 Hello, learners, and welcome to the first-life event of SC3x Supply Chain Dynamics. We're very excited to be here today at the beginning of this new run of SC3x that is one of the most fun courses of the MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management. I'm Ima Borrella. I'm a postdoctoral associate here at MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. I'm originally from Spain. I have quite a lot of experience as a course lead in SCX courses. I run SC0x, SC1x, and now SC3x. And I'm really lucky to be here today with our guest speaker for the session, who is Maria Jesus-Siam. Welcome, Maria Jesus. Hello, everybody. Thank you for being here with us today. It's a pleasure for me. Maria Jesus-Siam joined the Center for Transportation and Logistics one month ago. And she's an expert in collaboration in supply chain management. So she will be talking to us today about the challenges in supply chain collaboration. I will tell you a little bit more about her experience and her work later in the before the discussion. So let me share with you the presentation with the agenda for today's life event there. There it is. So today's life event will be one hour long from 1,500 UTC to 1,600 UTC. And this is the agenda. First, we will start with a brief overview of the program. I ensure most of you are familiar with the MITx MicroMasters in supply chain management. But I want to make sure you all are aware of the point or the moment in which you are in the path for the MicroMasters credential is when you start this SC3x course. Then I will dive deeper into the course, SC3x supply chain dynamics and briefly discuss course logistics and the key dates. After that, we will start our discussion with Maria Jesus about challenges for supply chain collaboration. We'll save some time for questions and answers and we will wrap up the life event. For questions and answers, we want to hear from you, to hear your comments, to answer your questions. So we will be using Slido. Please, in order to communicate your questions and comments to us, go to 3w.slido.do or slido.com that also works and enter the code SC3x. Arthur will share this information in the YouTube chat with you too. So let's start with an overview of the MicroMasters. At this point, almost half a million learners have enrolled one of our courses. 15,000 of them were verified and we have issued 22,000 certificates. That's an amazing number. 196 countries are represented by our learners and we have awarded already 1064 MicroMasters credentials. And this number will increase in August when we celebrate and when we open our next CFX. So the MicroMaster consists of five courses and a comprehensive final exam. As you know, our courses are open to anyone, anywhere in the world with internet connectivity. We propose a program that is all about supply team management and it consists of five courses, SC0x, SC1x, SC2x, 3x and 4x and a proctor final exam. At the end, if you complete all these six steps, you will get a credential MicroMasters in supply team management credential and it can be a pathway to an MIT master's in engineering. So what is the big picture? Well, we have all these courses and most of you have already gone through the first three courses that are focused on conceptual models that are more mathematical, more quantitative. In SC0, you learned a lot of different techniques and how to build analytical models that are commonly used in supply team management. In SC1x, you learn how to do the basic trade-offs between forecasting, inventory management and transportation planning. And in SC2x, you learn how to design physical information on financial flows. And now we're switching gears. We're going from conceptual models to introducing real-life complications because we all know that in real life, well, these conceptual models are nice to learn more and to take decisions but there's much more happening. So that's where we are trying to do in SC3x. We introduce complexity and also analyze the impact of the surgeon's forces that impact supply chains. And after that, in SC4x, you will learn how to manage different technologies like databases and systems and processes for managing real supply chains. So we are in this second side, the real-life complications and we will be working with more qualitative staff here. The value proposition, you already know about that. We offer these courses as an individual professional career development. It can also be used as a team and staff training for your companies. And it is, and this is very important, a pathway to getting an MIT master's in half the time. So if you get all the micromasters courses and pass the final exam to get your credential, then you could access the blended program here at MIT and spending five months here with us. And at the end, you will get a master's of engineering from MIT. Just keep this in mind if you're pursuing the micromasters credential. So a little bit of deep dive in SC3x, that's why we're all here. We have a great group of learners, almost 6,000 learners enrolled to date. And we still have a little bit more than a week before enrollment closes. So this number will very likely go up. 390 of these learners are verified. Remember that verified learners are the only ones who will get a certificate when they pass the course. And if you're pursuing the micromasters credential, you should be getting verified. Verification closes on July 18. So make sure you get verified before that date. Our learners have come from 151 different countries and we have an amazing team of eight community teaching assistants and one teaching assistant here at MIT who will be helping us run the course and moderate the forms. So seek for help from them in the course forums. The course contents, well, we will be covering supply chain dynamics, collaboration and contracts. That's actually a topic we will be covering today in the life event too. Supply chain