a good course because combined quantitative models with the complexity of the real industry, all of the problems we're providing here are very applied. So it's something that I really like. And I also, one of the things that fascinated me more about the program is the impact of this program on individuals. So just encourage you go to the next one to create the study groups in your local city to have meetups. We have a community manager Arthur Grau and Arthur is really trying to create this community of SCX learners. So just feel free to reach to your peers at your location. We are also encouraging SCX learners to enroll in the MicroMaster portal that is a website that we have specifically for SCX learners to allow you to collaborate, to allow you to create these study groups. So just take advantage of this huge community of SCX learners and all of, I would say that there is one common theme that is the passion for supply chain. So take advantage of that, great. So let's have a look. Excellent, thank you. Thank you, Eber. Thank you for this overview of the program. So let's now deep dive in SC2X. So these are some numbers of this current run. So far we have more than 6,500 students enrolled in the course and we already have 442 enrolled students. So people that aim to receive the credential if they pass the certificate, if they pass the course. Very far later. Very far later, that's correct. So these, our learners are coming from 157 different countries. The important dates to the course are two. I mean, of course you're already enrolled but if you know any people, any friend, any colleague that would like to enroll. So the key date to enroll in the course is October the 10th. Okay, after that, they won't be able to join the course. Okay, the second key date is the verification. So if you're planning to become Verified Learner, so the key date is, or the deadline is October 17th. So please verify before that deadline. So this deadline is fixed and we won't have any next day tensions. As Eva was highlighting, discussion forums are a great space to learn. So we have 14 CTAs that are doing a great job helping us to moderate this discussion forum. These 14 JTAs come from seven different countries. So that brings me to the first question of the life event. I would like to hear from you, where are you from? Okay. So let's go to the slide to see the results. Let me see if I can share the... 42 learners answered the question so far. Which one is the most common country? Let's see if we can plot the results. Oh, here you go. USA and India and Canada, the third one. So we have USA, India and Canada, Brazil. We have also Boston, this is far of USA, Jordan, yeah, Turkey, Colombia, and many other different Spains, the two, Mexico, great. Okay. But usually this is more what we have. You say India and Canada and also Brazil. So nobody from Bolivia yet, from Bolivia yet. Yeah, Bolivia is here. Okay. Maybe it's you. Excellent. It was me, definitely. Yeah, no, we have more than one because of the size. Okay, great. Okay, so let's continue. So regarding the team, so as Eva also mentioned, this is a team effort. So Chris Kaplis is the director of the program and Eva is the executive director of the program. So in EC2X we have, so we have the advantage of having also a variety of teaching styles. So we have four instructors. So Chris Kaplis is the main instructor, but also we have Joshi Sheffi, the director of CTL as our procurement instructor. And we have Jarod Goncel and Jim Wrights, also researcher here at MIT CTL for the finance part. I'm the course lead. My name is Sergio Caballero and we have the help of one TA, Ahmed Bilal. We also have a great team of 14 CTAs, 14 excellent supply chain professionals that are helping us moderate the discussion for. And these are the names of these amazing people. And I think that for those that already took EC2X and EC1X, Param, Lancet, Mar, Chris Coutel might be familiar for you because they have been collaborating with us for now for years and they are doing an excellent job. So you might know some of them. Excellent. Okay, so let's start talking about the Omni Channel Eva. Perfect. So yeah, we brought Omni Channel for different reasons. One of the main reasons is because it's connected with some of the content that we are reviewing and teaching in EC2X. I want to start with a recent article. This is a new from four days ago, four days ago. Four, five days ago. Four, five days ago. So Amazon announced that they just opened what they call the Four Star Store. This is a brick and mortar, a traditional brick and mortar store in New York City in the Soho area. Yeah, so this kind of news always surprised me because it's amazing to see now. I'm researching Omni Channel. I'm trying to understand, to better understand how retailer are, what things retailers need to do in order to be prepared to compete in an Omni Channel environment. And what we are seeing is an interesting trend. We are seeing that Amazon, a pure player when they started in 1995, recently, I'm talking about the last year, they bought a Whole Food. They also recently opened Amazon Go in Seattle and currently they just announced this brick and mortar in New York City. So I have one question for you. And the question is, why do you think that Amazon, a traditional pure player, if we can say traditional in the e-commerce era, but yes, a pure player in 1995, why do you think that Amazon is opening brick and mortar stores? This is the question for you. I provide them different reasons. So let's see which one do you think is the most relevant one. And then let's continue with the presentation. So yeah, so as I mentioned, they started in 1995 as a pure player. They started selling books, then they were adding more and more different products through the marketplace. Then in June, 2017, more than one year ago, they bought Whole Foods. This is a grocery chain. They bought 460 physical stores. I was investigating why, why they bought these physical stores. So I want to see your answers first and then I will expand a bit more about why I think they are doing that. They also open Amazon Go in Seattle. Amazon Go is a convenient store and this convenient store has one thing that is different from the traditional convenient store. That is that they are using technology, they