 Welcome to Inside Supply Chain Fundamentals. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Seba Ponce. I'm the Executive Director of the MITx, MicroMasters Program in Supply Chain Management. And with me today is Dr. Chris Kaplis. Chris is the Executive Director of MIT, the Center for Transportation and Logistics. And he's also the mastermind behind this course, Supply Chain Fundamentals. Thank you, Chris, for joining us. Glad to be here. Excellent. So I will ask you in a minute to share a sample of a lesson inside the course. However, first, I know that you are here in response to our invitation. Our invitation was to become, how to become a profit profit in your company. So why we are asking that and why we are saying that? Because we believe that supply chain management is vital today. It's something that is the backbone of the economy. If we have a look into our environment now, if we have a look into the growth of e-commerce, the global supply chains that we have, we can see the importance of being a good professional in supply chain management. And we have the need of more and more professionals in this area, one thing. But even if you are working in data analytics or if you are working in finance, still to have some knowledge and understand the pillars and the fundamentals of supply chain management, we believe that might help you to become a better professional. So that's why we are offering this course, Supply Chain Fundamentals. Before asking Chris to share with us a sample of the course, I want you to take a poll. We want to learn a bit more about you. So if you don't mind to take a couple of seconds just to answer what is your primary business function. So please take a second to answer this poll. And in the meantime, I'm going to ask Chris to share with us a sample of what you will find inside this course about supply chain fundamentals. OK, so if we can share my screen. So what I'm not going to do is show you a video of what you'll see in the course. What I want to do instead is tell you a story. And so my story deals with a company, a restaurant chain in the United States called Popeyes. And what Popeyes is, it's a Louisiana kitchen. That means it's more Southern food. And it's mainly chicken and things like that. And it's been fairly successful. So it competes with a larger company called Chick-fil-A, which is much, much larger revenues. However, what Popeyes did in August of 2019, just last year, they launched this chicken sandwich, which sounds stupid, right? It's just trivial. But it was a huge success. It was picked up in social media. Celebrities filmed themselves eating it. It took off like crazy. So it was the hottest thing on the internet. And so much so that within two weeks, it sold out across the whole country. They were selling a thousand of these sandwiches a day at each store. And they plan to have about, you know, they plan to sell over two months. They had that inventory and they sold it within two weeks. So it far exceeded what they had available. Share the window. No, we're not sharing. There we go. Share the, you're sharing the screen at the bottom. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Sorry about that. So there's a picture of the sandwich. There we go. So they introduced this big fanfare going like gangbusters. And they ran out in two weeks. And it was a huge issue. There was petitions to bring it back and everything. And in fact, they weren't able to bring it back. Let me make sure where. Yes. There we go. For two months. So they lost that demand for two months. In fact, they didn't weren't able to bring it back until November three. And what's interesting when they announced it, this was the ad that they showed and they brought it back on a Sunday. And they made a big deal that it's a Sunday because they're in a fierce competition with this company. Like I said, Chick-fil-A and Chick-fil-A is an open on Sundays. So this is kind of a really interesting competition back and forth. But the demand was so high that a man was actually stabbed and murdered in Baltimore because they cut in line on November fourth to get to this sandwich. This is the story of restaurant launches a sandwich does so well. It sells out in two weeks and they can't bring it back up for two months. And so why am I telling you this story? What does this have to do with SC one X? Well, it has everything to do with SC one X because what we do in the first, this course is we teach you how to forecast the man, how to plan your inventory to satisfy that demand and how to use transportation to get that product to where you need to have it delivered. And so the first two areas really apply to this story. And that's the forecasting. So in SC one X will teach you all different ways to forecast demand. And typically you have a steady state product. And what you do is you use something called time series. You see how that demand changes over time and you can project how that's going to change over time. I'll teach you a bunch of different methods, exponential smoothing regression. And they all are basically the same. If you look at your history, let's see how it's going to apply, look for patterns and project it forward. This challenge, this was a different challenge though, because this was a new product. So I'll also teach you how to forecast demand for new products because the challenge with a new product is what? They have no history, right? So there's no history. So you've got to try to figure out, well, how will I guess what demand