strategy, global supply chains, risk and resilience. And also we will talk about exogenous factors. Courses schedule. Remember these dates because they are very important. The course started on June 20. It will end on September 19. The enrollment deadline is next week, July 11. And the verification deadline is July 18 in a couple of weeks. The MITRA exam will be open from August 1st to August 8th and there's no extensions to the deadline. So please plan in advance for the exam and also a final exam that will take place between September 12th and September 19. So mark your calendars. And I just wanted to share with you the advantages of being a verified learner besides getting a certificate and an official proof of completion if you pass the course. It has been a proven motivator for learners to complete the course because once they've engaged and they've upgraded, they are motivated to continue with the course and they don't give up. You also, verified learners also get extra contents such as more practice problems, supplemental readies, videos with interviews with experts in the field and more. So, and yes, I just wanted to highlight if you want to pursue a MicroMasters credential, you need to be a verified learner in all of our courses. For getting verified, the step one is just like to go into the follow the verification link and pay the fee. And a second step that a lot of people forget and it's important is to get ID verified. You need to take a picture of yourself and also show your photo ID with your full name. If you find any problem with the ID verification, please contact info at edx.org. But the ID verification is fundamental. If you don't do it, even if you have paid, you won't get the certificate. All right, so after this overview of the course, let's start with the discussion. That is the most interesting part of the life event. So back to our faces, hello again. And let me start by introducing a little bit better, Maria Jesus Sainth. Maria Jesus Sainth has a lot of experience in supply chain management, both in research, so in the academic side, and also in collaboration with companies, with the industry. Dr. Sainth leads the research area at MIT on collaborative networks. He primarily research aims at leveraging the empirical and formal connections among inter-organizational businesses and their drivers for collaboration. And she particularly, she has been studying new collaborative paradigms, paradigms, difficult word, and digital transformations. She has more than 80 publications, including books and articles in leading international journals. And she has lead research projects for companies such as Procter & Gamble, Carrefour, Ralph Lauren and many others on supply chain management innovation. She teaches several courses as master, micromaster and executive education level in supply chain management, multidimensional collaboration, risk, resilience, and project management. That's a lot of teaching. She's certified in participant center learning by Harvard Business School. Her doctoral thesis got a con laude and outstanding doctoral thesis award from the University of Zaragoza. And before coming to MIT, she's been an associate professor of the School of Engineering at University of Zaragoza. And she was also the director of the Zaragoza Logistics Center. That's one of our partners in the scale network. So welcome Maria Jesus. Thank you so much for being here with us. Please tell anything else about yourself because I'm sure you have much more experience than what I was able to fit in one minute description. Thank you very much for bringing me here. It's a pleasure for me just to share our thoughts, reflection about collaborative networks and supply chain collaboration. So thank you very much and thank you for your presentation. Great. So let's start by knowing a little more about yourself and also like about your interest for collaborative networks and collaboration in supply chains. Yeah, I find the topic quite fascinating. And why? Because supply chains are quite complex because we are in a global setting. So it's not easy just to work with other cultures. I mean, people and companies with other principles, other visions, other value proposition. So how we can align these different ways of thinking just to be more efficient in the supply chain, just to get better performance in the supply chain. So for me, this is an interesting and fascinating topic due to this complexity. We are human beings. We belong to organizations. We have our own principles within our organizations of how we can align these different principles. But particularly I am now interested in how to face, how to deal with this digital transformation in the supply chain domain, in the network domain. Great. So the title of our life event was challenges for collaborations in supply chain management. But before going into challenges, what does it mean supply chain collaboration? Yeah, if you ask this question to different companies, you will find, I guess, different kinds of answers, very different kinds of answers. So maybe for a logistics service provider, he or she, they can say that collaboration is just to work with their partners, customers. But so this, I mean, the mean of work has different kind of implications and different kind of deployment. So then if we go to the more formal definition of collaboration in the supply chain setting is when different partners that are working in the chain, in the value chain, let's put it that way, value chain, putting value as a main word, how they experiment together in solving real problems, solving complex problems. These problems could be short-term problems, but could be also long-term problems. How they promote innovation in the supply chain setting when we're talking about innovation. So usually we are thinking about product innovation, but what about process innovation? When you are talking about process innovation and supply chain, you