 Hello everyone. My name is José Velázquez. I'm a research scientist at MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics and I'm going to be your host for this welcome webinar for the course edX course, SEM290X, Sustainable Supply Chain Management. And with me is Julia Peterson. Julia. Hi, my name is Julia Peterson. I'm the TA of this course. So if you enroll in the course, I will answer all your questions like technical questions, everything else. Yeah, I'm happy that you're here. Excellent. Thank you, Julia. So let me just explain how it's going to be. I'm going to share a slide deck and presentation that we have prepared to give you an intro about the content of the course. And feel free to just type in the chat any questions, comments you have and we have also with us, well, Julia of course and Camilo. Camilo Mora is going to also be helping in the chat. He's also one of the CTAs. And then let's hope we are able to clarify all your questions and get you also all enrolled to this fascinating course. That is an awesome journey to sustainable supply chains. But let me just start now by sharing the slide deck. So as I said, this is a welcome webinar. And the idea is to give you a little bit of information. Why are we launching this course? What is the context we are living in the corporate world, as well as in different countries, economies and in society. And also what's going to be different topics we are going to be covering here. So hopefully you will find this very interesting and will join us. We will launch this course in just a matter of a couple of weeks. So we are very excited about it. All right, so let me just start with this. So first, as we all know, we are facing difficult time. Just some countries are facing the post pandemic while others are still struggling with the pandemic. We have observed that this is not just something that affected the whole economy, but at the same time created a world crisis for humanity. Many of us have faced difficulties in our home countries. And despite all the efforts we have put into growing and trying to mitigate this impact, we know that the society has changed. And we know also that the conditions have changed. And now we are questioning ourselves whether we should do things differently for the future. What are the things that corporate corporations, corporate world, countries, society is going to face in the next 20, 30 years from now. Now we know that this crisis also brought something good for those that are in the field on supply chain, which is at least we always knew we were relevant. Now everybody knows we are relevant. And that actually has been really interesting because before it was really hard to explain what are we doing here when we are conducting the research or working in companies in the field. But in reality now, the flow of materials, the flow of information, the flow of everything that is happening in the world actually depends entirely on how these global supply chains are built. And we've been struggling a lot to really better understand what is this signaling done by the consumers, how we can better predict the needs of different people and how we can actually better be better prepared in the supply side to really come up with better products and services and design strategies that can be more responsive, more agile and also more aligned with what are the needs and the different uncertainties that are in any almost product and service that now exist in the world. So now we know this is happening. We know also that many of the things that have been discussed in the last two, three years. It was even before, but it was really emphasized, stressed out even more during these years, has to do a lot with the digitization. We know that plenty of organizations started facing different stages of technology adoption to be able to work in this now more virtual interactive world in which we were not able to really touch each other, not the product services in the same way that we were doing before or access to the same type of products and services. And the ways that we are envisioning how supply chains are going to be more competitive in the future has to do a lot with some of these recommendations that are in the books of Professor Sheffi, the director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at MIT, which is the boss of my boss. And he mentioned interesting things related to this topic, how we can achieve in the supply chain more visibility. And this has to do with the fact that many of the products and services are coming from places that we haven't identified yet. And that means these are potential vulnerabilities, not just in terms of risk management, but also in terms of sustainability as we see in a moment. But there is a huge wave happening also with automation that is also bringing more agility, the e-commerce and omnichannel strategies and how all these different domains are shaping the way that we are accessing to products and services in the field of supply chain management. So I'm pretty sure that I'm not saying anything new, but at least I'm trying just to reflect on what makes sense at this stage and what we are doing, what we are doing by launching this sustainability course. Now, when we look at different sources, and in this case I'm just citing the reference of the World Economic Forum in one of the surveys that they launched in 21-22, which is exactly the moment of probably the peak of the pandemic so far. And one of the key questions asked to different practitioners, industry, and also policymakers was related to the most severe risk for the next 10 years. And what we see here is that there are different categories related to economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological. The interesting part here is that we can see just in the top 10, we see five of them are actually related to environmental, which is of course one of the main dimensions on sustainability related to the climate action failure, the extreme weather that we have also faced that also relates to many different humanitarian challenges, the loss in biodiversity and different species that now have gone extinct, as well as also the human environmental damage, also caused by respiratory disease and all this pollution, as well as the crisis in terms of the scarcity in natural resource. Now, this is again related to the topic again that we are living now with the different disruptions and the different challenges we face as the consequence of the pandemic, but it's also something that has been adding up for the last 100 years or more in which we have discovered how these anthropogenic