is going to be? If I don't have this history to rely on, and I'll show you different techniques for that. You can look for similar like products. Do some market analysis. And that's one of the challenges. And that's one of the things that they failed classically on doing. They failed to forecast their demand accurately. Now their demand was way higher than what they forecasted. But I'll talk about this and give a lot of examples. It's so hard to forecast what your demand is going to be. And that brings you to inventory. So for inventory, we try to figure out ways of how should you stock whatever your product is? When should you replenish? How much should you deliver? How frequently? All those kind of things. And you can break it into two big categories. One is promotional. Suppose they wanted this only to be a sandwich out for a month or two. Then you would say, okay, it's going to be a promotion. So my demand is going to be short. So I want to figure out how much inventory do I need? And there's two costs you want to consider. The cost of having too much. If I have leftover chicken and therefore I might have to throw it away or get rid of it. So I have a loss. Or if I don't have enough, right? And if I'm short or if I don't have enough, then that means I'm losing potential sales opportunity costs. And that's pretty much what happened here because the cost, the trade off between having too much and too little. But in fact, for this sandwich, what they're trying to do is make it be a steady state. So they would, they want it to be in there forever. And so that's a different way of modeling it. And so because you have replenishments. So I'll teach you both ways of how to manage and model your inventory to take care of this, this demand. Now, then some later courses will also teach you some other things like what procurement you should do, how you should be monitoring the demand and maybe changing your sourcing supply, maybe having dual sources. Because you might wonder, why did it take them two months to get chicken? Why were they out? Because you can calculate $1,000 of sandwiches a day per store, about 2,000 stores. They're losing millions of dollars in lost sales. However, if you look back at this, they generated such demand. There were news stories about this. And it's been estimated that they're running out, actually built up their, their demand. And it was equivalent to about $60 million in paid advertising for free. And so a cynical person could say, well, maybe they did this on purpose, right? To generate more demand because they're making it so scarce that people are really excited. And they launched it back and it's doing very well. But I wanted to tell this story because the principles that we teach for forecasting, inventory and transportation, they apply to everything from chicken sandwiches to iPhones, to airplanes, everything in the middle. And so these are the fundamental supply chain and logistics concepts that I'll teach you that you can apply anywhere. That's great. Thank you, Chris. And this is what I really like of SE1X supply chain fundamentals. What I really like is that it's very applied. It's very industry oriented. And this is what Chris is doing through the course. He's taking the fundamentals, some key concepts in supply chain management and apply to real problems like this one that he just show. And as he mentioned, the big topics we are covering in SE1X are demand forecasting to make you a better professional for casting this demand for different products, new products or existing products. Go through inventory management and see how these models work and the policies behind inventory management and finally transportation management. This is another module that we are covering in SE1X, supply chain fundamentals. If you want to learn more about that, this is the approach we are following. This is just a sample of what we are doing in the course. The course starts in February 19. Dr. Inba Borrella, she's the course lead. So if you want to learn more, just join the course and join Inba and Chris Cap is through that course. So I want also to have a look now to the poll. So we can see from, yes, the interest and what are the primary business function of our learners. So let's see, yes, we have 11%, 35% are in supply chain management. They are supply chain management professional. That's great. I, yeah, this is something that is happening in our courses. Most of our learners are also supply chain management professionals and they are bringing their experience through the discussion forum in our courses. And so what this, what we typically see is you're probably doing something and it might be the way that it's always been done. It makes sense to you, but you don't know why. And so one thing that we found, especially for people who are experienced have been working in the industry for a while. They finally learn why they're doing things a certain way because the math explains it to them. So sometimes we have people say it's easy for them now to explain the concepts and the policies and why they're doing what because they understand the fundamentals behind it. Yeah. I see also people from data management and data, data analytics is funny because last week, I met with the director of data analytics in one of the big companies, one of the retailers and he said, I really want to have my team learn more about the foundations of supply chain management so they can help better the supply chain management department. So also for those