 Good morning global supply chainers or actually could be any time in the world for you guys. Good morning for me But thank you guys so much for joining. This will be our final live event of the course And we're really lucky to have a really seasoned industry expert with us to join us. So Procter and Gamble has been a longtime strategic partner to the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. We have done Projects together ranging from diapers to palm oil to hosting dozens of students We've partnered in every way you can think of so very close and strategic partner and mr. Andrew Byer has been a key part of that So I just want to give a quick background to himself And of course I'll let him introduce himself, but he's been that supply network operations leader with Procter and Gamble He has over 30 years of experience in supply chains So definitely very seasoned in supply chain across positions He's he's worked primarily in logistics and supply network operations in the haircare business He spent 12 years in Asia and is now located in Cincinnati with the supply network operations and he has served he is responsible for service levels inventory capacity planning Business planning innovation delivery and pretty much a lot of things under the sun so he's really kind of a cross-functional leader orchestrating different components of R&D marketing finance Customer business development and of course the consumers very lucky to have him here today. So I'm gonna let him Say a few words about himself and then we're gonna dive into a few questions that I prepared But of course, you know the very interesting thing is also for the questions that you guys have So as we're starting to get started here, please start thinking about some questions that you might want to ask him So hi Andrew. Thank you guys. Thank you so much for joining us. Can you just give a few words about yourself before we get started? So Alexis, let me check. Can you hear me? Yes, we can perfect Well, Alexis said good morning from West Coast time. Good afternoon from Cincinnati time and good morning. Good evening Wherever you are. I it's my absolute pleasure to be here talking with you today Pete as Alexis mentioned P&G is a strategic partner for MIT Center for Transportation Logistics and we Really support what they do and they've been a major support to our business. I Have I'm looking forward to talking with you. I have a lot of experience in the supply chain in a lot of different consumer products group CPG Context so if I give you answers to questions, they are going to be in a CPG context, which is, you know, not the same thing as heavy equipment and lumber but Just keep that in mind as I respond. It'll be in a CPG context I've also had the the privilege and the pleasure of working in other parts of the world I was based in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore for a aggregate of 12 years and I've been in global supply chain roles For probably the last 10 years so working with all parts of the world and have some familiarity with Supply chain dynamics in each region. So that that's me in my background Great. Great. Thanks so much Andrew. So just to kind of Give an idea for students who are really coming some are you know, we have a range of students from highly expert, you know Highly expert to kind of novice So I just wanted to wonder How did you come into supply chain management? Was that sort of your your your childhood dream or was it something you fell into? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, I could tell you it was not my childhood dream because the honestly the the development and Mature the maturation of supply chain management is really Mushroomed over the past two decades and I've got three plus decades in the business I was hired off campus by P&G P&G primarily hires at entry level And then I have just had a progression of roles and I found it fascinating Constantly stimulating constantly changing constantly challenging and you can see your contribution to the business and You know, I mentioned the past two decades the prominence of the supply chain management Impact to a business has grown as costs Become more important as consumer expectations get increasingly higher The competitive difference tends to be not only your product But also your ability to deliver and execute against the promise you may have with your consumers So the supply chain is an area of competitive advantage or potential competitive advantage And I've just found it fascinating. I've stayed in it Great great. No, that's Good good background. Thanks so much. So another question sort of broadly before we dive into a few more specific questions How do you think the supply chain management role has changed over the last 20 plus years? Since you've really seen it over, you know over that time period Sure sure I just mentioned it's become a competitive advantage When I first started working in the supply chain and you know for people who are new to it This is going to seem like dinosaurs, but it was Necessary element to beat in business. You had to deliver You know, you had to make And deliver your products it is now considered a competitive advantage the cost the speed the quality which you can Make and deliver your products is something that separates companies There's some other things that I would think about The financial element of a supply chain the the way you can influence your cost and your use of cash becomes more and more Important to businesses. I mean if you're following the news companies are going out of business companies are going bankrupt there are winners and losers and The companies with the best supply chains tend to show up on the winner side of the ledger So it becomes an area of competitive advantage The other thing that I think has been going on the past 20 years And I think it's going to continue to accelerate is the impact of digital tools and big data and information On running a supply chain