are using artificial intelligence, different sensors in order to offer a cashless, brick and mortar convenient store. You don't need to have cashiers, the traditional cashier, you just need to bring your cell phone, your mobile phone and grab your products and go through the scanners and automatically they will charge you for whatever you pick from the store. So it's an interesting new or modern convenient store. And just very recently, as I mentioned, they just opened this four-star store in New York City. So let's have a look to your answers. Okay, so 65% of you said that you think that Amazon is investing in that to gain omnichannel share. Yeah, this definitely might be one of the reasons because we are going to go farther with the presentation and we are going to have a look to traditional brick and mortar like Walmart, like Target and we are going to have a look to what they are doing. And let's see the conclusion we can have here. Some of you are almost 50% said that you think they are doing in order to test new technologies and business models, definitely. The Seattle store, they were testing these sensors on this artificial intelligent and visual computer artificial computer vision systems in order to see how we can get rid out of the cashiers and allow people just to grab the products don't spend more time through the cashier lane. So yes, testing this, definitely testing this technology. Yeah, what else? Some of you think that is to grow and expand their business definitely could be a strategy to diversify, definitely or to improve or offer additional customer experience. Also, the more recent strategy to open this store in New York City might be a strategy to be closer to the customer because this is an opportunity to have firsthand information from the customer, from the physical customer. They said also that they are offering in this physical store the best seller products. So they have a huge amount of information about which products are the most popular products through the online channel and they're using this information in order to offer in a physical store. So let's move forward. I also want you to think about the traditional brick and mortars. First, I'm going to show you what they are doing. If we have a look into Walmart, we can see that recently Walmart bought Jet.com. They also buy Shubai, Bonobos. This is a showroom store. They also buy Rakuten, a relevant marketplace in Japan. So they are really investing in e-commerce. And Walmart is putting a lot of a big push into the online grocery business. They are offering to their customers to buy online and to pick up in their nearby stores. So they are trying to take advantage of their current network of brick and mortars that they have and was their business for years and trying to offer this in the only channel environment, trying to offer that to their customers. If we have a look into Target, we can see also that Target is rolling out a store pickup for online orders. Very recently, they acquired Shipt. With this Shipt, an e-commerce company, what they are doing is offering a new shopping experience and they are trying to have same day delivery. As you know, retailers now are trying to figuring out how many omni-channels they should offer, how many different channels they should offer in addition to the traditional e-commerce that is to bring you the product to your house. They are also trying to figuring out if other pickup options like pickup option in a store or pickup in a convenience store, in a gas station or in a locker, in an automated package stations, makes sense for them and for their customers in order to offer this seamless customer experience that omni-channel retailers are trying to offer. They also change the shopping experience offering different options. Tesco, Tesco is an example that they are using of Mentir Reality. There is a nice video that I encourage you to have a look that shows the experience of Tesco in South Korea using of Mentir Reality. So what they are doing is while people are waiting in the metro station for the metro to commute to home, they have a kind of panels where they can see the different products in a supermarket and using their mobile phone, they combine the supermarkets. So when they arrive home, they receive almost, they receive their online order, which is something great. Okay, so let's now think about the reasons. The reasons behind the traditional brick-and-mortars like Walmart, like Target, in order to move to online sales. Let's see, why do you think these traditional brick-and-mortars are moving into online sales? While you answer these questions, let's move to the next slide. I want to highlight one thing here. I want to bring the mobile phones because the e-commerce has been growing since the last, let's say since 1995, and more specifically starting in the year 2000, e-commerce has been growing a lot. However, if we have a look to the trend of growing of e-commerce, we can identify that in 2007 was an important point where the increase of the e-commerce was really, really high, was a huge increase after 2007. And one of the main reasons from my point of view is the use of the introduction of the mobile phones. In 2007, Apple announced their first iPhone. Also, all the companies are offering smartphone devices and these smartphone devices are allowing customers to buy from anywhere. They can buy from anywhere, they can buy from home, they can buy from work, they can buy from the TS station, from the metro station, from the bus station on where, while they are in the park playing with their kids. So they can buy from anywhere. And also now, they can also almost, almost they can ask to deliver to almost anywhere. It's not 100% accurate to anywhere because if you are in a city, definitely as a retailer you can offer many different pickup options. If you are in a rural area, you are more limited on that. But in any case, what they want to show here is that after this mobile phone introduction and after this many different options of from where we can buy and where we can receive the online order, if we have a look to the traditional buying process in an only channel environment, what we can see is this mess. And this mess is because there are many different channels and these channels in order to offer