who are in data analytics or finance or marketing, if you want just to learn the fundamental piece, the pillars of the supply chain management, this course might be an option for you. Okay. So then with that, now what we are going to do is we are going to invite Yvette Franco and her team to join us. Yvette, she completed this course, supply chain fundamentals and the whole MicroMasters program with us. After doing that, she said, hey, I am applying this concept in my day to day job and I want to bring this to my company, to my team, to my employees. So we invited Yvette and her team and we really want her to share her experience with us today. Thank you Yvette for joining us today. Thank you Yvette for inviting me as well as my team. It's a pleasure meeting you. You as well, Chris. So as you mentioned, my name is Yvette Franco. I am a strategic sourcing manager at IPC. So with over 10 years of professional experience in supply chain and with supply chain quickly evolving two or three years back, I found myself interested in pursuing a Masters. I didn't know at the time what kind of Masters I wanted, but I knew I wanted to pursue further education for two reasons, right? One, to enrich my supply chain knowledge and to stay relevant in the industry. And two, to expand my professional network. So let's talk about what motivated me to take these online classes. So further to these criteria, interesting words, I would say flexibility, affordability, and most importantly, relevancy. So as I'm going through the courses, right, supply chain dynamics, supply chain fundamentals, analytics, I'm finding this more and more relevant to IPC, to what IPC does as an organization. So on that note, let me give you an overview of what supply chain, what IPC does, and who we are. And then you read this because I just want to make sure I'm going to say it correctly. So IPC is an independent, so with franchisee owned and operated purchasing cooperative. So you said what does that IPC stand for? So it's independent purchasing. So IPC works with subway to negotiate the lowest possible cost to help franchisees to be competitive as well as profitable. So in simple words, and the way I explain it to my friends is we do the supply chain for subway. So what does supply chain? What does that exactly mean? So we manage every team from sourcing demand supply, demand planning to logistics, distribution services, inclusive off technology. So after successfully completing the five classes and understanding the relevancy between the program and what IPC does, I propose my leadership team organization and my organization to offer this program to IPC employees. Initially what came to my mind was sourcing demand supply planning. But after having several conversations with my leadership, we came to a conclusion that this was relevant to the entire company because at the end of the day, that's what we do. We do supply chain, right? And I'm very happy to say that after my proposal got approved after five months, about 12 people, if I'm not mistaken, Michelle, I'm signed out for the initial class, which happened to be supply chain fundamentals. So Eva and Chris, if you were to ask me, right, Yvette, so how did supply chain fundamentals help you if you're not doing forecasting and demand planning, right? And my role was in logistics and now I'm a sourcing manager. I will tell you my answer will be in many, many ways. I can tell you today that I can walk into a room full of planners as well as my forecasting team talking about inventory models and exponential smoothing, for example, and I can perfectly understand what they're talking about. And that itself is extremely, extremely powerful being able to understand their challenges, being able to understand the terminology. It helps you to make quick, but informed decisions. And for me, that was really valuable as a supply chain professional. If it was for the current masters, I would have been able to have, you know, those very fruitful conversations with my team. And as you're advancing your career, you will be exposing yourself to different kinds of professional, whether it's logistics, distribution, supply planning, demand planning. So I found this extremely valuable to me. It helps me as a professional, but it does help the company as well, because when you make informed decisions, this is ultimately benefiting the franchisees. And that could be in terms of cost reduction, could be in terms of quick decisions, because when you talk about supply chain, it's all about speed. So on that note, I would like to introduce to Michelle from our HR department, who will be talking about the implementation of the program. Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Michelle. I'm the talent development manager here. And I sit in the human resources department. So when a vet came and shared this opportunity with us, one of the things that we were actually looking at was support for our people. So we care very much for the people within IPC. And one of the things we wanted to make sure to do was provide them opportunities for growth and learning. When we're thinking about opportunities for learning, we're thinking about how can we make sure that our people feel, how can we make sure that people feel successful than the work that they do and knowledgeable than the work they do. If you're with the HR industry, I can see some of you all thought it's called the HR industry. You're thinking a lot about retention of folks. And we want to make sure that