need to understand how your suppliers work, how downstream your customers work, where are their expectations, where are the end user expectations, how we are bringing these expectations upstream in the supply chain, how we are working with our logistics service providers careers in a more efficient way. And especially the speed of the market today, of the economy today is quite huge, right? So then we need to speed up, so we need to be very well aligned, right? So this means that we need to collaborate, we're not with all our partners, but with some particular partners, just to make this life in the global supply chain easier, right? When we are talking about collaboration, we are talking about sharing risks and sharing benefits, right? Not only risks, but also benefits. We are talking about sharing resources, key resources, not all resources, key resources that will bring the synergy into the table. Synergy means that one plus one is three, and not two, right? So then that if we are collaborating, we are sharing your key resources, my key resources, but we are making a competitive advantage out of this collaboration. From my point of view, for example, when a shipper manufacturer is asking or contracting a service to a logistics service provider for moving for shipping their freight, for me, this is not collaboration because this is a pure transaction. I am paying for this particular service, right? So there is no difference about the resource that we are sharing. But where we are talking about this collaboration is when there are strategic resources for the benefit of this synergy behind our collaboration, right? So it means a unique combination of resources, unique combination of resources, and they put emphasis on this unique, which can lead to an advantage over other companies. And I want also to emphasize that this can lead. Sometimes in a collaboration, you need to put some efforts and resources just for the sake of exploration, because maybe you will find some opportunities, but these opportunities will come later, I don't know, later in supply chain could mean six months time, but then you need to make the effort to explore only about these opportunities that are unique within the relationship. So if we are collaborating in a successful way, this means that the results of the value created together are higher than the ones that the results created by individual efforts, right? So then it's important to align very well what is the value, the joint value proposition while we are collaborating. And this value proposition could be translated into some quantitative kind of results, but also some other qualitative kind of results that need to be combined. So talking about the micro master courses, talking about the courses, particularly in supply chain three, we are gonna learn how to quantify some of these benefits. And also we are gonna learn how to align these quantitative benefits, quantitative results out of the coordination and collaboration in supply chain together with some additional qualitative benefits that are the main differentiator differentiator with other kind of collaborative relationships. I think that's really, really interesting. Actually I've read in some papers that nowadays the competition is not among companies, but among supply chains. So actually I think like there, it fits really well with you what you were mentioning about like you need to collaborate with other partners in your supply chain in order to be more competitive because not you against the rest, because it's your supply chain against other supply chains. But it's true that collaboration is a dangerous word. Sometimes I mean some companies think that this is just something weak if you collaborate. It's a real kind of feeling from companies, right? So if I am collaborating with you, I am sharing key resources with you, maybe I am losing part of my competitive advantage, especially if I am doing some kind of exploration that maybe could not bring any immediate sort of results while supply chain is quite dynamic. So, but on the other hand, some successful companies and we have several examples in the long history of supply chain. We have Toyota, we have Procter App Camel, we have Dell, I mean, Amazon is collaborating with some even competitors like DHL in the logistics market, right? And they are collaborating, right? So there are different and very successful examples that show that there is a real competitive advantage out of collaborating with key partners. That's interesting. So you're mentioning that actually Amazon is collaborating with competitors. So that's not the collaboration you were like describing before of collaborating with partners in supply chain, but actually collaborating with someone that is a direct competitor. How, yeah, is this another type of collaboration? Yeah, there are different ways of collaborating in a supply chain. I like to call it multi-dimensional collaboration because you can collaborate vertically. This is the most typical, not easy way of collaborating but this is the most typical. So vertical means that buyer and supplier are collaborating by a supplier of products, goods, also maybe buyer and supplier for services, like a logistic service provider with their shippers or their retailers downstream, right? But there are other ways of collaborating, for example, in terms of horizontal collaboration when different companies that are at the same level of the supply chain, for example, supplier with supplier selling goods to the same retailer. So these two suppliers could perform a good horizontal collaboration or maybe two logistic service providers who are collaborating just for enlarging the scope of their networks. Maybe there is one small region that one logistic service provider cannot get access to because there is not enough infrastructure or maybe it was not under their strategy to cover this particular regional area. Or maybe two