a seamless experience or customers need to be integrated. And this is something that definitely for retailers is something that they need to face now and face this challenge in order to compete in this only channel environment. So yeah, let's have a look to your main reasons why traditional brick and mortars are investing in online sales. So most of you think that this is to grow and expand their business offering new sale channels. I fully agree. I think it's a way to offer new channels and to gain market share in an only channel environment. And also for some of them in order to compete with the pure players and to survive in this competitive environment. So yeah, excellent. So let's continue with the presentation and I want you now to think about the main challenges in only channel distribution strategies in the supply chain. So, so far we have been discussing why the pure players are moving into the brick and mortar space. Why Amazon is buying whole food, why Amazon is opening traditional brick and mortars stores in New York City. We have also analyzed why a traditional brick and mortars like Walmart are buying jet.com and are investing a lot in e-commerce. So it seems that both world are converging. The pure players are moving into the traditional retail physical space and the traditional brick and mortars are moving into the virtual e-commerce space which is something interesting. So let's see the main challenges you think these retailers need to face. I want to bring here the paper of Bell from 2014. I like this paper because they just summarize the main challenges in two dimensions. One is related to fulfillment, how to deliver or fulfill the online order. And there are two main options here considered in store pickup or home delivery. Another relevant dimension here is the information. So information can be communicated via online or can be shared through the store. And there are four different options. Let's start with the first one. The traditional retailers are, let's think about Walmart, about Tesco, Mark and Spencer. Those that traditionally they put their products in the brick and mortars store in the different ale and the customer goes there, grab the, touch the product, decide which product they want to buy, grab the product and come home with their product. Then we have the peer players. Peer players are those that the information is, everything a single thing is happening through the website online. And traditionally they send the online order when we are talking about a physical product to your house. Now we have hybrid models. And this is the thing that are complicated a bit more and adding extra layers of complexity. We have Home Depot. Home Depot is an example of offering their products via online, but offering their customers to go to the store to pick up their product. Zara from the IndieTex group is another example that are incentivized these hybrid models, buy online, but pick up in the store. Walmart is also now moving into that. And the third model I want to business model are the showrooms. This is something that happened very recently. And these are stores that they do not have inventory for you to buy. They only have there, there in the showroom. The products that you can go and try is just to go and test the glasses or jackets, clothes. This is more for those products that the customer really want to touch and to try and see how this product fit with them before buying that. So showrooms is something Bonobos is one example of showroom. We have also Nordstrom is offering some showrooms and Target is also offering some of these showrooms. So this is a new business model just to be close to the customer, but you don't need to have inventory for sales, only inventory for people to test the product. So let's have a look to your key challenges and see what our learners answer. So how to deliver. So most of you think that how to deliver is one of the main challenge. I'm happy you point that because these connect very well with the contents we are reviewing in a C2X. So that would be the physical delivery of the goods. Physical delivery is like which mode of transportation I'm going to use in order to deliver that because for e-commerce we are, and if we are talking about e-commerce in a big city we need to reach every single destination, every single customer in their households or we need to reach them at the workplace. But in any case, if this is happening in a city we need to deal with the traffic and congestion of the city. We are also looking for fast or rush deliveries especially if we are talking about groceries. So retailers need to meet two things, how to deliver and reach the final customer wherever the option is they are offering and how fast they are going to send this delivery order. That is another thing, the time window they are offering are they offering same-day deliveries, are they offering two-hours delivery, rush deliveries that we are seeing now in groceries. So these are different challenges that they need to deal with. More things is how to manage to their returns. I agree, when we are talking about e-commerce one thing that is happening is that the percentage of commercial returns is higher than in traditional business. We are talking in some industries like the fast fashion retail about 35% of commercial returns. So these retailers need to manage that. Also, they need to think about which options are we going to offer to our online customer for returns? Can they come to my store? Can they go to an automated package station? Which option they are going to offer for that? The third most common answer is which channel should the retailer offer? Yes, which channel should they offer? And then they have the decision about, okay, the traditional e-commerce channel is home delivery. In addition to that, if I'm Walmart or Target, definitely I think all of these brick and mortar, traditional brick and mortar are taking advantage of that and offering these as a pickup options to the customer, to the online customers. And they are incentivized that that typically these are a free pickup there is no cost associated to go there. And for these brick and mortar it's an opportunity to have a customer there. So it's at the end an opportunity of a new sale. Yeah, so let's move to the, yeah, to the