people feel really successful within the roles that they have currently. So at IPC, we have obviously not just supply chain folks who work directly within the supply chain function, but we have a lot of folks within data analytics. We have a lot of programmers and they may know a lot of their industry, but then they also need to learn about supply chain. So we've gotten a lot of folks who are really interested within this. So in terms of implementation, we partnered with edX, the platform that offers these courses. And we've worked with them to essentially purchase, pre-purchase a set of coupon codes with edX. And so what we do is we provide these coupon codes to folks who are interested within the program. Now we've also offered the pathway to getting the entire MicroMasters, but we also want to make sure that it's attainable for folks who they may not necessarily have the time for the entire MicroMasters program, but they do want to focus primarily on one aspect of it. So we offer both pathways for folks to engage within the program. One of the challenges that we hear a lot is what's preventing you from moving forward. Time. That is something that is recurring in any organization. Do we have time for professional development? So within our organization, I actually started first Friday study halls. So every first Friday of the month, we actually dedicate time to be able to do professional development within the organization. So being able to prioritize that. And I float the time because I know that people have consistent Friday meetings. So I make sure that sometimes these study halls are in the morning. Sometimes it's in the afternoon. And then within the entire cohort who's taking the programming, I go ahead and let them know by the way, this time is coming up. So remember that you don't have to do the professional development after hours. You can actually do it within our own time because we want to make sure that we support those folks who are investing in themselves as well as investing within the organization. We also make sure that we have an appreciation program. So as soon as anyone finishes that program and passes, I send it directly up the chain. So it's not just their manager, but it's their entire team going all the way up to the executive leadership team in the C-suite and letting them know, please make sure that you congratulate these folks. This was hard. This was tough. And this was an investment within our organization and an investment within their selves. So we make sure to applaud the successes of our team. So that's how we work with it and the HR side. I'm going to go ahead and introduce Brigitte Bachara, who is a purchasing associate here with IPC. Thank you, Michelle. Hello. Good morning. As Michelle said, I'm Brigitte Bachara and I do purchasing for the bakery category within supply chain, within IPC. So I took the fundamentals course at the end of last year, 2019, and I feel it was great. It made me understand supply chain as a whole, not only as procurement, which is what I do currently. So it gives me perspective for other areas that my coworkers perform. So when demand planners, supply planners talk about demand forecasting and inventory management, I'm aware of what they are talking about, the terminology, and the techniques that they are using to perform their work, their job successfully. Also, understanding that the forecasting, as Dr. Caprice said, is deeply tied to the product that is being forecasted. It's fundamental. And obviously it makes you see the importance of having different techniques for forecasting for each product. Also knowing that inventory is also tied to each product is simply brightening and gives you a whole perspective of the supply chain. I'm now pursuing the second course, which is design, and I'm looking forward to pursue the full MicroMasters. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and also for sharing your tips about how you handle that with a full-time work. That is something that is definitely very helpful for our learners. And we always, always recommend, please, book for some time, at least one, two hours per week, just to watch the videos, to go through the material, because online education is very flexible, but you also need the discipline to go through that. So thank you. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. That's great. So with that, what I want is just to highlight here that supply chain fundamentals by itself is a course. It's a standalone course. You can just take this course and earn the certificate in supply chain fundamentals and learn about these three pillars that we mentioned here. However, if you want to go further, the supply chain fundamentals course also open to you different pathways and different opportunities. One of these opportunities, and let me share with you my screen to mention these opportunities. One of these opportunities is the supply chain bootcamp at MIT. This is a five-day base on campus immersion program. This is just an opportunity for those who complete this course, these 12 weeks of an online course, they can apply to the supply chain bootcamp and come here for five days. What's the idea behind that? The idea is just that you are going to be exposed to MIT researchers, MIT faculties, cutting-edge technology. We also invite industry speakers to bring the reality and to discuss current challenges in supply chain management, and it's all about interaction. It's all about to come on campus, discuss complex problems, think about