manufacturers working together just for developing a new kind of product, a new kind of process, or maybe two retailers. This is something that could be a part of it, working on sharing the same distribution network, right? So there is one interesting concept that is called physical internet. It's very long-term vision. While, yeah, there are open networks that can be shared by the different users, for example, retailers can share a distribution center, not a logistics service provider, and the same distribution center in an open manner, right? So there are different levels of horizontal collaboration. So again, the two partners that are at the same level of a supply chain could be the same supply chain or maybe different supply chains while they are maybe collaborating just for developing a new law, a new principle, or the new policy in a particular sustainable kind of setting, for example, right? So there are different ways of collaborating. So multi-dimensional, vertical, horizontal, or maybe the mixing are both of them, right? When we are collaborating in a vertical setting in a more traditional way, but also horizontally with different kind of partners. And the maximum complexity or difficulty I would say is when two competitors are collaborating. And yeah, is it feasible? Yeah, it's feasible and can be done, but these requires just to develop a very clear value proposition. And usually this collaboration is not on the main core of the business. Maybe they can share part of the tracks, they can share part of the logistics networks, but they will not share anything about, of course, profit innovation or market switch. And so, yeah, yeah, it's hard to believe, right? Two direct competitors are gonna be collaborating. Ami, could you tell us something more about the Amazon DHL collaboration? Yeah, I like this example because, yeah, imagine that you have an Audi car, right? So that you are, I mean, you are in love of e-commerce, so you are buying, I mean, twice a week, twice a day, for example, yeah. Let's try to be creative, for example, in the scenario. And then you buy through Amazon, and then you are gonna receive one of your parcels through Amazon. And so Amazon uses DHL bands just to deliver your parcel, right? So then one option could be, okay, I will receive it at home. So it means you will receive it at home. It means that you need to be there from, I don't know, to from 10 to 2, 10 a.m., from 2 p.m., just to wait for your parcel. So this is something that sometimes is not feasible. So then Amazon, DHL and Audi have performed a collaboration setting. Just when you are gonna receive your parcel, you go to your, I mean, to your phone, then you activate the car boot of your Audi car, right? Then the car boot is opened. You are for the driver of the DHL band, right? So he puts his jaw parcel into your car boot, right? Then he accepts, you receive the confirmation, then you close, you block the car boot, and then your product is in your car, in your hands, without any effort, without any additional complication. Everything is so smooth, right? So this is the kind of collaboration where there is wing, wing, wing, wing, right? So then Amazon is winning because it's providing good service, immediate service. You, I mean, DHL is collaborating with Amazon with the very extensive network. Audi is providing to their users a very, I mean, interesting and luxury feature in your car and in your phone. And the final user, of course, this is the main benefit. Would you don't have to wait for the parcel to arrive? So then again, analyzing the opportunity, thinking out of the box. So, I mean, we are the different stakeholders, what are the different implications? What is the value proposition? And so, and what, of course, importantly, what the technology is allowing us just to get access to this kind of innovation. So then let's start working, thinking about the companies. Let's start making the collaboration setting. Let's think about what kind of resources every of them can put into the table in order to have this differentiator. It's important to say that collaboration usually takes place in the short midterm, especially talking about digitization. When the companies, I mean, are thinking about digitization as an autonomous way, right? So then this will come in the long term. So we are thinking about autonomous supply chains that will use all this information available. But I mean, the companies need to establish successful collaborative settings before taking use and taking advantage of this data that is coming from the digitization. This is where collaboration has a place nowadays. So you have reached your bio and you're an expert in innovation supply chains and collaboration. I guess those two are very closely related. In the example you just shared with us, it's, they just created an innovative process for delivering parcels to customers. So I'm just curious, could you say that collaboration drives innovation or innovation drives collaboration? Yes, yeah, it's the chicken and egg. You're gonna learn by the way, a lot of chicken and eggs in SC3. You're gonna learn a lot about how to model this kind of relationships, right? About collaboration, innovation. Yeah, the both are together, right? So then the partners need to start exploring new ways of innovating the supply chain that we have an impact in their products, in the services, in their markets. And then this requires to understand their partners, upstream suppliers, downstream retailers, customers, horizontally, I mean, potential partners in an horizontal setting. What is the potential just to improving processes from the logistic service providers, from the networks? There are all the roles that are also important, for example, neutral trustees when you are working with an horizontal setting, for example, and two logistic service providers are working together. So maybe they will need for the starting, the