effectively We have more information available the impact of time It's both service to satisfy or it's also cash tied up your ability to respond faster using tools That's going to make a huge difference It's been growing over the past two decades and I would consider I would expect it's going to continue to be a major factor in the top supply chains Hey, yeah, no, absolutely this the information Management components a big one and we'll definitely be touching that quite substantially in our next course Se4x where we talk about technology and systems. So thanks for that that clear segue So just to kind of talk about some of the topics we've covered in this course I was just wondering, you know, obviously Procter and Gamble is a massive company with global touch and Wondering if you could talk a little bit about how Procter and Gamble deals with complexity and global supply chains. I Would say it all starts with our supply chain design The supply chain needs to be set up for the business need you have the global You know when you deal with a global supply chain, you're dealing with multiple countries by definition and those countries are not static I mean if you're just reading the the headlines in the newspapers these days trade arrangements are not static So the challenge with a global supply chain is not just the supply chain design of setting it up Well, but in the dynamics of today's world, it's operating it when there's going to be continuous changes It could be The tariffs and duties change it could be ease or difficulty in trading partners it could be you know, we saw Major carriers have some financial difficulties We've seen port strikes the ability to do business on a global supply chain That might be a little different if you're sourcing your materials Manufacturing and delivering locally there might be some different challenges, but again I would say a strong supply chain design understanding the business need that your supply chain is fulfilling and The ability to not to monitor your supply chain and keep up with the changes that might impact it Absolutely great. Yeah. No, that's great I was just thinking is there a challenge that you could cite that you have encountered managing global supply chains or An example that you've run into in your experience Um You know, I mentioned in a second ago port strikes and ocean carriers bankruptcy I might give you a more where we use global supply chains to build our business You know, we wanted to be Importing a lot of business into Japan and the port the steamship lines tended to go to the ports in You know Tokyo Yokohama. We wanted to actually Have more deliveries on the western side of George trans transit through the country Speed not having to circle around the country to get to the east side and we had to work with our partners to get, you know lines and delivery slots there it It was a challenge. It didn't that supply chain Connection didn't exist when we started but when we were done it did I would use that as example of Global supply chains you have to ask yourself what could be true not what is true today and then work to Ensure the supply chain is meeting our business your business needs in that case for us We did not want to lose the extra time of sailing around the islands of Japan just to get to the eastern ports. We Would prefer to deliver to a western location Right. Great. No, that's a great example. Thanks a lot It just sort of popping into some of the other topics we've Discussing this course and I'm we're getting a flood of questions I'm just gonna ask you a couple more and then we'll go right to student questions But I was just thinking you know as you're facing some of these global supply chain challenges, you know, what how do you? select and implement some of risk mitigation strategy And and to identify that risk and manage it when it comes up so, you know risk mitigation is a fascinating subject because some risks are plannable and You can look at what are our critical materials? What are the materials where? You really do potentially face the the biggest risk limited supply base scarce raw materials But you have other challenges in some markets right now transportation is actually a risk the ability to secure the right transportation you need including temperature protected Containers or or carriage So for us we look at the critical materials We look at things that we can control like pre-qualifying alternate suppliers Flexibility in our feedstocks or formula cards where we might be able to substitute Critical materials we look at In our supply base maybe having awards of to multiple suppliers, so we've got we're not Limiting our putting all our risk on one supplier So there are a few strategies then there are the surprise risk, right? If you're I'm in the US if you're in the US We had a pretty bad hurricane season at the later part of 2017 and it really challenged any one supply chain if you were dealing with the Southeast the Southwest of the US which is a lot of the you know, it produces a lot of the petrochemicals and a lot of raw materials come from those regions and That where we put a lot of emphasis on digital tools that can help us assess understand and even In some cases pre-assess pre-analyze what might happen based on the track of the hurricane or the potential impact of the hurricane to just enable us to respond faster, so Answering your question part of it is the things you can control and put in measures up front ahead of time and there other is boosting your response capabilities Sure, absolutely. No, great. That's a great example, too. Thanks So I'm going to just ask you one more question. I'm gonna dive right into Student questions, so you know a personal topic personal topic that you know very well No In terms of sustainability, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you see What are the major future issues that you see emerging as related to sustainability and supply chains and Kind of on top of