the future of the supply chain, how the new trends, how technology is impacting or are impacting the supply chains. This is the offer we have for this summer, for those who complete supply chain fundamentals. In addition to that, definitely we have other options and options that are, let's say, more comprehensive for more academically, more complete or comprehensive. And this is the MicroMasters in supply chain management. Supply chain fundamentals is one of the courses, the first course, indeed, of this program. The program offers five MOOCs, five courses, all about supply chain, from supply chain analytics to supply chain technologies and systems. Each course, the duration is 12 weeks. In total, you need to spend around 12 to 18 months to complete the whole program. On each course, you need kind of 8 to 10 hours of dedication per week. And at the end, you need to pass a comprehensive final exam. This program is a pathway for a master's degree. Here, at MIT, you can apply for the master's degree in supply chain management, but also it's a pathway for master's degrees in more than 20 universities. You can apply to Harvard Extension, to Purdue University, different universities in Latin America, in Europe, and also in Australia. So we have a comprehensive offer of new pathways for continuing learning more about supply chain management. So what you have here is a whole portfolio, taking the course by itself. It might be enough for you. It might be all that you need, but there's other opportunities. And what Ava was talking about with the boot camp, that really complements what you're going to be doing online. Because what we're doing online is teaching you the models, make sure you understand the fundamentals, mainly the math and the concepts behind the decisions. If you come to boot camp, we'll flesh that out with making it more experiential. And so you'll understand and work with teams, because that's the leadership side, the soft side of supply chain that you really, it's hard to do online. So that's why these two fit together really well. And if you want to continue on for a graduate degree or can finish the whole credential, that'll again flesh out even more of your knowledge in the whole supply chain profession. So pick what you want to do. Start with SC1X and see if you want to go further. You can do it at your own pace. Yeah. And the good thing is it's very modular. So you can pick just one piece or two pieces or the number of pieces that you really need for your career development. Okay. So with that, we are going to try to answer all of your questions. We know that you have many different questions. So one of the questions is related about, let's see, let's go to this one. How is the course for guys who work in supply chain management IT applications like SAP, GDA and so on. Yeah. So some of these, I think Arthur might be replying back to you for those, but for this one, it applies. So if you're using any GDA or any of these tools, Manhattan Associates Oracle, it's magic, right? When you press the button, it comes up with an answer. It's telling you a stocking level. It's actually just doing all the math that we're teaching you in SC1X. Excuse me. So what this will help you do is understand the math behind what the system is telling you. In fact, SC4X, we go specifically and talk about supply chain management software, WMSs, TMSs, ERPs, planning systems. So we'll talk about those, but in SC1X, we're telling you the math that is underneath all the systems that you see when you use any package software system. Yes. So another question. Anyone can attend summer camp, would come? No, this is solely for those who complete and pass supply chain fundamentals. As Chris mentioned, the bootcamp is a blended offer. So first, you need to take SC1X, supply chain fundamentals, 12 weeks, 100% online. And once you complete and pass this course, you are able to apply for the bootcamp here at MIT on campus for five days this summer. We are offering in June, mid-June this year. Some of you are asking about the cost of the bootcamp. The cost of the bootcamp is $5,500. For those who are micro-master holders, there is a very special discount of $1,000. So this is what we are offering here. And you can see all of the details in the website that my team will be sharing with you after this event. Okay. So while we're answering questions, there's also a poll that was opened. And it's asking about when you think the EOQ, which is a model we talk about, economic order quantity, when it was that first published. So we'll get to that in a second. But a question I want to answer, Syed asks, actually every organization has to do some sort of forecasting, but many times it goes wrong. So how much can we trust forecasting data? Absolutely. That's one of the big lessons, that forecasts are always wrong, but you have to do it. You have to set a direction. So we talk about that. We talk about how putting ranges around that, what your competence interval is. So it's a great question. And in fact, that's why the inventory models you set up use not just the forecast for the demand that you're trying to plan for, but you look at the variance of your error. And so that actually determines what we call safety stock. So we'll talk all about that because you're never going to trust a forecast exactly based on how much you trust it. That'll determine how much inventory you need to keep on hand to keep on hand for buffer or safety stock. Great question. Yes. We have a couple of questions. Aji