collaborative setting and making this setting more autonomous in the long run, maybe they will need some kind of trustee in order to set the rules. That will mean we win for the two parts and we win in the long-term, in long-term, sustainable way. So then this will require some trustee. So then again, coming back to your question, definitely collaboration needs, innovation, innovation needs collaboration, they are working together in the supply chain setting. Okay, so it really looks like wonderful after like, and you're very passionate about it, so it looks like a supply chain collaboration can really drive value creation. So where are the drivers in collaboration and also the main barriers to overcome for seeing more of these initiatives, companies collaborating with each other? Yeah, we run a survey several, couple of years ago in Europe, we surveyed 300 more companies about these particular questions, what are the drivers? What are the barriers for collaborating? And particularly in the horizontal setting, just because it was more innovative. And yeah, we were surprised about the results. So thinking about drivers, maybe our learners can guess where the drivers, but for example, I mean, cost reduction was the main important driver. Sometimes sustainable results could be in the, also in the agenda, just for collaborating. One interesting example is how, for example, Marriott, Marriott Hotels and Snaven Electric, how they are collaborating for being more sustainable. So they are collaborating just about what is the hotel equipment that Snaven Electric could, I mean, be deployed in their hotel channels. This was a project run in China, China Hotels, Marriott Hotels in China. And it was interesting because not only they found very good results in terms of saving CO2 emissions, it was their main primary goal, but also they found that they were able to reduce a lot of different costs that really they improve the service level to their customers in terms of the comfort areas, in terms of also to make it more efficient in their stay. So they were able to put some additional benefits in their accommodations for the clients due to the savings, right? We also found in our survey another kind of drivers, for example, demanding customers, are demanding more quick, more efficient supply chains. So then you require to be aligned with your suppliers. I like in that particular del, del, just for when they made this disruptive innovation, the supply chains was, yeah, one decade ago, they were aligned with the suppliers. So then they tried their suppliers to think like that. As for the quicker and the supply chains. So when a problem happens, especially in the electronic industry, right? When a problem happens, so the suppliers will react more quickly just because they were aligned by the form, right? But this requires some training. This requires some compatibility, compatibility in the processes just to bring this, I mean, quickly into the deployment. So then this alignment is important and customers are demanding this kind of quicker alignment, right? Another driver, of course, is service level. And at the end, you need to be more efficient in the supply chain and the service that you provide in terms of time deliveries, increase differentiation. So the example that we just commented, Amazon DHL and Audi is just to put a differentiator in their service for the three, for especially Amazon and Audi, increased competition. So these are the drivers. Talking about barriers, this was interesting because we can think about barriers and maybe we were thinking about infrastructure. We can think about, I mean, operational barriers like, okay, if my handling system is not aligned when I am sending a particular shape of my goods or a particular pallet or, but the main barrier with the important difference was our organizational culture and internal politics. There are companies that they don't believe in collaboration and that's the case. And this is fabulous. Distrust everyone else, right? So then they don't want to take the risk of shutting these key resources because maybe they had bad experiences. So this explorative phase was not overcome and then they were not able to go to this rotation phase where the results are coming, right? So maybe they had bad experiences and so then this cultural issues important because for collaborating, for collaboration, you need to think out of the box. So you need to think out of your regular process and think about new ways of performing those processes. So yeah, this needs an extra effort, an extra risk. So then culture, lack of trust, how to find the key partners. So here to whom is a key question? So you cannot collaborate with everybody because then the risk is huge, the effort is huge. So you need to select with partners whatever will be the role in the collaborating and multidimensional collaborating setting which role they will play in this kind, in these relationships. Managerial inertia. So then why are we gonna break the process if the process is working properly? Why are we gonna work in a different way? If we are getting a lot of benefits and we are getting a lot of recognition in the market, this is where the opportunity. If you don't collaborate, if you don't align, if you don't explore innovation, then maybe your competitor will do it and then will get the reward. So it seems to seem like the barriers were more, I mean, organizational oriented than operational kind of quantity for you. That's very interesting. And the barriers were all about culture, perceptions, aversion to risk. It's important to quantify the results. Quantifying the results, quantifying the win-win, quantifying the quick wins is a way of showing demonstrated that the collaboration has a path to follow. Because all the drivers were seemed easier to measure than the barriers. It was easier to get an agreement with your customer, your retailer. This sometimes is not easy. Why