that. How do you think you know our supply chain students can prepare themselves for these emerging issues? Okay, great. I love this question as you know I mentioned earlier all my responses would be in a CPG industry context We know our consumers really care about the Sustainability and also the overall corporate Citizenship of the company they're buying their products from so it's important for us But our employees also live in the communities where they work And we're all citizens of the planet, so Sustainability is very important for many reasons to us and to me personally Some of the challenges in the supply chain. I think consumer expectations of The citizenship or the sustainability performance of the manufacturers they buy products from the ability to Understand that when they make their purchase decisions So the ability to put information online or on the package that helps the consumer know the the steps and the lengths of And actually the achievements a company has in the area of sustainability We're also looking for ways where we can drive environmental environmental environmental sustainability in ways that it's easier for people to understand so Actually as Alexis knows we've been talking to MIT about how we might be able to get industry standard carbon emissions tied to products because their formulas today, but It's it's quite complex and not necessarily something that is easy for students or sorry consumers to understand When they're trying to make a purchase decision So the challenges are actually being sustainable operating that way and also doing it in a way that it's Measurable and claimable so your employees know it your shareholders know it your consumers know it, right? Absolutely, I think that's such an important kind of perspective in terms of the the challenge of you know Actually doing the supply chain processes along with how do we actually communicate to that to the consumers? So two extremely hard challenges and one that I know Procter & Gamble is really working hard on Thanks for that. So we got a we got a list of student questions in so I feel it's time to go to those So Marina wants to ask What is in in your experience the Best way to manage inventory efficiently Sorry, the best way to manage inventory at then I got a glitch efficiently Just the best way to manage inventory. Yep There are a couple of strategies that I would talk about the first is Wherever you can use in so simple truisms wherever you can use information To substitute for in inventory. I would do that. Can you get advance orders from your customers? Can you get advanced demand signals? Can you understand more about? shipping schedules that allow you to To look at things, you know, and I mean shipping schedules may sound Kind of a pedestrian example, but we had some MIT Master students do a thesis for us once and they concluded a lot of our work on getting to much faster cycle inventory wouldn't have that big an impact because we were producing in a country and The boat sailed once a week So anything we tried to do to a short cycle less than once a week really wasn't making a difference because the shipping would be the same Which was a very helpful conclusion for us to understand Other other points about inventory that I would tell you is the more discreet you make inventory So specific Language specific regulatory The less uses you have for it. So if you can postpone the Final product keep it in raw materials keep it in intermediates But once you package it it becomes very discreet and you're limited to which demand it could serve the other element is Staging inventory closest to the point of use Which again it does two things it takes time out of your system Which time is usually inventory the second thing a lot of the function of inventory is covering for variability The closer you are to the point of demand the faster you can respond to variability the less inventory you have to carry for variability So a couple of general truisms that I would tell you About managing inventory, but I would also say those conceptually have not changed Over the past 10 to 15 years with the exception of the ability digitally maybe to get more advanced demand information That might help you make smarter choices Right great. No, those are great great insight. Thanks So next question comes from William Casper So he wants to kind of take a little to div it here or pivot here considering the importance of analytics and supply chain automation What recommendation recommendations do you have for engineering cyber resiliency into the supply chain? That's a great one. I mean if you're reading the headlines of the newspapers Or on website cyber attacks Are a big deal and it's you know, whether you're a supply chain or you're a power grid You have to take care to protect your data. So I would say any company needs to be looking at It's not just your supply chain, but for example, can we bill our customers? All right, can we get our invoices out? Can we get collections in without any disruption? so companies should be and Generally are taking cybersecurity seriously and building in measures that prevent intrusion The challenge here though is the bar is constantly rising right the bad guys the cyber attackers I'm just I'm calling the bad guys, but they are cyber attackers. They are getting smarter cleverer So, you know, kind of I said the challenge with a global supply chain is that it's not static that it's constantly changing the same thing with cyber security You've got to constantly be looking at our are we at the the best level possible? Are there new developments? That would help us or are there new? Cyber attacks out there that we haven't secured our data and our operations from it in a supply chain context Cyber attacks can hurt you in many ways You know the ability for your your controller systems in your operations to run Right the access to the master data in your corporate ERP system The ability to communicate with your customers and suppliers electronically those are areas where you could get disrupted if you don't have a good cyber security program Right. No, that's great. Great. Thanks for that kind of on that same vein Not really on the same vein but sort of on the the data management data information side as she wants to know You know, obviously the impact of blockchain and financial services You know given your perspective in the from Procter and Gamble in the supply chain How do you think blockchain technology can provide a competitive edge in supply chain visibility in other parts? I can honestly say we are Waiting and sampling what blockchain might be able to do There is a lot of talk in this area. We are really trying to see Where it is a winning business proposition by winning, you know, it's it's providing a service That's of use and it's affordable I Can just tell you that this area is heavily under development if someone tells you they know the answer here They probably are over-talking I Mean we watch we study it's a personal area of fascination for me But It's under development The use case proven use cases are quite limited Yes, no, that's that's very true. We're also in this space of just learning about it. That's totally in that same space So Emily Emilio, excuse me Emilio One was wondering Basically, can you describe ten? You know, what are your top ten key performance indicators? And why are they relevant for your position? Are you have something you could speak to? Yeah, Emilio? That'll be a challenge. I'd have to start writing them down if it's ten. Let me go to the All right a handful Yeah, so we are in png we're always looking for increasing Shareholder value and or shareholder return and you can grow sales and your supply chain can help you grow sales you can Use your cash more wisely your supply chain can surely help you use cash more wisely and you can You can grow your margins and which is cost in the supply chain context and the supply chain can help you in that area so That would be from a why does a company think about and invest in and and operate a top supply chain it because they can help Us grow our our top line sales. They can help us with our costs. They can help us with our asset efficiency or our use of cash Beyond that service is really important for a supply chain Your consumers expect Your customers and consumers expect to get what they ordered when they want it and those the demands are constantly going up People are looking for more and more responsiveness Expectations are growing up a supply chain needs to provide the service that your consumers and your customers expect It also needs to ensure quality In our business if you don't have quality you're really Not gonna have a viable proposition for long people expect The quality that they pay for your supply chain needs to ensure they're getting the quality and Then the supply chain for the company needs to operate at the right cost structure To achieve your financial goals and objectives including you know Money available for research and development money available to pay the bills money available to return to the shareholder So your supply chain helps you with a lot a lot of those to service And some of the cost metrics what your gross margin is what your inventory is and then lots of Submetrics within that that help you on understand how you're performing against things like inventory or service Probably rather than a top 10 list those are be the big categories Different industries will probably look at things slightly differently But in our our business, that's the way we're looking at it. Sure. I hope I answered your question. Okay No, that sounded great. I mean hopefully Amelia was happy with it, but it sounded great To me so kind of on a new emerging frontier You know, well, I would I guess I wouldn't call it new anymore, but how is PG looking at e-commerce? You know, what is the supply chain strategy? You guys are implementing or can you talk a little bit about your transition to e-commerce? Kareem asked this well Okay The Kareem e-commerce is certainly becoming a bigger and bigger factor in Particularly in CPG, but in many industries People like the convenience of being able to order wherever they are We're wherever they want as well as the access to more information that might be available then Picking up a package off the shelf. So I mentioned earlier You know, you can look online and also see like a lot of the sustainability information From a manufacturer on the specific product that you're thinking about buying or comparing against other products e-commerce supply chains Do put some unique challenges on a shipper because the first of all, there's different handling systems You have to be prepared for handling and you know, you're not shipping in a protected case of products where you've got something surrounding the products that you've stress tested your shipping in units and each is in Not necessarily sure exactly how they're being packaged So you have to make sure for in our business. We have to make sure there are no leakers And no broken packages No one wants to open a package where it's it's leaked And even putting it in a bag inside a box isn't satisfactory because no one wants to open a bag That's got leakage all over a package So it creates new challenges to manage Shipping and maybe smaller units and different handling systems It also is a different Challenge in terms of the demand flow the demand signals and we're having to use methods like social media mining and things like that that might spark trends and then That those trends materialize in a lot of online ordering Those would probably be the primary ways that e-commerce at this point is Impacting our supply chains. The other thing we know is it's likely to continue growing and likely We're going to continue to see disruptions in this area because it's continuing to evolve You know areas of just sorry. Let me finish one other point area areas of disruption include How it's delivered right Is it For higher carriers is it? part-time, you know job rabbit type People just doing a few deliveries in there off-hour out of a private car Just it's just an area that's evolving Right. No, that was great. That was a great overview very interesting And one we know is going to continue to grow So going back to the area. I'm always interested in Asan asks How do you address corporate social responsibility in developing countries like Pakistan India Nepal? Sure, I Would say first we Would not differentiate our Corporate social responsibility based on the country we Holder I mentioned earlier P&G or I thought I mentioned P&G looks at this whole area as citizenship and it includes five pillars Ethics and corporate governance community impact diversity inclusion gender equality and environmental sustainability and we Expect our P&G operations to uphold these pillars of citizenship and drive progress in them no matter where you are Now what that may look like is P&G's profile and some of the developing countries may be different When we were opening a facility recently in India We had to work with the local authorities to make sure it was okay for women to work shift work so evenings where local custom would not have allowed that and if we didn't make Arrangement with you the local authorities and make sure it was okay. We would not have been able to achieve our gender equality in the workforce Objectives So I use that as an example where maybe some of the developing markets have some different regulatory environments or regulates, you know local practices that we may have to impact but our general approach to The way the question was phrased was corporate social responsibility in P&G We refer to it as citizenship the way we approach citizenship does not vary based on the geography Where we're operating sure that was great and great example and also in the in the information that I sent To all of you I included Procter and Gamble assistantship reports So you could certainly look to that for some additional details and they're doing a lot of great work So absolutely go go take a look there if you're you're curious about some of the other projects. They're working on So now we're gonna pivot a little bit One of our community teaching assistants pram asks since resilient Resilience costs a lot to establish but does not provide a tangible return How easy or difficult is it to convince the people who control the finances to understand the performance of something like redundant redundancy? So pram, that's a great question. Um, I will This is how I try and explain it to People that I'm coaching or working with internally I would often rephrase or reframe the question to do you own do you personally have insurance? and most people would say yes because it's required to drive an automobile it most people want it on their homes and Insurance is essentially the same thing. You're paying small money to prevent having to pay big money and I always segue here with I was one of the 1.5% of the people in Kobe, Japan who had earthquake insurance at the time of the Kobe earthquake That's where I was living at the time and I don't know whether it was they thought they were pulling something over on a gaijin when I signed my insurance policy or that they thought It might be needed, but I was living in an earthquake zone where very few people had earthquake insurance and it truly bailed me out So a personal segue into the insurance thing. So when you talk about resilience You have to be Asking yourself and talking to your leadership Are we willing to take the risk that we could go out of business by a natural disaster? The the unfore unforecasted collapse of a critical supplier Or do we want to like insurance pay small money to prevent losing big money? That's how I would probably frame it um Right no, that was great great great example and also sort of a personal segue. I like that so Alessandro Asks decision livers change constantly including transportation tax duty costs and currency rates How do you dare tackle this complexity and optimize the supply chain globally for Procter and Gamble? Just a small question. Sure sure and you know, it's funny. It seems like a So Alexis was joking just a small question and it seems like a large and complex question, but it really It's and it's an insightful question, but it boils down to two things that we've touched on earlier You need to be agile in your supply chain because the levers do change constantly And if we all had a crystal ball and could predict the future we'd all be buying lottery tickets winning and not being in the supply chain management field retired happily somewhere, but No one does have a crystal ball. So you do have to have an agile supply chain that can respond Against a variety of levers. The second thing we talked about earlier is Taking time out of a supply chain because the more time you have embedded in your supply chain Needed to respond to demand the harder it is to change rapidly. Okay, so if you've got a Large time supply on the water and you need to make a material change It's a difficult proposition because that stuff that's on the water will get to a port and get delivered to you at some point. So The shorter your supply chain is the you genuinely have more responsiveness levers at your control so agile response agile supply chains and Use of time strategically would be the elements that I would tell you help you deal with the Uncertainties that everyone faces Right. No, that was great credit kind of covered that whole piece there So this is sort of a little bit of a different question and you know It can tell me if this is not something you really want to speak to but Jesus Madrid asks, you know, are there strategies strategies or tools You can recommend to small and medium-sized at companies that may have some of you know That don't really have the financial and technological capabilities that a bigger company would would Yeah, you know Jesus, I So I work for a not a small or medium-sized enterprise. However, what I would tell you is There's not closets full of resources in any sized organization everybody is under pressure to Drive margins and provide the best cost value equation to your consumers The people buying your product. So everyone's looking out and we expect Our employees just like you'd expect that a small and medium enterprise to be keeping up with what's going on in the field in the industry So sharpening your personal tools and capabilities so you can Impact more. We also expect people to be looking at What else is being developed just you know staying in touch on the web and It's things are happening so fast that if you're You know, if a large enterprise was insular They'd be caught in past and you know, the same logic would hold for small and medium enterprises Mining what's available out there You know, who's developing what and can we apply it because the space is changing very rapidly particularly with Digital and information-based tools that can help you achieve what your supply chain needs to achieve very efficiently So again, I don't work in a small or medium-sized enterprise But a lot of the approaches that we would coach people in a large enterprise would still apply the external focus The don't think we've got to invent it here because there are a lot of bright people in the supply chain space and things are changing rapidly Mining what's out there? Right. No, that's some great advice. Thanks. Thanks Andrew. So this is an interesting question that just came in from Garov How do you focus on globalization and localization of your product and its supply chain? What are the challenge you face because of different business environment of your of all the countries you operate in so You know, obviously So interesting as being sort of a global supply chain and also consumer-facing products Here are great question Perhaps if you were designing an ideal supply chain and you had no constraints you would build the capability to Provide your products right next to each consumer. We know that's probably not scalable financially affordable Probably also not a sustainable practice in terms of the environment So what you look for are relative economies of scale based on the sub the based on the supply chain needs you have Every supply chain exists to serve a business need So you have to look at what your business need is and determine how are I going to set up my supply chain? back to supply chain design and In some cases it makes sense to have a global supply chain We are shipping materials or finished products across borders across oceans in other cases You may have the scale and the local raw materials to have a domestic supply chain which might might help you in terms of speed and responsiveness and some of the risks associated with currencies and Shipping across borders are eliminated It depends on the nature of what your supply chain is serving for your business on how you want to set it up And then as you know, we talked earlier managing global supply chains is constantly adjustment and monitoring You still would do the same type of thing in a local supply chain because there's always opportunities to get better And to optimize your operations and if you're not optimizing your operations Someone else who's probably a competitor is optimizing theirs and you have to worry about it Right, right. Absolutely. Thanks. So Marta is a little bit curious about some of the you know Procter and Gamble's secret sauce of supply chain. So she is wondering what you know makes Procter and Gamble supply chain competitive relative to to your competitors. I Don't know if you have some general takeaways for that. Well, I take it as a compliment. So thank you And we are one of the three supply chain masters in the Gartner rankings along with Apple and Amazon You know, I mentioned earlier P&G largely Hires at entry level and we grew room and develop talent so we have Some we put a lot of emphasis on training development of our employees and also the culture of accountability and high expectations The elements of a winning supply chain tend to be people are really clear on the business objective our business partners are Commercial leadership highly values our supply chain. They know it makes a difference I'll give an example here. I mentioned earlier the hurricane season in the US in the second half of 2017 was particularly severe We had invested in digital tools and Our response to the hurricane compared to our competition Our customers told us it was a competitive advantage We were able to put stock on the shelf faster than anybody else after the earthquake. Sorry the hurricane, excuse me and You know when you can make a difference like that to your commercial partners people understand Wow, the supply chain is a place where we really want to make sure We're attracting and retaining the best talent we can and we're doing everything we can to develop the supply chain talent Give them responsibility and hold them accountable for outstanding results So I wouldn't say that's a secret sauce that was in the question, but it's That was my wording actually, okay, sorry, it's more of a blocking and tackling the supply chain is valued We know that we need to build the quality of our resources in terms of our skills and capabilities And we know that this can make a difference competitively for us. So it's sustained Great. No, that's great. Thanks so much one more kind of Hot topic question and then we have a bunch of question. We have a couple questions about future advice for supply chain professionals So Emilio wants to know Is artificial intelligence playing any role in your supply chain? And if so, can you talk about any results or or if not, you know, where you see it going? Sure, I can't give specific examples, but definitely artificial intelligence machine learning data robots These are things that any top supply chain should be looking at and should be Thinking about for implementation You know, there's more data available than ever before The smarter you are in terms of understanding the the operational parameters of your supply chain The more you can optimize it But the ability to mine and harness this data it takes time and that's where the artificial intelligence the machine-based learning The robots all those things can help you they can you know, if you have repetitive manual processes You can automate them if you've got a Lot of static data that you know, you're just looking for mistakes These machines the machine-based learnings and the algorithms are better than humans at that So there's a lot of elements in a supply chain the amount of the data richness and the impact to the results that artificial intelligence can have so You know, they're definitely things that We're working with and I would expect most top supply chains will be looking at right. Absolutely great So a few questions out, you know a few students ask a similar type question But Sarah van ask, you know, I mean you talked a little bit about your background sort of going, you know straight from college campus into the into the P&G supply chain, you know currently what do you think is really the best approach to you know, get a supply chain? Global supply chain position, you know, is it is it a masters in supply chain? You know MBA online in person finance degrees Do you have any kind of perspective on what you're seeing? You know in in kind of current trends for a cheap for getting those kind of positions sure I don't know that so remember global supply chain roles could be in any part of the world and I don't know In some places a master's degree is You find it's it's relatively common in other places. It's more rare. So you're gonna have to judge for yourself where you're thinking about applying and the standards expectations of the workforce, but what I would say is if I look past the degree because I think that has some elements of the specific Geography or the specific slice of the industry that you're looking at if you look past degree people typically Don't start in a global supply chain What you typically start is in a regional or domestic supply chain and you master that and then now that you So if you want to be good at a global supply chain, you've got a sourcing location You've got a receiving location. You should have mastery and really good understanding one side before trying to tackle both sides Is is my coaching and advice and typically most companies would hire in That way if they had a choice sometimes they don't have a choice they need to fill a position but if if you want to be successful your best bet is to have is to build on a foundation of mastery and knowledge and expand It would be the way I when someone says I want to start a global supply chain There's a lot that you need to learn and you're better off You're likely to have higher prospects of prospects of success if you start with Really good knowledge on one side of it because then the complexities are limited to the part you don't know And and you can kind of stratify it and it's easier for you to solve things Versus is it a sourcing problem? Is it a receiving problem? You know, I'm trying to communicate or figure out both ways That's probably what I would tell people I probably the other overriding advice is Follow your passion. I Don't think there's a cookie cutter approach to a supply chain career in the current day and age And you're probably going to be most successful when you're following your passion Versus trying to tick a box with a specific degree Specific star point get in an area you're passionate about and do a great job and the doors will open for you That's great. That's great. That was actually kind of covered the some of the questions One question. I think you kind of covered there, but maybe you want to say a few more words some is Are there areas you need to focus on? You know as a kind of emerging areas you would recommend focusing on to you know as you are looking to be a global supply chain manager Sure, I think supply chain skills in the future will be a lot more digital and Analytic than they have in the past. We touched on artificial intelligence. We've touched on digital skills and the emergence of big data So the ability to mine data trends Spotting things social Unstructured media Will be key. That's one the second area that I think is going to be stressed in the future is collaboration skills because more and more supply chains or ecosystems with partners and You know 3d type supply chains where it's not just you and a trading partner, you know a linear supplier Manufacturer trading partner, but there's a lot of other factors that could come into play. So we talked E-commerce a few minutes ago, and you know now it's Right, so I would say collaboration skills. The last one would be leadership. I it's always been important The ability to understand what are the priorities? What does the business need of the supply chain to get the most out of your organization? and To deliver outstanding results it takes leadership. So digital skills collaborative skills leadership skills That's what I would see as needed in the future That's great. That's great kind of a mix of hard and soft skills that they can start thinking about that was a Wonderful wrap-up. So I think we're right on the hour here. I just want to first You know, thank you thanks to the students and thanks Andrew for working around our technical difficulties today And also thanks for joining us today I think it was we've really covered a lot of ground and Andrew Provided so much insight into so many topics global supply chains Resilience technology sustainability. We really covered a lot here. So great great questions from the students I we covered up many we didn't get to all of them Thank you so much Andrew for your time. This has been a wonderful opportunity and we really really appreciate it