next one. Yeah. The next, I think it's the next question. Yes, to the next question, perfect. So I want to ask you, which areas of the design of supply chains do you think that will be impacted by the growth of e-commerce, mobile commerce that we have been discussing in this live event? So let's see your answer about that. There are different areas. And what they want to do here is to connect with the contents we are reviewing SC2X. So at the end, what they want to highlight is how SC2X supply chain design can help you and help retailers to compete in these new challenges and in this only channel environment. So let's, the students are now answering this question distribution strategies is one of the areas that you think that this is going to be more impacted I fully and definitely because this is related to the previous question. And the previous question is which channels as a retailer should or as an only channel player should I offer to my customers? And this also connect with the network design models. Correct. Because depending of how many channels I'm going to offer I need to rethink and redesign my network design and think about how many physical distribution centers should I have? How many if fulfillment dedicated centers should I have to meet these requirements? How many tiers should I have an intermediate people before reaching the final consumer? Should I just have one tier and deliver every single thing from the distribution center? Or should I consider as I think Amazon is doing now should I consider my whole food chain of grocery stores to prepare the online order and to deliver from this grocery store because I'm closer to my final online customer. So these are some of the decisions that we are going to review in a C2X and you are going to learn techniques that might help you to help these retailers and these different actors in the supply chain to solve these questions. So let's try to connect now. Yeah, so the most popular one are... The distribution strategies and network design. And network design. Also to add what you were saying Eva is of course network design is a tool that is very helpful to design the only channel strategy. But you were commenting that but not only for forward logistics or forward to move the products from the stores to the customer but also to return. So they need to decide the location of the pickup points and or the collection point in this case. So network design is a tool that definitely will help in these regards. Definitely and it's changing as you highlight not only the forward logistics also the reverse logistics. Have a special... It's a special needs in omni-channel because of the percentage of commercial returns that we are offering. So let's connect with the contents in S2X. So in weeks one and two you are going to have some videos practice program materials related about supply chain network design. Dr. Chris Capples is reviewing these tools. He's applying specifically to solve network design problems. In week three, you will be reviewing production planning. Week four, we review omni-channel. We review distribution strategies in general and we include a bit of omni-channel distribution strategies. So you have some practice problems in order to help retailers to think about the omni-channel distribution strategies. In week seven, Professor Sheffi will review supplier management. So at the end, any challenge that we have in the supply chain might affect all of the actors. Some of these changes might affect more retailers or manufacturers but at the end the supply chain is interconnected and it's a system of different actors related and interconnected. So this also will affect suppliers. This also will affect our relationship with our suppliers because if we need to, at the end, deliver in a fast way, we need to have the product ready to be delivered. So these things are related. So you will review some of the procurement management decisions in week seven. And finally, in week eight and 10, Gene Rice and Jarrod Gansel, both will are your instructors and will review supply chain finance. The main aspects of finance that affect and impact the supply chains. Anything you want to add here? So the only thing I would add to the content is the last week of the last lesson of the course. So I have also a lesson about how to design organizational topics in your supply chain. In your supply chain. So I have one lesson about to explain in this concept and also introduction to the different metrics that you can put in place to measure different initiatives in supply chains. Excellent. So with that, we are happy to receive your questions and go through these questions. So let's see which questions do you have for us? Yes, so we receive a couple of questions. So the first one is related to is related to what you were commenting. And it says in India, Walmart was not alone. They just bought Flipkart in India. Flipkart is a major e-commerce site here. Would you like to discuss the role of supply chain in this? Yes, definitely. So Flipkart is equivalent to Amazon, but in India. Yeah, you're out in India and also Amazon has been struggling to enter in India. So the question is with Flipkart, yes, they are offering, this is also a pure player, pure marketplace, operating there. What I would like to see is how Flipkart is moving and the agreements that Flipkart is planning to do with traditional Greek amortars or maybe pop up stores, these small nano stores that also are located there in order to offer these convenient stores, mom and pop stores as a pickup point for their online customers. And also Flipkart, if I'm not wrong, was also a partner of CTL, a corporate partner. It is. They were involved in actually in a network design problem. Yes, and the Megacity Logistics Lab is working with Flipkart and they are helping them to redesign their last mile delivery strategies in India. So yes, they are a partner of CTL. Okay, so we have more questions not related to the topic that we discussed, to Omnichannel, but I think that maybe worth to answer. So for example, there's the one about Chris, one of our CTAs, and he's asking what advice would we have to someone who's struggling with quantitative content and software tools? What can we say to them? Definitely, so I would say that always review the video