I am so special to work with you and know the others, right? So, yeah, this kind of thing require effort. So to overcome all these barriers, that you need to show that there's some benefit to collaborate. But it might be difficult to obtain immediate benefits out of collaborate. All of this complexity might take some time with all the exploration and finding the right partners and the right idea. So how could we create a joint value in a supply chain? So moving for the gains sharing paradigm to the value sharing paradigm. First, it requires to understand your partners. So how they work, what are the flexibility they can offer? What are the main strategic principles? So you need to understand the partners, your partners very well, just to answer if they are prepared or not. So then once you know your partners, you can start sharing what is the gain that every partner could bring into the table. And this is a very quantitative approach, right? If we are working together, we are two suppliers going to a particular retailer. And maybe we are collaborating for sharing our freight in order to go to our retailer with higher levels of full truckload, right? Which brings some benefits. And this will bring also some savings because usually maybe sometimes you go with less on truckload. I go with less on truckload. If we are merging part of our freight, then we will increase this percentage of full truckload. So then one way will be to share this quantitative gains, quantitative savings, right? There are very sophisticated ways of doing through a lot of PhDs doing, I mean, behind all these calculations about game theories, aptly value. There are interesting ways to quantify this and this is important. But also my recommendation will be to complement this gains sharing with the recognition of value. Maybe you are better than me in terms of operational performance in front of this retailer. Of course, we are not competing. So you are in another segment, another product category that I am. So maybe while we are sharing our logistics flows, maybe you are teaching some kind of content that I mean I am learning. So this value sharing is the recognition about this additional resource, additional effort that you are bringing into the table. Right? So it's very difficult to quantify how we are gonna measure what you are teaching to me in terms of operational process. But at least some kind of qualitative way that could be compared in quantitative way in order to recognize this effort. Or maybe I am always late when we are bundling our freight, bringing the pallets, right? So then the first time you will allow me, second time it's okay, third time you will, I mean raise your hand, this is a problem here. And fourth time you will not go with me, right? So somehow we need to recognize this lack of performance maybe with some kind of penalties that would be easier to quantify just to incentivize a relationship. It's not a hard penalty but just to let the collaboration go because maybe we can share 30% of logistic scots if we are bundling our freight. Not the logistic service provided is bundling our freight if we are collaborating to bundle our freight. So then again, this recognition that there is value behind this recognition that what we need to quantify this value behind is important. Not only the savings, not only the easy way of quantifying the easy, it's not so easy, but the math is doing a great work here but also to transform these qualitative benefits into quantitative in order to think about the long-term and sustainable collaboration setting. That's a really interesting point because as you said, one of the drivers was cost savings and that's relatively easy to quantify but how do you quantify the skills you're gaining what you're learning or the new ideas that are coming thanks to the collaboration. But I guess you must be addressing that with part of your research. We are doing this kind of things especially in the digital transformation world when you need to be very quickly reacting in front of different challenges, different opportunities. So collaboration is a good way of tackling because you can learn a lot with your partners from your partners. So it's fascinating. So we are 15 minutes to 12. I have one more question and then maybe we can go to our learners. So since you're an expert in supply chain collaboration and you're like, I am learning. But you clearly think it might be a bad way for differentiating like a supply chain against all the supply chains and getting more like innovative processes and products out there. How could our learners, many of them are professionals working in supply chain management. How could they start transforming their supply chains into a competitive ones through collaboration? They are like their company. Yeah. First, there are several questions that I would recommend they to follow. Key questions that some of them are not easy to answer but important to answer if they want to take advantage of the effort in collaboration. One is, do the members of my company? Think first about my company. Do we understand what are the concept of level of service? Sometimes it's only a percentage but sometimes level of service could be flexible. Maybe losing this part of percentage but being flexible means additional targets. Do the actors of our supply chain really understand this concept of level of service? So not only my company but thinking upstream, thinking downstream, thinking laterally, do our partners understand this level of service and the different quantitative and qualitative implications behind that? Third question is, do they have a set of shared and compact key performance indicators with my actors, with my supply chain actors? Not only that I am sure that they will have but shared key performance indicators that will allow us to measure these gains. And maybe some other minor secondary key performance indicators that will recognize this value. So gain and value. That's how we are going to combine. So we need to measure just to recognize the quick wins. And one quick win is coming. Yes, celebrate it. Yes, and understand why, how and everything. Just to share with all the community that we've got this result. So then this shared and compact key performance indicators is important in the supply chain. The fourth question is, are these key performance indicators aligned with a set of shared goals in our supply chain? So then we need to have the way of measuring but also we need to know where we go, right? So then we can set particular goals of according to our joint value proposition. But which are these goals and how we are going to measure through key performance indicators that are easy to measure. We don't need very fancy, very complicated KPIs. We need something easy to measure but that will allow us just to follow, to monitor how we are getting these results. So again, this fourth question is chart quantified goals in our supply chain. The fifth is, so going to more complexity. Are these mechanisms in place for identifying jointly opportunities and threats? So then if we have these key performance indicators, these measurements, these signals into our supply chain processes and we have these goals, then once we will perceive an opportunity, we will be easier to explore if this opportunity is good or not because we have these signals already in place, right? So then we are prepared for exploring new opportunities. If these opportunities are working great, let's go and let's implement it. But if they are not bringing good results, let's forget them. But then the exploration, exploitation process is taking less effort. The fifth question is, are there incentives for accomplishing those chart goals? I have been with some companies that when we were working with them for as a neutral entity to promote collaboration between two companies, the first issue was Maria, we cannot mention the word risk in these joint meetings. Yes, come on, but this is about risks, right? No, sorry, we are not taking risks. This has happened, right? So then again, are there incentives internally in my company? Of course, it's generally in the supply chain but internally in my company to implement and for accomplishing these chart goals. And the last question, do we know as a partner in the supply chain the real costs and benefits through improving my supply chain? And this is tricky because sometimes you need to share some costs in your supply chain but just for the benefit of getting these savings, right? So then this is the kind of relationship that you need to develop. So you need to develop trust to share this kind of cost. The minimum you can share, but you need to share something. You need to put some information on the risk. Put something on the table. Definitely. So these are the seven questions that are in a progressive path just to implement a collaborative competitive advantage. You start with the simplest and end up with hardest one. Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much. I think that's a really good suggestion for our learners. Maybe we could share the questions with them later in the life event space. So actually, before finishing, yes, I wanted to comment that there is one paper that we would like to share with all our learners that yes, too, maybe for the opportunity of continuing reflecting and thinking about all these issues about collaboration, finding profit in horizontal collaboration. There's a supply chain management review article that could be interesting. Yeah, there are some framework and some principles there. And also maybe thanks to the supply chain management review magazine journal because they also has offered to all our learners free subscription to the journal. So then to all our very fine learners. Yes, all very fine learners. Thank you. And yes, we will share the link with them. I think that's a fantastic opportunity. And thanks, Maria, for talking to us. No, thanks to the supply chain management review journal. There are very good cases, very good practices, very good new developments, successful and no successful cases, that a lot of learning behind. Yeah, I think it can be a really good resource for our course in S3x. And Maria is going to be with us throughout the whole course, helping us improve it and adding all her experience and ideas with all of you, sharing with the course. And we will be getting some more articles and good discussions there throughout the coming three months. So there's some questions from our learners. Are you ready? Yeah. OK, so we have one question from Amresh Monshi. And he's asking, how the current business channel and supply chain management dynamic affect the supply chain management collaboration with the shift, with industry operation, with automation and machine learning, the digital transformation? Yeah. This is interesting. And there are a lot of discussions again about chicken and egg. So what comes first? Is collaboration or is data what comes first? So I guess that then we need to understand if we can really get access to data in order to explore collaborating, setting with a partner in a supply chain. My approach will be first to approach the collaboration but with the main goal of making automatic processes out of the use of this data. In terms of IoT, as we commented with the case of Amazon and DHL, but also how we can implement algorithms to make a more robust urban-faith network, for example, in a dynamic way. But first we need to understand through collaboration what are the potential benefits that we can extract with our partners. So then we will establish rules that will allow us to take advantage of the data in the digital world, thinking about the long term. And then this collaboration will convert, will be transformed into a digital setting so it will not require so collaboration in the long term but in the