emissions are actually driving climate change and are creating global warming and are actually creating a risk for society and also the economy in the way that we operate. Now, we know this sustainability is a hot topic and just before starting with this, I would like to launch a couple of polls, three questions just to see also what is your perspective on this. So, let me launch the first one. Re-launch. Awesome. Fantastic. So, the question here is, does your company have explicit goals, strategies on sustainability? Now, what we are having here is three options. We have, yes, no, not short. And I'm looking at the results now, 60% of participation so far, 70% now. Everybody's getting excited with this. I will show you in a moment their results. Let me just end the poll, but I want to wait until we have a little bit more participation. Does your company have explicit goals, strategies, etc., on sustainability? All right. So, I'm going to wait until we get the 80% participation and then I will end the poll. All right. Almost there. So, let me finish now and share the results. Okay. So, we have a winner here. More than 60%, 61% says yes, 22% says no, and 70% says not sure. All right. So, that's a little bit expected. Let me ask now another question. So, let me go just to understand what are those type of goals. If so, what dimension of sustainability apart from the economic is your company mostly interested in? And again, I know that there is always discussions on this, which are the correct dimensions, ESG, or others. In this case, I will just leave it in environmental, social, and then over, which mostly relates to people. All right. So, again, I'm going to wait. We have so far 50% of participation and I'm going to wait a little bit more. So far it seems one is winning. So, the question is, if so, what dimension of sustainability apart from the economic is your company mostly interested in? All right. So, I believe I'm going to finish it now so that everybody can see. Share results. Now, you see environmental seems to be the one that companies seem mostly interested in. 67% social 24% and the other 9%. All right. So, it seems that the old environmental sustainability seems to be the most relevant for the companies at least, not necessarily for you or for what is the most relevant. It's more mostly related to what companies are saying. Now, let me ask the last question of this poll and let me launch it now. Does your company or key customers have established clear carbon reduction targets for the next 10, 20, or 30 years? All right. So, we have, again, the same options. Yes, no, not sure. All right. We are getting faster in this one. This is going to be really interesting because it's not that clear as the other one. So, we already saw that the majority has either companies or key customers that are concerned about sustainability. We saw so the environmental sustainability seems to be the most relevant at this stage. And the other is whether the company or a key customer, because we know that there is certain influence that the customers may have in our companies, have established clear carbon reduction targets for the next years. All right. So, we'll finish the poll now. And this is almost a time. Wow. So, 42% said yes, 35% said no, and 22% not sure. All right. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for answering all of this. Well, this just, in a way, emphasizes what I'm saying. We are just living at the moment of an important post-pandemic or pandemic, and different disruptions have caused many challenges to create more awareness about importance of supply chains. And what it seems to be something that is not necessarily related to the economic growth should not be relevant. It seems that, by the way, now, plenty of companies are really paying attention, close attention to sustainability, the majority environmental sustainability, but also social. And we also know that at least in this poll run with those participants in this webinar, half of you are very much aware that you have already carbon targeted in your companies or your key customers, and others said no, others said not sure. Now, what we see also in the news, well, we know that in 2019, Amazon started this climate pledge and started with them signing for a reduction of carbon emissions and a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Now, the interesting part is that already there are 300 companies already across different industries and different countries that have already also signed a climate pledge. And you can see here, some of them are very large from logistics, from consumer package goods, from technology, from social media, companies are making pledges to really reduce their carbon emissions and achieve those either carbon neutral or relevant significant reductions for the next years in hand with their corporate strategies, meaning they need to still be competitive in the business, achieve their business goals, but inside to that, also they are committing to reduce their emissions. Now, when we look at also, you know, in terms of countries, and I got the opportunity to participate in one of the panels here with the Asia Pacific Economic Operation just a couple of weeks in the new supply chain connectivity framework action plan, so it's number three, they actually established five different choke points, they call it, like this bottlenecks that they need to work on to alleviate and create more an improving fluency between economies to be able to achieve different strategies to become not just more competitive, but at the same time also related to sustainability as this fifth priority talks about the lack of understanding on the green supply chain management. What are those practices and how by building better policy, these economies are able to increase pressure for supply chains to become more sustainable. And again, this is another risk that in the course we also discussed from one side, we know that there is a pressure from consumers that can pay more attention to sustainable either products and services, we know that we have different shareholders and investors that are also paying a lot of attention and pressure, we have key customers, but at the same time, we also have policy makers that can also in a moment create policy that can drive a different way we how we operate our supply chains. And of course, these risks are important. And that's why it's key for organizations to start paying more attention to these topics on sustainable supply chains. Now, let me just start talking about the course on sustainable supply chain management. And the first is, this is a course that is inspired on the in-person course that I teach at MIT. This is a graduate course that is being at MIT for 10 years. Different people have worked and collaborated in this one. And still in my case, when I took the lead on this course, I've been still engaging with different people from the industry as well as other colleagues at MIT that I will introduce in a moment to try to build content to introduce students to what are the foundation to build sustainable supply chains. And in this case, the course is an introductory course. It's not intended to be comprehensive, but at least create awareness of different topics, different strategies, how organizations can start moving toward their own carbon targets, but at the same time, by looking at their business goals. And I will show you in a moment. But the first, of course, this course is inspired by the vision of our university, MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that has as a core the vision to solve the problems of humanity. And we love this fragment of our vision. We seek to develop in all the community, the MIT community, the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively and effectively for the betterment of humankind. So for all sustainability, it's a problem of humanity. And that's why we are launching not just the course, but also disseminating all the knowledge that we have acquired in these years by developing research on different topics on sustainable logistics, sustainable supply chains and social sustainability, in sustainable sourcing and different topics that you'll see in a moment. Now, within the MIT, we have the Center for Transportation and Logistics, which is, as you know, our premier center in logistics, the largest center in terms of network with all the scale centers we have in all over the world. And our center has a very clear vision, which is creating supply chain innovation and driving it into practice. This is our mission. We want to focus again to solve the problems of humanity, but we look at this by building innovative research that lands into applications for corporate partners. And this is one way that we see this. We have different dimensions of research, outreach and education, but of course, the foundation of what we do has to do with the research and the connection with the corporate partners and how these feeds are different educational programs. And of course, we have the supply chain management program. We have the micro masters in supply chain management. Some of you probably have already taken some of these courses or our alums in our courses, but our course, ACM290X, is having the same foundation inspired by the same approach of building innovation and disseminating knowledge that will help you become leaders in the field and shape also the topic on sustainable supply chain management in your own organizations. Now, we have different research areas, as you can see, related to technology, innovation, food and retail, humanitarian, last mile, et cetera. And of course, we have areas on sustainability. And in my case, I've been focusing on sustainable logistics for almost 10 years now. But, you know, recently, we have some changes because some of our colleagues have moved to different positions. So I've been overseeing now also the rest of the sustainability efforts at the center. And this is what's going to be also the core. What's the core of the course that we are offering in this ACM290X for all of you. Now, this is just to compare the results of the poll we just ran a moment ago. This is just a screenshot of the different corporate partners at the center. These are our partners that help us, you know, drive the innovation. And many of them sponsor research projects, sponsor thesis caps and projects with their master students. And we've seen a huge increasing wave of type of projects they are now sponsoring related to sustainability, a lot. Actually, in seven years that I've been at MIT is the first time that I've seen so many, probably half of them related to sustainability. Now, in February, January, I was invited to give a presentation to some of the partners to present just a research brief on the different topics we are doing on sustainable logistics. And then I actually started with the same questions I started this webinar. I ask, well, first, does your company have explicit goals, strategies on sustainability? Now, look at the answers. I believe it's a little bit more skewed, but it's still quite similar. The vast majority still is very much aware about the importance of sustainability. So yes, no, I'm not sure. Then I asked the question again, which dimension of sustainability, apart from the economic, and it looks again, quite similar to what you all also responded in these polls. The majority seems to be at this stage mostly interested in environmental, although we know that social is quite relevant. It's probably at this stage not as taking us seriously as environmental, but we know it's very important and creates also more vulnerabilities in the supply chain. So we don't know how it's going to be in the next years. But now the question to the extent of the carbon reduction targets for the next 10, 20 years, 30 years, then here again, we saw similar behavior. In the poll we do, we saw half-half, which is also interesting. But in this case, we saw that actually the majority that we're having, or at least commenting on their corporate strategy, having sustainability criteria there, they also have seen that either their customers or themselves have made a pledge or achieving certain goals for the next 10, 20, 30 years. Now, how to achieve these carbon targets while meeting business goals? And that's the key question. It's not trivial, but of course, important thing is to first be aware that this is what we want to achieve. To just claim that you want to achieve as a company some goals and sustainability, but putting at risk your own business from the economic perspective is not sustainable. So the idea is how we can look at this from a more systemic, comprehensive way in which we can provide solutions that are more holistic and help the company also track their performance in the old criteria and make strategic decisions to that end. And just to do this, I would like just to explain a little bit more about the importance of how the path is built to achieve this carbon goal. And this is actually a chart inspired by a nice conversation having with a PhD student from our center, Jonas, that is also working on these topics on sustainability. And in this, what you see here is in the horizontal axis, you have the years, you know, from today up to 2040, could be 2050, but the different years. And we know we have also in the vertical axis, the CO2 emissions in which we have certain emissions that you have already identified in your current carbon footprinting or your greenhouse gas inventory you have conducted. And what's your target, what you're intending to achieve in the next years. So the idea here is that everybody is very much aware that this has to do with an investment in technology. So we know we want to make an investment in renewable energies, in different equipment, in electric vehicles, or different hydrogen technologies. So we know there is something related to that that is going to help us move material in the supply chain in a more sustainable way. Now, I'm just talking about environmental sustainability in this case. But if we have that moment in which the technology will become more affordable, of course, the discussions between now shippers and carriers is always related to this. From one side, the shippers are pushing the carriers to go for this technology and the carriers are claiming why you are not putting more money or willing to pay more. And this is always usually the elephant in the room in almost any conversation, presentation I'm invited to discuss. Now, the way that companies are seen is that in some of the incentives either by the government or just the economy are going to take this, you're going to achieve this technology that becomes more affordable. And at this stage, you're going to, as a company, start squeezing deficiencies to achieve this reduction of carbon emissions and then achieve your carbon target by either 2040 or whatever is the year you are establishing this goal. Now, it could be that once the technology is more affordable, there is better ways to actually squeeze those efficiencies and becoming very not faster, but at least with less emissions in the path to get to 2040, as a point in which you're going to achieve your carbon target. Now, this works very well. But what we argue is that there are ways in which you can start establishing some quick wins now to start reducing the emissions, even prior to this adoption of technology that is going to happen either when different investments are done. And once you get there for the ability, you're going to probably achieve it even more straight line to be able to achieve this reduction. Now, make no mistake, all of them achieve the same carbon target. But that's why we say the path is more important than the goal because the difference here is first by focusing on this area that only can be achieved by these quick wins that is related to decisions we can make at this stage. If we don't do it, this is going to be a cumulative amount of emissions that is going to definitely have an impact in climate change. And the interesting part is that we tend to discuss more about the carbon target instead of discussing the path that actually makes a whole difference of what's going to be the effect for the environment and in general for society and the planet. Now, how to do it? We just put this into an impact effort chart. And what we argue here is that there are, of course, different efforts we can have. But if those efforts either is little or a lot, only bring a limited impact, we shouldn't waste time on those because the time is really relevant at this stage. It's much more important to focus on those that have high impact. And of course, the one that has the highest is the investment on the equipment that we know this. If we change energy sources, the network, the supply, and we are starting looking at all these investments for the next years, five, 10 years, this is the one that definitely is going to have a significant amount of reduction in the carbon emissions, which in turn is also going to help companies achieve the carbon target. But as I mentioned before, there are something that we call the quick wins, which is related to the decisions in the supply chain. At this stage, this has to do a lot with an example that I also mentioned before, which is when we tend to have problems with certain components. And I use the example of having an organ. For instance, if I have a problem with a kidney, that things got not that I know of. But imagine that there is a problem with a kidney and then you say, well, what's the problem? Well, just have a kidney transplant and then make the kidney even stronger and better so that you never have a problem with your kidney. Well, that's one way to do it. The other way could be that maybe I should stop drinking so much alcohol or maybe I should drink more water or maybe I should do more exercises. So there are certain decisions that are going to drive the performance of a hotspot in the supply chain. And that is what makes the difference. Having a specific warehouse that has high emissions or a specific transportation lane that has high emissions, this might be a consequence of an inventory policy you have in place of a very large problem in the air or with the forecast or could be related to other strategies in sourcing. So things that are related to other parts in the supply chain may actually drive the rest of the hotspots in the supply chain. And that's the secret, not to just identify hotspots but identify what are those causes by looking at the supply chain decisions. And this is something that we emphasize a lot also in this course, not just by looking at what could be an important investment but also looking at what you can do at this time in the organization to really help the company achieve those carbon targets. So now we look at different approaches and we like this chart in which from one side we still like the idea of squeezing for efficiencies in the supply chain and logistics. We look at examples using data analytics, machine learning, different type of mapping and measurements so that we can really find optimized operations in the supply chain that can balance both business goals as field rate, service level, minimization of cost at the same time also reduction in carbon emissions. So we translate many of these things we are discussing into the operational level and that's something again organizations in our experience have struggled with because while they have these corporate strategies with sustainability, when we discuss with either supply chain planners or schedulers or people that are making decisions, they don't know what exactly is the impact of their decisions in these strategies and there are ways to really build this type of metrics to help those people in the organization to achieve those. So we're in favor of that but at the same time we are also in favor of growing the supply capacity by looking at also the customer and consumer side. And this is also again another part that is very unique in our course. We look at how we can involve consumers and customers into our sustainability strategies and by doing this we can grow the capacity of the way that we supply in really large amount and the savings are many times as significant and if the company had made some investments in the equipment as big as that. But again at this stage many customers, consumers get access to products and services and they have no idea what is their footprint of that decision and whether a different way in their behavior may can actually help the company achieve those sustainability strategies. So the content now enough of all these conversations I hope that you get a sense of the things that we're going to be discussing I think we're going to be doing but in general we have a course as I said this is a half term course at MIT which means it's only seven weeks it's a short course but also deep in content is going to run from November 9th to January 17th next year and we have seven main modules we start with introduction to sustainable supply chains in which we discuss some of the basic concepts as well as the business implications we continue with the environmental hotspots which is key you get what you measure so we are going to discuss different measurements you're going to do exercises of conducting some carbon footprinting in supply chains and using that information to establish some decisions then we're going to spend a couple of modules three and four to discuss topics on sustainable logistics and this is mainly my research expertise discussing routing, transportation, network design a fleet composition and also the topic of involving consumers into this decision making then later we are going to move to sustainable sourcing and for this one I'm going to invite my colleague Dr. Dave Correll the lead of the sustainability survey that we have launched and probably some of you have already responded it or at least seen the amazing insights that he has built with this interesting approach and he's also an expert on procurement so he's going to come and discuss with all some of these topics on sustainable sourcing and I'm going to complement with something related to green inventory strategies then later we have in week six Eva Ponce Dr. Eva Ponce which is the executive director of the MicroMasters in supply chain management as well as the lead on omni-channel distribution strategies at the center and she's going to discuss the topic of circular supply chains as you know this is a key topic very fashionable all the discussions of the closed loop supply chains reverse logistics she's been doing research on this for more than 10 years and he's going to come and share some of these insights also related to the e-commerce context and last but not least the topic in last week of improving the social performance in supply chains this is delivered by our colleague Dr. Alexis Bateman which is also a research affiliate at the center as well as also a lead practitioner in Amazon Web Services and she's going to she actually was the director of sustainable supply chains and I have to say the mastermind behind the course which she tried to launch and then later I heritated from her and I'm very happy that she still keeps the engagement with us and is going to deliver this topic that also involves plenty of the research she has conducted for the last 10 years also at the center so this is the plan used to give you some screenshots of the things we are going to use lightboard and discuss some of these ideas we are going to also use some simulators in which you are going to play to make decisions you know in the either monthly or weekly basis and we are going to make comparisons with the rest of the of the class to also see what is your performance in achieving carbon targets but at the same time keeping fuel rate and keeping also cost low we also are going to have Dave Correll as I said discussing this sustainable sourcing and different strategies and also Eva in order circular circular circular supply chains as I said we also have Alexis as I said discussing responsible supply chains which by the way she also led that initiative at the center and combining all these you know we are intending to provide really an amazing learning experience for all of you that enrolled to the course so these are the instructors that are going to be with you I'm Jose Velázquez as I said research scientist and I'm the course lead but also my colleagues Alexis Bateman Dave Correll Eva Ponce that are going to be close teaching also with you with me and teaching you and also helping in this interaction with all of you we also have the sign up of our community teaching assistants team of eight brilliant students that also took my class in some moment in person class got an A or an A plus and they are also willing lead practitioners in different field that are going to be taking part of their forum discussions and if they are also taking this call deeply grateful with all of you for doing this and last of course as I said Yulia Peterson that already introduced herself she's being also instrumental in all this work for the course helping a lot in following up and planning all the deliveries that we have for this interesting course and we are getting ready she's going to be your TA and myself also taking part of all these discussions but with that I say thank you if you are interested please either in the chat I'm sure we already have shared or no we are going to be sharing the course link so that you can enroll if you haven't done and you can also reach out to us in our email personal emails and also sustainable.mit.edu which is the website of our research lab and that's all I have to say and now we are ready to answer some questions or comments that you may have thank you so much for your attention all right so Yulia if you see any comments in the chat please let me know and then we can start having fun yeah so we have a few questions in our Q&A section so the question is is carbon neutral good enough shouldn't they be pledging to achieve net zero? Of course this is an interesting question ideally of course we want organizations to be pure carbon neutral meaning avoiding as much as possible the carbon offsets which is probably as you know a big discussion at the moment so at this stage without carbon offsets it's practically impossible to really achieve a net zero right this is the reality because we don't have necessarily the technology and almost any economic activity has in a way certain impact for the environment but that doesn't mean that that goal should be erased that this should be a name a long name but in the meantime what we should probably try to enforce with the organization is that they should achieve as much reduction as possible and try to minimize the amount of carbon ups that they have in their strategies but this is an interesting point and I believe of course once you are also in your company or yourself now it's important that you keep that conviction to really drive a real change to really help environment and society awesome I hope I'll cover that question we have another question from Igor who will be the course as pre-required for SCM blended program not yet right now there is no evidence that that's going to happen of course I've been discussing with with both Eva Ponce and also Chris Caplis the executive director of the center about this idea but so far the course is a site even though it's inspired by the content in the micro masters and different courses it's not part of the micro masters and at this stage we don't see when this is going to be the case but that doesn't mean that the course is not as relevant it's as relevant as the course is also part of the key electives for the master's program in supply chain management and if you are a blended hopefully you will take the course also in person awesome we have another question from Scott he asked when considering emissions intensity we must consider weight not just distance like a typical MILP when calculating routing will this course provide instruction on how to do this modeling ah this is actually something we cover very comprehensively definitely I am against the idea of just arguing that the reduction of miles or reduction of distance implies reduction of zero to emissions in fact in the class I always make this joke that all the students should repeat themselves you know before starting the class in green logistics shorter distance does not necessarily mean less zero to emissions I'm going to say repeat it again if you go for a date if you are with your family just repeat it right because this is true as you are just pointing out Scott weight matters a lot topographic conditions of the road also matters speed matters so when you combine all these conditions you may actually have plenty of routes in which you may actually have increase in the distance but actually achieve reductions of fuel consumption and zero to emissions and we definitely look at these models we show some of the modeling behind scenes but as I said before this is an introductory course you may get knowledge sufficient knowledge to really follow up on this and look for the right references understand what are the main drivers and if you are already good in analytics it's an optimization it's very likely you will be able to make implementations in your company but this is something I definitely spent sufficient amount of time to really discuss these insights thank you for bringing this up thanks is the course going to be self-paced or scheduled on weekly deadlines it's going to be scheduled so far we are not going to go on demand like the SCRX so we'll see it as the first time we are launching it so we want to really stay close and we know that sorry I know that in the course we are going to also cross some some festivities and we are going to also be mindful of that and provide some some weeks for you to work but we are going to stay very close and our idea is that we can keep a very open interaction and follow up with all the all the all the students that that enroll thank you for that question um another question from Jorge Moreno he asks I saw sorry I'm not so sure how to pronounce it correctly are you kind of a look in your okay you said Jorge Moreno I think so yeah ah nice she's a student who was a former student of mine yeah go ahead oh okay that makes sense um he asks I saw Kinexis as a sponsor what examples of sustainability targets involvement can software companies have ah what was the question that Kinexis is sponsoring I didn't get the question yes I saw Kinexis as a sponsor what examples of sustainability targets involvement can software companies have ah there are plenty of examples but probably Jorge you it would like to know that with Kinexis we are we are also talking very closely to to bring some different ideas related to translating those sustainability strategies into the planning level we are interested in helping those that are doing demand planning inventory planning to really get information about how their decisions affect their metrics on on on sustainability how they either contribute or not and those decisions in general are going to really drive a lot of behavior at least this is what we are expecting so we are actually having a plenty of conversations Kinexis is a great partner and yeah we look forward to seeing this this collaboration but thank you for your question Jorge nice to to say hi to you awesome we have another question from Jean François I think it's a French name I hope I pronounced it the correct way and I can maybe even answer that one it is what is the deadline to enroll to the verified track of the course Jorge do you mind if I answer that question please Julia this is all you so it's the 30th of November so the first week you won't have any like deadlines any homework and then the second and the third week you have lectures and after the second week you can enroll on the verified tracks you can have a look at the lectures first and roll free and if you like it you can enroll to the verified track yeah I hope that answers that question we have another question from Oscar it's does the course covers the different standards to do a greenhouse gas emissions inventories is some of them right it's a good a good question but some of them as you know there are plenty of different standards so we when we do for instance the exercise of the carbon footprinting and the supply chain which we are looking at cases study written by a professor El Solivetti from MIT and also Dr. Edgar Blanco what we do is that we look at the different entities in a supply chain that is having operations in Asia in the US and the idea is to by using the greenhouse gas protocol we teach how to do this carbon footprinting now once we look at that once we are discussing the sustainable transportation we spent a little bit more time discussing other standards for instance we we compare GLEC framework which is you know the the most widely used transportation methodology to estimate emissions also with the emission factors from the greenhouse gas protocol we may use also DEFRA we also use NTM from Europe and the idea is to to discuss how the accuracy of these estimations may may actually drive a correct or wrong supply chain management decision so we spend time on that and we make some recommendations but as I said just to discuss exactly how you're going to implement all of this with following completely a standard it might be a little bit beyond the scope but again with that topic it's very likely that the participant will be able to to explore that on their own awesome thanks Oswey another question from Teddy I think he has also the MicroMasters in SCM he asks the concept of sustainability SCM and the sustainable SCM report is the same that is used in the course question mark thanks the sustainability survey is not that he's having a specific as far as I understand right it's not that will probably kill me but as far as I understand it's more like getting the insights from the practitioners what do they understand by looking at the definition of sustainability right so this is more that rather than saying we know what is the right definition so the way that we see it in the course is that we embrace all the definitions particularly what we do is we focus more on the actions as we said you know in our timeline of the course we try to avoid the conversation whether this is a pure you know a strong sustainability approach for a company or a weak sustainability or whether the company is having this sustainability as a business strategy or is more like you know part of their essence in their culture we discuss these things to create awareness that this exists but we immediately move to to the majority of the organizations that are facing the problem of saying okay whether I believe in this or not now I'm here I have a carbon target I have a a challenge now I need to do something about it now we we embrace the definition of sustainability even though we spend most of the time discussing environmental sustainability and the reason is because the same as in the surveys it seems the one that companies are mostly interested in at this stage but we also spend time on social you know particularly with our expert on this Alexis Bateman and the economic side is always in the side of all the discussions so in a way we are keeping you know a general definition of sustainability in the course that this is pretty much practice oriented and this is how we we wanted to keep it so hopefully this answers your question and hopefully you feel excited to to join us perfect we have a lot more questions so let's go on with those a question from Mohammed I'm not totally sure if I understand it right I hope also you understand it it's how are my measuring progress how are your measuring pro progress yes I'm not so sure maybe Mohammed means how the progress and the course is like measured well yeah I mean yours I don't know but the ones that we teach we try to we try as I said before we try to provide different approaches to to compare what is the impact of selecting different techniques to measure emissions and how those drive different supply chain management and logistics decisions so this is a a core discussion in the course because we really believe that whenever possible a company should focus on very detailed approaches to get those estimations awesome thanks I think that was the correct answer because we got a thumbs up awesome awesome thank you Mohammed cool so Carlos asks how does climate change impact agricultural supply chains well you know I will not pretend to be the expert on that on that question Carlos I am sure that Dave Correll probably is the right person to answer that question but of course the answer is there is a lot of impact a lot of impact into mainly all the entities in supply chain and particularly in extraction like agriculture it matters it matters a lot but I I will not venture to give you a more discussion and that invite you to join the course and also participating in those discussions in our discussion forums once we are there and Dave Correll that discusses a lot of sustainable sourcing will probably spend more time answering those questions perfect so Rui says as you said the path is more important than the goal my perception is that most companies are currently just declaring interesting strategic plans but don't have a concrete plan the program will cover how to convince the decision people to go beyond the nice declarations and yeah ah you know I'm very much aware with you on this one right even though I believe there are some companies that definitely have invested taking the time to really build interesting plans but I believe this is honestly a key question at this stage at least in my experience when I've been discussing with both you know companies and both in the CPGs logistics as well as consulting companies the challenge is okay we've done some exercises in estimating our carbon emissions we already identified clear hot spots so we have already implemented some strategies that we know are going to help immediately but then from there to save now I need to get in 2040 or 2050 the carbon neutral the pad is still very very strange how are you going to do it what are the investments in which moment what initiatives so those questions are still in the place and companies do not know it and our intention is to is to help them reflect on this by looking also at the framework that I was discussing today which is focus on this investment but spend time also looking at what you can do at these current decisions now the feeling that I get is that they they don't want to make in general investments that would jeopardize also their economic competitiveness right we want to make sure that by investing they still are going to be able to deliver and being profitable that's that's the main at least approach we used to discuss and I try to convince them to embrace it so the way to do it is that we acknowledge that that's the approach and we look at any decision that we are making any recommendation that we are making always looking at the side what is the economic impact as well the impact in the in the in the in the cos minimization as well as the service how much these decisions may or not affect or capability to serve the customers with the standards times and quantities that they are used to and again how we can balance all of these and we use examples in almost anything in consolidation strategies in routing in inventory planning so all those decisions in this course we are going to play with that and create that awareness and that's mostly our idea that you are you'll become familiar with these tools and also conscious that this is an opportunity for organizations to really embrace this in a in a realistic way in which they can achieve those goals and at the same time looking at the business expectations awesome thanks for this way so Jean Francois ask another question thanks for being so active Jean Francois he asks does the course address the types of cooperation with non-business stakeholders like NGOs to improve the supply chain sustainability yeah I wish I could tell you that that's the case the reality is that we mention it right so we discuss about the importance of the NGOs and how they also may drive plenty of behavior but we you know they we don't do particular how to say the differentiation between the type of content we develop based on these NGOs except for one project that for instance we discuss at least an illustration of the green network design because we work on a capstone project just last class with with UNICEF in Zimbabwe in Africa it was actually sponsored by a former student Yuto and also done by a couple of brilliant students team and and Karim and the idea was to to do a distribution strategy to deliver particular goods that were needed in Zimbabwe but again the approach didn't vary that much because mainly was related to how to build this network to achieve certain reduction of emissions by keeping the service level of this network so we we treated the NGO as if it was any other organization but at least we created the awareness unfortunately we do not spend we do not have so much time to really discuss much more than that perfect thanks Josué so unfortunately the time is almost up so if you have more time we can still stay in here or we can finish Josué what do you prefer? No I would be happy to at least take five minutes more right and then if you have more questions what we're going to do is we are going to take the chat and try to answer you but if you can reach out to us maybe we can write some of our emails in the chat so that they can reach out to us and make sure that did you get your answers because we really want want you to to help you and decide to join us in this in this fascinating course awesome so if you want to stay everyone is welcome to stay we will answer a few more questions but I will write my email address in here so if you have any more questions I'm happy to answer them yeah so this is my email address just message me and I have a few more questions to go okay so another one is is it actually possible to assess accurately the final comfort print of a product or a service when it should require to get to get the visibility of all the upstream chain beginning from raw material industries oh that was a very comprehensive question and I believe it was a little bit too fast for me to capture everything but I can tell you I can tell you that yeah we also mentioned the product footprint but this is not a course on life cycle assessment all right so we do not do that exercise because that will require probably a different type of of course like industrial ecology in that regard and so this at least what we do is what we mentioned the the existence of this product footprint but what we do is discuss more the what we call the corporate footprint is more what are the missions associated with the organizations and the supply chains operating with those products and services so this is a slightly different as you can see because the other is something that in a manner is a little bit fixed because this is the life cycle because of the materials and how this is extracted and how this is moved and there's a discussion on functional units in this case it's more about how you are deciding in supply chain management your decisions on transportation planning inventory production and those things are the ones that we are going to assess what are the environmental impacts or sustainability impacts in the in in those decisions but we mentioned that and of course there are other courses in life cycle assessment that you can also go but hopefully you find also that the corporate footprint matters a lot particularly when you are looking at achieving those carbon targets for the next years awesome so you're seeing as meeting targets is important but setting the right emissions target is even more critical are companies able to measure their emissions accurately are they able to connect those measurements to business decisions oh my goodness this is brilliant questions so the first one I will say it's arguable not the case right we don't know because it depends a lot on this discussion we are saying what is the right methodology to estimate emissions right the important thing at the end the way that we see it is to keep consistency what we have observed and we discuss a lot in the course is that at the corporate level as an organization at the corporate level many of the methodologies provide similar estimations of emissions so that that means doesn't matter how accurate it is in the aggregate level you usually get it right or missed or errors of 5% but when you are going to assign these to a logistics business supply chain management decision this is when it makes the whole difference because those fluctuations that exist for the error become really relevant and can actually drive a completely different decision so it matters a lot in the in the tactical and operational level to really look for the most detailed approach to actually align this with the business decision now at this stage I know that some organizations have started to do this but this is still a little bit more in the in the first steps the important thing is that we develop part of those research output and we intend to disseminate this through the course to help organizations or practitioners like yourself to learn how to really use that information to to make better decisions that will account for this for this impact so this is part of the content and the other is part of the discussion we are going to also have awesome we have another question from Rishi I think I can maybe the last one yeah yes it's lectures would have recommended readings and white papers and yes after each lecture and even before we have listed recommended readings that you have to read and also some that you wouldn't have to read that are just interesting like additional readings so yeah we have a lot of awesome so I think as I said the time is up as I said you can send me all your questions and I'm really happy maybe to see you again I guess fantastic well thank you so much Julia thank you so much everyone for attending and as Julia said we look forward to having you in our virtual class thank you so much and have a great day bye thank you bye