and go after the videos through the quick questions, then solve all of the practice problems. And once you have watched the videos, solve quick questions and solve the practice problem, try the graded assignment or try the metronome sum. If you are struggling with quantitative models that might happen because we know we have a variety, a huge variety of learners, some of you have more strong math background, but some of you have not asked this strong math background, but the material we have designed, I think is thinking on a high school math level. So with a high school math level, you should be able to complete and pass and solve every single practice problem and graded assignment. So if after watching the videos carefully, answering the quick questions and solving the practice problem, create your own spreadsheet. And I really encourage you to create your own spreadsheet and struggling with the problem. Go to the forums. If you have any questions and ask any questions you might have, because as I mentioned, your question might be there. So look for your question. Maybe someone posed the question before. If the question is not there, post it there and try to find help from the community teaching assistant from the staff and from your peers. If after that something is not working, you always can reach us through the email. But I think that if you review all of the materials and you create your own spreadsheets, you should be fine to complete and pass a graded assignment. And also we have CTAs that are, I would say expert in Excel and in SAS. So they are willing to answer the question that you might have regarding the software that we use in a C2X. Yeah, because most of the time you are struggling not with the concept, are more struggling with the Excel and the solver and how to solve this using the solver. So yeah, do not hesitate to reach the amazing community of SCX learners that we have. Yeah. Okay, going back to the topic. So Dona is asking about how a cement company can have only channels or only channel strategy if the business is V2V? This is a great question, Dona. And this is happening not only in the cement industry. This is happening also for traditional manufacturers that they typically are the manufacturers, they are selling to the retailers. And it seems that the retailer is the only one that can implement the only channel strategy that they think that for this manufacturers company is also an opportunity to reach the final customer directly. However, there are pros and cons on doing that. The pros is you are going to have direct relationship with the customer. This is always beneficial because you are going to have the first hand information from the customer. This might help you to redesign your product or whichever you have first hand information from them. However, if you typically work in the V2V market, what happens is you are delivering pallets, you are delivering bulk, you are delivering huge quantities instead of delivering itches. To deliver one single product, one single item requires from the distribution center, from the logistics perspective also to have the adequate peaking process in the warehouse, to have the adequate layout in the warehouse and to deal also with the last mile delivery that some of the company are struggling with that. So I can see pros and cons of doing that. I know that some manufacturers are trying, at least testing to sell directly through the marketplace, their products to the final customer and they are dealing and facing these delivering itches versus pallets or big quantities. Okay, thank you Eva. So there's a question about the book. We will have a book in the course that the students can follow. So please refer to week zero. So we posted at least a couple of books that might help you for the different sections for different topics that we covered in NSE2X. So that information is in week zero. Also, we have Noljasi that is asking if one did not complete the first two courses, so SSE0 and SE1X. Is there any material that can be given to assist the student? Yeah, definitely. We have the key concept documents. So at the very beginning, our learners were asking us for a book that you asked now. To be honest, we do not use a single book to prepare our material. We have been using many different sources, many different books. We have used also a lot of our research projects and real experience with companies in order to prepare the problems and the real cases that we are discussing in the courses. So having said that, since many of you were asking for a book, what we did is we prepared the key concept document. The key concept document is intended to compile the relevant concepts that we are reviewing in each of the SEX courses. So for those that are taking SE2X without previously completed and passed zero and one, I will definitely encourage you to review the key concept document for SSE0X and SE1X. And these key concept documents are available in the course handouts. Handouts, correct. Yeah. And also we offer in week zero an overview of SE1X. So we have some lecture videos trying to review a key concept of SE1X. So you also, it's also a chance to take a look to those videos. Yeah. Okay. I think they have one time for one last question. So Ramazan is asking after this course, can I be able to make a material planning and coordinate customer orders? As the answer is, yes. Of course. We have a model about production and planning. So we cover topics such as MPS, material production schedule and also MRP. Okay. So that's basically what you will need to make this a master material planning. And with that, I think, Eva, I want to thank you for joining this, this live event was very insightful. Any last words to our learners? Yeah. Yes, encourage you to take SE2X. If you want to pursue for the certificate, do not forget the deadline and become a verified learner as soon as possible. If you just want to learn about the videos and the network design models, just go through the material. Encourage you to participate in the forums. I think there is, believe me, there is a great community of SE2X learners. So take advantage of that. Have fun, enjoy the course. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you for joining and see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye.