 Hi everyone, and welcome to the first live event in SC4x. So I'm here today, my name is Seba Ponce, I'm the Executive Director of the MicroMaster Pro and Supply Chain Management, and I'm very happy to have with me Conor Makowski. Hey Conor, good morning. Thank you for having me. Conor is our digital learning, he's working as part of the MicroMaster team, and we both are going to discuss with you and debrief the first run and the results of the fresh connection game. So we will have some fun. During the presentation. Okay, let's start. So the plan for today, the plan for today is I will talk a little bit about the MicroMaster overview and the big picture, the latest statistics. I also want to mention about the third MicroMaster cohort that is coming. I really encourage you to complete this fifth course as part of the program and go through the CFX and complete the whole program. We have now a huge community of MicroMaster holders we really encourage you to complete this long journey. We know, we know there is a lot of effort behind a lot of nights and hours spent in this program. So don't give up. Yeah, you are in the last stretch. So that's great. We will go a little bit deeper in the SC4X, the supply chain technology and system course. I will share with you the latest statistics. Yeah, talk a little bit and discuss a little bit about the contents and the plan for this run of the course. We will talk also about the next proctor test. We are going to introduce this in week seven and I really want to share with you why we are doing that and some tips in order to run this in a smooth way. And then in the second part, we are going to focus on the fresh connection, the simulation game that, yeah, Connor is an expert. I don't know about that, but I appreciate your... He's really an expert and he has a lot of experience with the game. And we just want to share with you your results and what you did, what we think, or did and have a nice discussion. And as always, open to your questions and happy to answer those questions. So let's start. We are going to try to do this in an interactive way and we really want to have your participation share your opinion. We are going to ask you some polls, some questions for discussion. So I encourage you to go to Slido, Slido.com. And the event code for today is SC4X. So just go to Slido. You can go through the mobile form through the laptop or any other mobile device. Include this code in Slido.com. There are some questions that you are going to receive pools and we won't just have your answer on these pools. You have also the opportunity to ask questions to us. So please feel free to add through Slido any questions you might have for today and for us. And yeah, here are some tips about how to ask a questions and how to vote. So the first question. How many SCX courses have you completed so far? I know that some of you are already at the very end of the MicroMaster program. Maybe some of you are only completed three courses or it's just your first course. So please tell us about how many SCX courses have you completed so far. Okay, we have 11 people participated in the pool. Excellent. So far 75% have completed four SCX courses. That's great because this is the fifth course and this is how we designed this program just to take in order, having you at the very end of the journey. Yes. Looks like we have quite a few first timers as well. That's true. Welcome to the courses. It's great to have you guys here and we hope that you really enjoy this. So we would also encourage that you come back and go to our other courses that we offer. We have four courses that happened before at this point. We would love for you to join as well. Yeah, and SCX is going to start just one. When we close this, you can take a break during the summer and this fall we are going to launch SCX. So for those that are just newcomers, I really encourage you to join SCX this fall in September 2018. That's great. So 70% of the population today already completed the four courses. That's great. My second question to you today is, are you planning to take the next CFX in August? For those that qualify, definitely. But I'm assuming that those that are now at the very end of the journey, you are doing a great job. I'm sure you are putting the necessary effort in order to complete and pass as a verified student this run of SCX. So the question is, if you are planning to take the CFX in August, 70% yes, okay, 80% yes. Perfect. So this helped us a lot because then I will go a little bit about the CFX and explain a little bit why we are doing a proctor test in this course. Okay, so the big picture. As you know now, this program has been designed and developed by the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. This center started in 1973, 40 years ago, more than 40 years ago. The main goal is to create supply chain innovation and drive this into practice. It's very industry-oriented. And every single thing that we do here at the center, let's say we talk about research or outreach, it's very related with companies and with the industries. So we have more than 50 partners, companies, organizations that are partners of the center. And this brings to us the reality, the real problems and all of the techniques that we are teaching in this program are intended to solve real life problems. Absolutely. Actually, I want to add to that. If you guys do end up taking the capstone, get accepted and come on campus, part of that you'll be doing a project. And a lot of those projects are done with real world companies as well. So that's another really kind of great way to get in here, get working on some projects with us and then help some real world companies as well. Definitely. And apply those concepts that you are letting know. Absolutely. Yeah, these SC4X concepts will be really helpful in a lot of those projects. Definitely. And then education. So this program is part of the education left of the Center for Transportation and Logistics. I need to mention here that 20 years ago, we started with the supply chain management residential program. This is a 10 month residential program that has been ranked as number one in the field, in the supply chain management field for the last 20 years. So it's a program that already has the reputation and the recognition of the industry. Last fall, 2015, the president of MIT, Rafael Rave, he announced the first micro masters in the world. And this micro master was the micro master in supply chain management. And we were very, very lucky and fortunate that the CTL was the center that the president Rave chose in order to develop and design this program. So far, you are part of a huge community of learners we have around a quarter of a million of people that have taken at least one SCX course since the beginning is when we started with the program. 15,000 of these learners has verified the students. You know now, this is a global program. People from all over the world, from more than 190 countries. So far, today, we have issued 1062 certificates credentials, micro masters credentials supply chain management. These are people that has completed the five courses plus the comprehensive final exam at the very end. So the principle, I always want to remind the principles because this is important and also for the team, it's important to have this in mind when we are developing, when we are running this program. The first is to share the knowledge with anyone anywhere with internet connectivity. It's to educate the world for free. So anyone anywhere from with you need a computer, a laptop and internet connectivity because this is a 100% online program. But for those that just want to learn in supply chain management, this is a great opportunity just to learn. For those that want to pursue for a certificate, then you need to pay a modest amount of money in order to pay just for the administrative costs related to the certificate by itself. Yeah, regarding the courses and the course leads that are running the course, regarding the whole team, the teaching assistant and the community teaching assistant, our goal is just to provide the best learning experience to our learners, also a rigorous assessment. I will explain why. Why we also work a lot in this rigorous assessment, a reliable way to assess you and a robust way to provide this assessment. So these are the five courses. Most of you knows very well, you already completed and passed as a certified student. These four previous courses, here we are now at supply chain technology and system, the C4X, the fifth course as part of the MicroMaster program. And for those that want to complete the journey, you just need to pass as a verified student. This is very important as a verified student because if there is not any other way to earn a certificate in these courses, go through the CFX and then you will earn the MicroMaster credential. So in terms of the big picture, I'm not going through these details because you know that. The only thing I want to highlight is that SC3X and SC4X are more qualitative courses. That's why when we are presenting the materials and when we are assessing you, we are using more mini-case studies and trying to have, yeah, since the nature of the contents are more qualitative, we have some stills and numerical problems. But most of those kind of assessment questions are now based in these mini-cases or mini-real cases that we are preparing for this program. Okay, in terms of the value proposition and why we encourage you to don't give up and to complete the whole journey because there is a lot of effort behind. We know that. We know that those people that really complete the program have spent a lot of hours combining the current job with the family, with a lot of nights and days, spending, watching videos, solving problems and going through these great assignments. So individual professional career development. This is one of, I would say, one of the main outputs. One way that our learners are using this MicroMasters credential as soon as they got it, they just forced in the LinkedIn and they are asking for jobs related to supply chain management. I'm also very happy to announce that some companies are offering interviews, job openings, just for MicroMasters holders in supply chain management. So in terms of pathway, it's also a pathway to an MIT supply chain management residential program and also a pathway to a master degree in any other university that are recognizing the MicroMasters as a pathway for credit. There are now more than 10 universities recognizing the MicroMasters credential. So for those that just want to continue learning more in this field or in field related to supply chain management it's an opportunity to earn a master degree at residential or campus master degree in an accelerator. Okay, so this is just to motivate you at this very end of the journey just to bring you some of the people that already completed the program. So we have Obehi, Obehi is from Nigeria. He completed the MicroMasters program and he really appreciate that this very industry applied and he said that this helped to his day-to-day job. Same theme with GOT. GOT is now one of the blended students. GOT completed the MicroMasters credential. He applied for the master degree at MIT in supply chain management. He got admission and he's currently almost about to graduate in the blended master degree in supply chain management. We have Maria Barba from Spain. She's currently doing a master degree so she did the MicroMasters credential. She's doing a master degree, master science degree in manufacturing and she's planning to work now in the supply chain management field. So these are different examples from... This is Kuma. He is an entrepreneur guy. He's creating his own startup company. So yeah, it's another great example. And Paulina, another blended student doing the master, the residential degree in supply chain management. Actually, I had a chance to engage with some of these blended students on campus. And one of the greatest things that I kind of got from this is the fact that when they came in, they weren't behind, they weren't lagging. A lot of them are actually standout students. So they got this degree online. They came on campus and they stood out amongst people that had been accepted at MIT without this credential. And they're really, really great students. So I think this is a really great program and I think that speaks a lot to that. Paulina is a great example. She's a really, really great student, very standout student, and she started online. And so it's a great pathway for her. Definitely. Deepti, she has family. She has kids. She's doing a great job. So we really admire this pool of people that are combining so many things at the same time. They are really, really hard workers. This is something that they are doing great. So in terms of the SC4x, supply chain technology and system, so far we have 6,500 learners and 322 verified learners. The median learner age is 30 years and as in all of our previous SCx courses, 87% of the population already have a bachelor, master or even a PhD degree. And in this course, in particular, students are from 160 countries and the top three are the United States with 21% of the students, India with 10%, Canada with 3% and Brazil also with 3% of the learners. So my next question to you is, what topics interests you most in SC4x? Database management, machine learning, ERP system, transportation management system or warehouse management system, supply chain visibility or new trends and technologies in supply chain. So let's see your answers. We are opening the pool right now. Yeah, we can't say here that all of these topics has been already covered or we are going to cover in SC4x. As always, your feedback helps us to think about how to improve the course, how to develop new material, which topic we should add in addition to the ones that we have. So always, always are very, very welcome, your feedback through any way. You can send an email to the course lead through SC4x help email account. You can reach directly to me, to our community manager Arthur. So all of us are part of the same team. Always happy to receive the feedback. Okay, so let's see what's going on here. Oh, it looks like a focus on new trends and technologies. Actually that's one of the really great things we added. And do you know, I didn't say that the hot war blockchain, but we covered blockchain in these new trends and technologies in supply chain management. So yes, we agree. There are even the companies that come here to the center, they are asking for artificial intelligence, how to use robotics to help them to have a more efficient supply chain, how to integrate augmented reality in this new only channeling commerce environment, how to use blockchain, or how blockchain can help them to do things in a different way. So yes, I agree that this is something that, the question with that, this change, I would say every single month. So it's really difficult to have a video that can stay for more than one round. This is the only con I see with these kind of lectures. Database management, machine learning, almost equally. Yeah, we cover, let's have a look to the contents we are covering. So in the first block, the first force we cover, or Chris Casa is the instructor, the main instructor for this part. Connor has did a great job with the recitations and bringing software to help you to solve this problem using Orange for machine learning. They are also very happy with their relationship diagrams. Okay, yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of really great programs that we're trying to take advantage of here. So we use MySQL, we use SAS. We use just a kind of a wide variety of things with the idea being that you guys have access to these things, that you can learn about databases, you can learn about normalization, you can learn about machine learning, and a relatively easy to understand way, but still gives you some pretty good depth as well. So I'm really excited for you guys to be in this course and to kind of start pushing into these categories. Yeah, and in the second part of the course, we are going to cover, Chris Kaplis is going to cover supply chain software system, mainly enterprise resource planning systems, also transportation management system and warehouse management system. We have also one week lesson dedicated to supply chain visibility, another huge topic, especially in the food industry, software selection and implementation, how companies typically make this kind of decision that are very relevant in order to manage the information flow. And finally, the new trends and technologies. So in this week, what we are doing is just covering eight of the most relevant technologies that are affecting now the way we are doing the things in supply chain or helping the students to do that. We are also bringing interviews with experts from the industry. We really want to bring reality to the course. So this is something that we are introducing here. The course lead David Correll very recently, he also went to one company and interviewed the people that implement one of the solution that was developed based on the techniques you are learning in this course. All of these things we hope that you like it and also are a way to fix concept and to see how the industry leaders are applying this concept that we are teaching here. Okay, some key dates, verification.line. This is very important. Yesterday night, I went through the list of learners. I identified that there are still some learners that are in the pipeline, almost about to complete the five courses and you are still audit. So I really, really for those that want to pursue for a certificate in this round of SE4X, please upgrade your status today. Don't wait more because once we close the deadline, there is no way to earn a certificate in this round. You need to wait for the next round, which is totally fine. But if you want to pursue in this round, please verify as soon as possible. Today, if possible. So in terms of the verification process, there are two steps. The first one is just to pay the $200, the fee to purchase the certificate by itself. And the second step, this is just the verification process. The second step is the ID verification. For those that are already verified or just are planning to verify now, please double check that you are also ID verified. The verification process is per run. The ID verification process, once you do, the duration is one year. But at some point this expires and you need to again verify your identity. So please double check that. I say that because we can only issue certificates to those that are verified and ID verified. That's why I really highlight this part of the process. Any issue, any problem through this process, you should contact directly with edX. edX support info at edX.org. Aim on the benefits is, as I mentioned, to earn a verified certificate in this course to pursue for the MicroMaster Credential. This is the only way to do that. And to have access to these life events. We will have more life events, but the second and third life event are only for verified people. So you are almost there. So yeah, as I mentioned, this is a pathway to a master's degree in supply chain management. That's why we really care about the assessment for two purpose. One, because of the value of the certificate. And the second thing is because once you are admitted in a master degree program at MIT or any other university recognizing, we are convolidating credits for this program. That's why it's so important that assessment is delivering a very rigorous way. We are offering you a proctor test in week seven. And all verified students need to take this proctor test. Why? We are doing that because the comprehensive final exam is a virtual proctor final test. We want you to go through the experience before taking the actual comprehensive final exam. The proctor test in week seven is going to be a time exam. This means that you will have two hours to complete the great assignment for week seven. So the whole great assignment for week seven will be open during two weeks. But once you open the exam, you only have two hours to complete it. Before opening the great assignment for week seven, I really encourage you to download the practice proctor test. We always have a section that is called Before Taking the Great Assignment, Before Taking the Exam. You will find all of the instructions there and the software that we really encourage you to download. Because if these practice tests work, then you will not... I don't think you are going to have any issue during the actual proctor great assignment. But if you have an issue there and you identify in advance, we can work on that and try to fix it. So please do it in advance, because some of our students wait until the very last day to do these things. For regular great assignment might work. For the proctor test, I really recommend to do it in advance. At least download the practice test. Okay, so MicroMaster Portal. We have the MicroMaster Portal. Arthur Rower, community manager, is managing this MicroMaster Portal. We want to create this community of MicroMaster learners. We are posting there all of the job openings that we have for MicroMaster holders. We are sharing news for the CFX, for the Comprehensive Final Exam. It's mandatory that you go to the portal, register. We need to have your profile there. Because we are using this portal in order to communicate with you about any detail about the Comprehensive Final Exam. So for those that complete the five courses, I really, really encourage you to join the MicroMaster Portal. It's also a really great place to connect with other MicroMaster students. Yes. So I think that's something that we don't always think about as much, but I think for you guys, it's a really, really great place to reach out, meet some new people from the program, and build some connections that hopefully you can use later in life. Definitely. In terms of the Life Event, the Second Life Event will happen in Week 5, around Week 5. And the idea for this Life Event is to deep dive into machine learning. We want to bring an expert using the techniques that you have learned in SC4x in real projects. So this is the idea for the Second. And for the Third, we will go through the MicroMaster, wrap up what's next, and also we will cover all of the details about the CFX. Okay. Questions and Answers. Let's see if we have any question related to this part. And after that, we are going to move to the First Connection debrief. Okay, so let's see if we receive any questions. If not, what we can do is just go through the debrief. If any question pop up, we definitely come. We can handle some questions at the end as well. Yes. Yes. Let's do that. All right. I suppose I'll take over with this. So the inaugural run of SC4x, we had students from our entire pipeline kind of coming through and taking the Fresh Connection. The top students were invited to the Global Challenge. And so four of them, Carlos, Ivan, Andrea, and Aaron, were invited to compete on a team together. Now they live in four different countries across different time zones. So for example, Andrea, he currently is living in South Korea. But at the time, maybe it's a different country. I think it's South Korea though. But at the time, he was actually living in, I believe, Italy or Portugal. And he was kind of traveling between where the other gentlemen were from South America or Mexico. And so you kind of get this interesting mix of people working on a team together. Well, they came together very well, performed very well. They ended up finishing that second round in first place and then went on to the global championship where they won and became global champions. I'm in the picture mostly because I was there with them, not because I won. It was all on them. They did a really great job and they applied a lot of the concept they learned in the courses to actually come out and win the Fresh Connection. So I think this is a great opportunity for you guys to learn as well on participating in the Fresh Connection game. Kind of ties a lot of what we taught together into one kind of cohesive package. Yes. The beautiful thing is that these learners learn to play the Fresh Connection through SC4X in a pure online environment. And they just play the four roles and you have the opportunity to do now in SC4X in an individual way. And then they just met for three days and they work as a team in an incredible way. So the beautiful thing is how online learning prepared you very well for an, let's say, in-person challenge. And they won. So we are very proud of this team. Yeah. Team United Nations. So it was really cool to get there. They had flags from all of the countries where people were from. And we had a United Nations flag on the table representing our team, which is actually really representative of you guys as well. Yeah. And I need to mention also that the Fresh Connection, we have been played the Fresh Connection Simulation Game here at MIT for the last six years. Other universities also use the Fresh Connection as a simulation game but always on campus, on a residential program. So students learn to play on campus in teams of four people and each person play a role. This was the first time we did this pilot that was to offer the Fresh Connection in a massive online course and was challenging for us because we need to create 40,000 user names and user codes. We don't allow to play in teams because the massive courses is still not allowed to create these teams in an efficient way. So we just decided that you play in an individual way and we weren't like analyzing the pros and cons of doing that. And based on our experience, we are really happy with the results and that's why we are still we have an agreement with this company, the Fresh Connection Company in order to offer this through our online courses. So let's have a look to the participation. 233 people participate in this first round of the Fresh Connection. I really encourage you audit or verify the student. Doesn't matter to join the game and play. It's a great opportunity for you also to apply. Most of you already completed the four courses and it's a great opportunity to apply most or some of the concepts that you have learned through this program. This company is not a real company but the case was developed based on real experience. So it's a nice environment to test how decisions are interconnected and how we can change one decision and maybe have a huge impact in the profitability of the company in a positive or in a negative way. So it's a very good learning without having so much problem with your boss if you are in a real company. So this is a great opportunity to test some of the concept and the impact of some decisions in a supply chain. So I really encourage, it's fun, it's time demanding. I agree. Absolutely, there's a lot of time. And it's not like a it's a complex game but not for you guys. You already know all of the concept behind this game. So I think you are in a very good shape to go to try and also to take risks. Take risks and make your own decisions and see the impact. Nothing happened. And for those that didn't have the opportunity to play so far the game, no worries. We just closed today the round number two but round number three is opening next Wednesday and you can join. The only difference for those that already play is if you play your profitability, your return of investment, might be different. Positive or negative or whatever but different. Those that didn't play, you are going to have the started conditions, the baseline conditions. So open to anyone, audit and verify and you can join the round number three that will be open next Wednesday. In terms of the active participants, 63% was verified, 37% audit. As I mentioned, anyone is invited and welcome to do that. Average score minus 3.9. That's pretty close to the stock but if you look at the median, most of our students improved. So if you see, on average, our students did really well. They almost got into profitability which is a very good feat for this game. So I'm very proud of you guys and I think you guys did really great to start. Definitely. In terms of the distribution, this is very similar to the distribution we got in the last two rounds of S4X and I want to highlight here that as you can observe in this histogram, most of our students improved from the starting point. Yeah, more than 50% of the population improved from the starting point and most of them are even over 0% of return on investment. And if you notice, there are some students that didn't do so well and that's fine as well. So a lot of this is a great learning opportunity and it might have been because you tried something very risky, tried testing something new. I even know some of our staff members that started playing this game this time and they were trying some new things and they didn't do so well as well. I expect them to do better in the future and I know that you guys can do the same but just keep taking those risks and try to learn. This is the place to learn. So if you're going to fail, fail here, learn and then by the last round you try to get in the positive, try to make that difference. Improve it. Definitely and take those risks. Yeah, it's a learning experience, pure learning experience. So 68% of our participants scored over the starting point. The minus 3.95% return of investment. 53% score over minus 1% that is a very good result for the first round and we have been playing this on campus for the last six years and we can tell you that this is a very good result and 33% score over 1% that this is like spectacular. This is a very good result. This is actually really, really good. When I played on campus here, our entire cohort, not a single team got over like zero at all the first round that we played as well. So this is an incredibly challenging game and you guys are doing really well. Excellent. So now we are going to ask you some questions related to your strategy and the strategy you follow during this first round of playing the game. We are going to separate the questions and the strategy in those decisions that are more related to the inbound logistics, I mean to the suppliers decisions to the raw material and level of stock components decision related to the inbound warehouses. Outbound logistics, we refer more to our customers, the different channels we are offering the relationship with this customer, the service level we have agreed or not with these customers and also all of the decision related to the inventory of finished goods. So with this in mind, what strategy did you use for your inbound logistics related to your suppliers and the level of stock for the components, inbound logistics? Did you focus on inbound efficiency more on reduce the cost and be very efficient in this way, focus more on the service level or trying to look for a balanced approach just to reduce the cost a little bit but not too much because then the service level will be affected. So let's see what you did. Okay. Ooh, a lot of service level right now. More of the service level. Great. Okay. Yeah. Some of them efficiency, some of them balance. Great. Great. Nice. Interesting. So now we have balanced some service level. Great. Efficiency, some people definitely. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So it looks pretty balanced actually. Yeah. So no, that's really great. So you guys are all trying different strategies. I mean, that's really good to know. Definitely. Let's see what you did in terms of the outbound logistics. More in the relationship with the customer, service level with customers, level, stock level for finished goods. So same theme, but for the outbound logistics. Did you follow a service level approach, efficiency approach, or a more balanced approach? Hmm. A lot of service right now. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Now we're getting some votes. Ooh, balanced. Okay. Not too much efficiency going on in our bond right now yet. Yeah. Let's see how you guys keep voting for. Do you know, for me makes sense, because the outbound is closer to the customer. So I think you have more in mind that the service level, you need to care about that. Customers are very close to you. And you know that they complain if they don't get the customer level that they are expecting. So, excellent. So around 70% focus on service level for the outbound logistics, 33% in the balance approach. So, okay. That's pretty good though. So we had a lot of balance kind of inbound, but the outbound seemed pretty customer focused. Yeah. So let's see what our top three players did. So we have Christian with a 6% of return of investment. That's a very, very good score. Great job, Christian. Alex, 5.5%. I'll clap for these guys. These guys are awesome. And Gustavo, also 5.5%. So these are great, great results. So let's ask now the following question. You know your outbound score. So what is strategy? Do you think that the top players follow for both the inbound logistics and the outbound? This is like a prediction. What do you think they beat in order to get this 6% of return of investment? Okay. No, this is the old one. Yeah, we need to activate question 6. Okay. It would appear that we're missing question 6. So we'll just... Let's see if we have question 7. If not, just think about what you think they beat and we are going to see the actual results. Perfect. So yeah, it seems we are missing this question. No words at all. Let's see what the top players did. Do you want to go through? Yeah, we'll go through this. So what you see here is you have the top three players, and this is from their dashboard showing their supply chain functions. So the KPIs for the supply chain functions. And with this, you can see their ROIs. So you see the 6.1 and the 5.5%. You also see the availability of components that they offer, as well as the stock components in number of weeks, and also the stock products in number of weeks. So you can see here that there's really, actually three very similar strategies happening here. So you see that they focus very much on stock availability. So their components are always available, their suppliers are either reliable or they stock enough in their warehouse and their inbound warehouse that they can cope for these things and still provide good service on the outbound side. You also see that their stock components, the amount that they store in their warehouse is all actually relatively low, at least compared to the average. So they're keeping their inbound warehouse actually pretty lean. And they might make up for that by actually storing a lot in their outbound warehouse. So you see a lot of these players are storing three plus weeks of components or of finished products in their outbound warehouse. And so actually it seems that these three players have very similar strategies. Very similar strategy. But what I want to highlight now is that, and this is something that is a lesson learned in this game, is that you can follow a different strategy and you can also have a very high performance. So let's have a look to the top players last year. The first player did follow a very similar strategy as these three top players did this run. However, we have other players that follow a different approach. For instance, player number two last year, what he did is focus a little bit more on having more inventory for components. The stock of components is a little bit higher. Yeah. But then the finished products, you see he actually is able to mitigate these costs that he has in inbound by having a slightly lower outbound. And he has this responsive supply chain or slightly more responsive supply chain, maybe a little less efficient. But that's where he saves his costs. Yeah. However, the availability of component was pretty high, was 99.7%. So this is also something to highlight. So he might have paid more for his suppliers to ship on time. There's a lot of different things that happen in these strategies that allow for them to work out in certain ways, just as with any real supply chain. Yeah. And the third player focused a more follow, a more balanced approach. So almost a little bit of a stock of components, a little bit of a stock of final products, very high availability of products, but a more balance in between service level and efficiency. So the beautiful thing here is, one of the lessons learned is, all of the decisions you are making in the game are interrelated. That means that if you decide to reduce the cost of raw materials, of components, them may be the service level for this supplier and this component might be also reduced and affected because of this reduction of the cost. But if you do that, then maybe you need to stock more final finished products. And then the cost, the inventory cost related to that, the cost of the outbound warehouse is going to be higher. In order to keep the same service level for your customer. So this is what I mean when I said that all of the decisions are interconnected and that's why the game is not straightforward. It's like I made one decision, but this has a direct impact on my, let's say on my function, but this is also affecting the other functions. So since you are playing the four roles, the cost to do that is you need to learn the four roles and you need to review all of the KPIs and you need to really, really spend more time playing that. The good thing is that it's just yourself. So it's just to align yourself with your decisions in the four different areas of the game. So there are pros and cons and I think the overall result is very good when you are playing the four roles. I think actually if you guys end up going to the world championship or like this world competition or you come here on campus, we'll place you on teams of four people. And then the challenge actually shifts very, very differently. So it's not just aligning yourself, but it's aligning with a team which can be quite difficult as well. That's a whole new game altogether. And so I would encourage you to try to do it as a group of four people as well sometime. Definitely. Yeah, because all of the things that you are spending now just to learn the different functions and the KPIs and understand well each function, here you are going to spend more. It's a lot of communication. Discussing, let's say discussing with your peers and try to convince them to do certain things that you believe are the best for the game, but you might have different opinions. So it's fun. Yeah. It becomes a very challenging game, but I think that you guys would excel at it and a lot of our blended students really do. Yes. So I have two open questions now for you. What are the primary pro to your strategy? What do you think that is the thing that was really, really went well following your strategy? And then the same question about the primary cons you identify with your strategy. Include just one word, because we are going to try to plot a word cloud. Primary pros to your strategy. I will give you guys a couple of seconds to think about that. Yes. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. In the meantime, what we can do is, as we said, we really encourage you to play the game, have fun, take risks, and play with different decisions. In the next two rounds, you will have more decisions to make. We open more decisions in all of the four areas. So you have more room for improvement, but also a little bit more complexity is added to this two last round. But as I said, if you didn't play the game so far, go for it. You can do it. It's open. You still have opportunity to make your decisions and improve the results. If you already played the first two rounds, I really, really encourage you to continue and have more challenges in the round number three and round number four. Yeah, absolutely. So once you guys go back into the platform, just click through all of the different options that you had in the past. You might see some new boxes open, some new things that you guys can change. I'd encourage you to just look into those, see what you can do with them. Do the math. Think about the implications. Think about the soft side. What would the supplier do? What does this mean? And then move forward with a good strategy. So with these new options, you might end up changing your strategy. Yep. And as we say, this is a learning experience. So that doesn't matter if the final result is higher or lower. The important thing is to learn. Just to apply the concept and see the effect that this happened in this case on the return of investment of this company. Round three will open next Wednesday, May 16th, and will be open for one week. So the following Wednesday, we are going to close the round. Okay, so let's have a look. Great. So here is the cloud. Which are the primary pros? Okay, service level. Definitely those that focus on a service level strategy. Yeah, you really got this high service level with your customers. Inventory. Some of them are very happy with the inventory decisions, which is great. We have a little safety stock. So probably somebody is working on an efficient supply chain. Keep being a lower safety stock. Great. And let's see the primary, but these are the primary pros. So the pros, yeah. Yes. Okay, so we've got service. Okay. It's awesome. Some of you improve, which is great. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, most of you improve. We saw the results. So yeah, let's see now the primary cons. Yeah, we are bringing this question because we want you to think about your strategy, think about how to align your decisions across the four different functions. See about the implications of making one decision in one area and see the impact in the global supply chain. So that's why we are bringing that just to make you think about that and try different things in the next round. Absolutely. Oh, supplier for performance. Oh, so it's almost the same thing. They were struggling. So yeah, so the people that did inventory before or yeah, interesting. Yeah. So if you go for low cost, you might have poor performance. Definitely. But at the same time, you might save enough money to make up for it. So inventory, that's a big one. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. So you store a lot. Oh, this is great. So I mean, this is a balanced game. So every pro actually will have a con that balances with it almost exclusively. So this is great. And as we mentioned, it's all about trade-offs, trade-off in between costs on service level in the different areas of the company. Okay. I think this is all we want to cover today. I don't know if we have time for some general questions or specific questions. And if we have, we really want to go through that. Let's see if we have any questions in the poll. Yeah, we'll answer one or two questions. And then we can leave that open here for maybe a minute and then... Yeah. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to share with us through a slide-off. And as I mentioned, if you want to pursue for the certificate, go today for it. Don't wait more. We hope also that you enjoy the rest of the SC4X. More industry experts are waiting for you. More fun problems. So we hope that you really enjoy the course. Yeah. And the machine learning section is coming up, and that's going to be a really, really great opportunity to learn some basics of machine learning and actually get some depth as well. We do a lot of really cool problems. We put a lot of work into tying it into databases. That's very exciting. And then we go after the midterm, we'll go and do some completely different things. They actually tie in together. They might not be as sexy, but when you go out into industry, they're very valuable. So the TMS, the WMS, all very valuable things that you're going to want to learn as well. Excellent. Any questions, Tim? No? Okay. The question is awesome. So thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the rest of the course and have a great day. Bye. Have a great day.