and Hari, they are asking about, should I take first supply chain fundamentals? Should I take first supply chain analytics? Great question. So you can start with supply chain fundamentals. You can start with supply chain analytics. This depends on your math background. And also depends on if you want to pursue for the whole micro master or not. If you are just only interested in the fundamentals of supply chain management, I will encourage you to take supply chain fundamentals. It's very applied. We use some math, some tools, some techniques, but it's very applied. If you are interested in the micro masters, your math background is not very strong. Then in those cases, I would recommend you to start with supply chain analytics. Supply chain analytics now is offered the whole year. And we are offering this course as a course reference. This means that while you are taking supply chain fundamentals, you can go and review those modules of supply chain analytics that you need to reinforce or review in order to complete supply chain fundamentals or supply chain design or any other course. So SC0X supply chain analytics is very flexible. Now is the reference course of the micro master program and you can take up front or during, you are taking the other courses as part of the micro masters program. And if this is your first immersion and you just want to learn about the pillars supply chain fundamentals, maybe it's the best way to enter in this field. All right. A question from Solomon. What are the potential benefits for this supply chain management program for operations research degree holders? So awesome. If you have an OR degree, then the math will not be daunting to you at all. So you can focus in on the concepts and how it's applied because for OR models, you learn really fundamental mathematical models and they can be applied in different places. What we'll show you is which approaches make sense for different settings in supply chain. So you'll probably use your full tool belt of techniques. And so SC0X is a place you should take a look at, because you can probably complete that very quickly, because in that course we cover probability statistics, regression, optimization, going from classic optimization to linear programming and mixed integer linear programming. So you'll be able to see the scope of the tools and the rest of the courses is where we apply them. So your big benefit is going to be context to see how it can be applied and it'll help you see where the tools that you learned in your OR degree can fit in and be used in practice. So if you have a question from one learner, he's asking if he can take more than one the course, the answer is yes. This course is we are offering this February and also again this September 2020. You can take the course as many times as you need, as you want. It's open enrollment and anyone from anywhere can enroll as many times as you want. If when you decide to go through the course and you want to enroll, you can enroll as many times as you want. Then I definitely think it's good that you book for some time in order to put the effort because you need to pay the fee and become a verified learner and follow all of the assignments. So in that case it's good that you book for some hours per week just to dedicate to the course. Because the course is equivalent to MIT content in which our learners are dedicating between six to ten hours per week. Depends on the week for sure, but there is some hours that definitely you should dedicate to the course in order to complete and pass all of the assessment. So a similar question from Tin. I have a master's degree in statistics and recently joined a supply chain logistics company. How will this course help me? Again, some of the math will be trivial for you. Now maybe you haven't done as much optimization, so that might be new to you. But for statistics, the forecasting should be a breeze for you. Because we talk about that using straight regression in some cases and looking at errors. So it will help complement you. Again, it gives you context for all those tools you learned in your degree of where they fit in in supply chain. And it will flesh out your toolkit to understand other skills you need to work in supply chain management. As well as other courses Juan is asking. As well as other courses, will fundamentals have some virtual field trips or business cases as supplement? Yeah. So we try everything. Supply chain is applied science, right? We take math and we apply it to practice. And so everything we do to teach a concept, we only teach it if there is a real world application. So we try to constantly use those. Now in some of the other courses we actually go and video going to a workshop to show you how to do that. We do a lot of things like we do a lot of things like we do a workshop on a warehouse or other other plants. We don't do as much of that in here, but we do applications or problems from practice. We tie things into what's actually being done with real examples from business. So yes, we use real examples. First I teach it on a very simple level, but then we apply it to a larger problem. And so the short answer is yes, we have a lot of APICs, certificates. And asking about the differences and if it makes sense to take this program or this course if you are an APIC certificate. I would say yes. We have a lot of APICs, professionals, CSCMP professionals that also are taking this course for different reasons. As I mentioned, our courses are equivalent to graduate courses at MIT. So are equivalent in terms of offering to what we are offering here at MIT. And also it's a pathway for a master's degree. So some of our professionals at some point in their life they decided to pursue for this academic pathway. We have some of the APIC professionals, CSCMP professional taking just one specific course or the whole program. And we graduate two years ago from the master's degree at MIT, one of those professionals here. I like to think of it as a T. And so APICs will cover a broader range. They go much broader but they don't go as deep. We tend to go, we show the length that we go to from supply chain fundamentals and systems but we go much deeper. And so it's just a different way of how you want to approach. They compliment each other and many of our credential holders like Ava said have APICs certification as well. Another one was from Fumlani asks are there any academic minimum requirements to be eligible to take any of the SCX courses. No, it's open for anyone. However, in SC1X I think in the week zero there's a quick little math thing just to see how well you're doing. You should be able to do algebra. You should be up to high school maybe low level undergrad math. You should be comfortable with math. If you've been working in the industry for 10 years you learn your toolkit gets narrower and narrower as you're doing the same job and you might have learned some of this stuff at one time but you've probably forgotten it. So one of the challenges that the students need to overcome is getting the rust off of those techniques. You learned it once but now you've got to reapply it. So no, we don't require you to have certain things and we try to help you along. We don't require you to have certain things and we don't require you to have certain things at all times because if I start talking for example in forecasting about regression and you can say I think I saw that once before you can go to zero and pull up that lesson and learn that really quickly and say okay now I see and in SC1X we apply it to an actual problem. So there is no minimum requirement and we try to help you along with that. So it's a good way to help you better understand the community TAs or your peers. It's the best resource to help you learn. Nice comment from Eduardo. This program is amazing. Thank you Eduardo. Eduardo is asking if we are in addition to these courses if we are preparing or planning to offer new SCX courses. We are working now on a new SCX course that is going to be a different SCX course that you can take. So this is one course and another course that my colleague is working on is in a supply chain course about humanitarian logistics. He's an expert on that topic and he and his team are preparing also another move in humanitarian logistics. So these are the two new moves that are going to be a part of the MicroMasters. They are there to augment and it will probably help you if you have done SCX before you do these but it's not required. So I can see us doing more of these on specialty topics but they probably won't change the core of the MicroMasters. We have one question for Yvette and her team from Juan. Yvette, Michelle, can you please answer this question? I think you muted. Yes. And I can't repeat the question. So for the IPC team, the implementation of the MicroMasters, I don't think that it was that difficult. It really was about supporting our individuals and making sure that we worked with them in terms of this is how much time you need to spend with the programming. And I think that Yvette was really masterful in that. She came and did the Q&As with us. Folks were able to ask her, how was your experience? Now Yvette was also doing this while she was also going to school for communications. So she was juggling a lot. She was really able to speak to her experience going through this. And for us it's about providing a clear understanding of what we're going to be doing. We're going to be doing a lot of taking over in terms of technicalities. This is what you have to do to register with edX. This is what's going to happen in the next few weeks once it starts. This is how it's going to feel like. So it's really about managing the experience and supporting the expectations of the program. I'm not sure if I fully answered what you think we're going to do. Great. I think one of the challenges that people do have as they take what we teach in the class and apply it to their company, every company has different terminology. You might use slightly different terms or phrases. So understanding when we say cycle service level, what is your company calling it? I try to use the terms that are most common in academia and in practice, but every company is a little bit different. As you learn these fundamentals, you'll start identifying how my company is doing something a little different and maybe it should change or maybe you start understanding why your company is doing a certain thing a certain way. So that's one of the challenges that I've seen that people have had is translating using the same terms. But that happens from company to company, industry to industry. And since we want you to become the profit profit in your company, it's a new way to introduce your company. I would excuse to do that. So let's go to the poll. Apparently many of you can use Google and you looked up the correct date because the correct answer is 1913. So the shocking thing here is one of the major ways that we set up inventory it's been around for over a hundred years, right? And so the economic order quantity, you learn to love it. It's there and it's embedded in every system. I don't care if you're using SAP, JDA, Apple, Manhattan, you name it how sophisticated it is, whether it's in the cloud or not, you're probably using a hundred year old model to model a certain part of your inventory, EOQ. Yeah. We have one question related to the blended master's degree here. He's from Sandip. He's asking if there is any recommended percentage that we should get into the micro master credential. The higher, the better. I would say yes. Do your best. Do your best. We look into different things. For sure we take into consideration your performance in the five courses plus the comprehensive final exam, but it's more than that. We review the whole case, the whole application, your essay, your proposal for the capstone project, the letters of recommendation, your video. So it's a full assessment of your case. And one of the things that we really look for is your ability to do research in a short period of time. Because for that program you come in in January, the class just got here four weeks ago and you graduate in May. So you have five months, five months to do either a thesis or a major research capstone project. And so we want to be able to make sure that you can actually accomplish that. And so part of the application process is where you tell us about a research project that you would want to do. And we ask you within your company, because you probably know your company best, doesn't mean you're going to have to work on that project. About half the students end up working on those projects that they recommended. But it gives us an idea, does this person understand how to do a project, how to do research. Because that helps us make decisions and see who will be successful here. It's a multi-dimensional criteria. There is no magic number that you achieve. And if you're above it, you get in. We really look for that well-rounded. You got to do well in the courses. Because to be honest, if you don't do well in the courses, you will do horrible here at MIT. So it's just a minimum standard to make sure you get in and can actually be successful here on campus. But the whole package matters. Regarding if we are asking for supply chain management experience, yes. We are also asking for supply chain management professional experience. But to add to that, because we have the 10 month full program, and that's actually more geared to people who are three to five to six years into their careers who need more career development. Because if you're here for 10 months, you get more of that. If you're only here for five months, we assume you already have a lot of that and you just want to get in, get out, get ahead. So we tend to admit older students, to be honest, because they're more experienced. They're able to attack this as opposed to someone who's, say, 27, been working for three years, they might need more career development. And maybe the 10 month program is better for them. So we try to look at those decisions as well. Yeah. Let's take the last question. What's the difference between SC1x and SC0x in self-paced? Yeah, the SC1x supply chain fundamentals is an instructor-paced course. This means that every Wednesday, we are releasing a new week of content. And then you have two weeks to complete the graded assignment. During one specific week, you need to take the meter or the final exam. SC0x is a self-paced course. This means that all of the materials are released the day number one. First day, you will have access to the whole course. And you can review the material at your own pace. And at the end of the course, during one week, the final exam will be open for you to take and pass this final exam. So SC0x is more flexible, self-paced, SC1x is instructor-paced. You need to follow the schedule we are giving to you. But the content is totally different. I mean, that's the thing. So they're delivered in two different ways, but the content is very different. SC0x is all about the mathematical models that you're going to be using, mathematical methods and techniques throughout the whole supply chain management sequence of courses. So that's basic analytics, probability, statistics, optimization, et cetera. SC1x is all about logistics. Forecasting, inventory, transportation. And so really focused on those areas. So the content is different. The delivery is different. Yes. So another question from Gustavo, the MicroMaster is inclusive of transportation slash stored safety aspects. Yes and no. Yes, we cover transportation, mainly modal choice, variability. We do a little bit of last mile for there and looking at routing and things like that. It's really understanding how transportation fits in and drives the supply chain. In 3x, we actually cover some international transportation. That's a little different because whenever you cross a border, things get kind of strange. And warehouse storage, we do some of that for warehousing and talk about some of those techniques. As far as safety, we don't specifically address that to be honest, the safety within those things. That would be a different course. Yes. Okay. I think we cover all of our questions. Thank you so much, please for sharing the mini lesson with this audience. Thank you Yvette team for joining us today and sharing your experience with our audience. Thank you so much everyone. If you are interested, you know we are open on February 19. Thank you so much. Thank you.