short term we need a collaboration approach just to understand the two partners, the different principles, the different technology, the different processes that we are following, how this technology could be complementary to each other in order to take advantage of this long term benefits. So first collaboration together with data and then in long term the implementation of data. So there's another question that is clearly related to that one and it's about blockchain technology. I guess like it's from Vikram from India and he asks, when do you expect supply chains across the world leveraging this technology for collaboration and optimization? So I guess the answer is very similar, as far as you're bringing up now. Maybe you're not, you also are an expert on blockchain. Yeah, I'm not an expert, as you said. I'm learning, always learning. But yeah, I totally think that collaboration needs to be there first. You can just think that this technology is just gonna make unnecessary all the previous collaboration and building trust with the partner and understanding each other and understanding each other culture and getting all these agreements only because you have a technology that is called blockchain or any other fancy one. So I really think we have like the technological dimension that is fantastic and it's added a new ledger and it's maybe gonna be one of these factors fostering collaboration can be one of the reasons that actually triggers this exploratory phase Maria was talking about but it's not gonna solve all the organizational issues that arise when two companies are trying to collaborate with each other. So yeah, I mean, I fully agree. So at the end technology help us to take advantage in a more autonomous and automatic way, take advantage of the how we are gonna bundle our businesses. But at the end, we need to put a layer of agreement. We need to put a layer of common understanding. We need a layer of how we are gonna deploy our talent in our two companies just for the benefit, right? So then technology helps but it's not 100% of the solution here. That's something you're gonna learn in SC3X. Yeah, I learned it in SCC4. Yes, SCC4X. So Danton asked, how to drive a strategic partnership or relationship in supply chain collaborations? How to solve the connected issues, blockchain and the Amazon effect? Yeah, Amazon is an interesting effect. I love Amazon because it is the company that is really bringing very quickly all the paradigms and then the other companies are trying to react in front of these, what other companies interpret as threats but maybe Amazon is really moving forward all the companies, right? So then, but it's true that, I mean, if you company, you want to be successful of being excellent in the supply chain. So you need to quickly collaborate with partners in order to jump to the next stage. You cannot do it alone. So you need to be open to collaboration. So on Amazon is a great example. Amazon is creating new business models every, I mean, short piece of time, right? So then they know how to collaborate even sometimes with competitors, right? This example that we were mentioning DHL and Amazon while they are competing in the logistics service market, right? So then why not? At the end, we are bringing competitive advantage, yeah? And we are going to be the pioneers of this kind of competitive advantage, right? So I love Amazon that for that. Yeah, and let's have another question and then we'll have to wrap up because we have two minutes, she's 12. So Namita Jain, like she's commenting, companies might have situations when transactional relations become strategic. How do firms handle such dynamics of shifting supplier value proposition? Yeah, transactions after transactions are important. So then if I have a logistics service provider who can become a commodity for more services, this is great. And then of course you need to, we could need to continue doing this kind of, I mean, business and services, right? But the issue is that, I mean, are we gonna jump in another kind of relationship with maybe some of my logistics service provider because they can maybe open opportunities to horizontally collaborate with other partners? So why not exploring this kind of another kind of transaction with another kind of logistics service provider, another kind of relationship, right? So then these are the opportunity to be dynamic in the kind of relationships. And so you need to be open, listen, just to create empathy, right? With your partners. So then you need to understand them, how they work, what they can bring into the table, what you can put into the table, in the to bring this energy. So then you need to listen very carefully. So there's room for transactional relationship and there's room for collaborative relations? Definitely, definitely. Of course I'm not proposing only collaborative relations. No, no, no, no, no. We need to innovate like too much effort. No, yeah, yeah. We need to create repetitive processes just to take advantage of our effort. We need to make automatic process, of course, without any doubt. Otherwise, supply chains will not survive. But just to deal with these challenges and paradigms in the new economy, we need also to work with collaborators. So great, we have one minute left for the wrap up. Thank you so much, Maria, for your time and your interesting insights. We learned a lot. I learned a lot and it's what our learners did too. And we're really lucky to have Maria throughout the whole course with us. So you'll see us in the discussion forums and we really expect to have interesting discussions about collaboration in week three, but also about supply chain dynamics, supply chain strategy, so risks and all these other topics we will be tackling in the course. So good luck with the gradient assignments, plan well for the exams, and we hope you will learn a lot in C3X and you like it as much as we do. Thank you. Bye. Enjoy.