 Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today. I'm Laura Azege, a course lead here for the MITx MicroMasters in SEM program. I'm co-hosting this live event with Kellen Betz, also of course you may know and we are super fortunate to have here today with us Dr. Josue Velazquez. Josue is a research scientist and lecturer at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. He has recently launched his first massive online course on sustainable supply chains and today he's joining us with one of his many hats here at the center as the MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab Director. Welcome Josue. So before we move on and as you know we love to have polls here and all our webinars we will kick the event with a poll. We want to know why are you here today. So Lisa here who is helping us will launch the poll so you probably see it popping up on your window. Let us know if you're here today because you just want to learn about optimization models with sustainable practices. If you just want to know more about sustainability if it's probably because you're here for the technology and visibility portion of the event or if it is that you're part of our MicroMasters program and you don't miss any live event. So with that I'll give the word to Kellen for the agenda of the session. Awesome. Thank you Lara and pleasure to have you Dr Josue Velazquez looking forward to our conversation today. So just kind of a quick agenda for today's webinar. The next 15 minutes or so Dr Josue Velazquez will provide some context on sustainable supply chain management and the role of optimization and technology to drive sustainable decisions. It also illustrates some practical examples from applied research projects conducted here on the MIT CTL and sustainable supply chain lab that he directs and discuss the challenges faced when implementing sustainable supply chain practices. Lara and I will then have some questions prepared in advance. The last 10 minutes will definitely be saved for your questions and so start thinking of those and please use that webinar Q&A feature in Zoom. It's that Q&A feature at the bottom there to ask your questions and be sure that you're logged in with the name. We won't read any anonymous questions today. Also share a couple more polls during our event so be prepared to participate with those and with that let's check on the results of that first poll here if we can share those results. Awesome. So the poll the question was why are you here today? Lots of looks like lots of great learners in our audience so I want to learn more on how to connect with optimization models and supply chain practices. That's awesome. Almost 60%. Almost 40%. I'm interested in knowing more about sustainable supply chain labs. That's cool. You decided about that answer as well. I don't know if you have any comments or thoughts on those initial poll results there. But with that in mind, maybe we'll just outpass the stage to you and you can kick it off, share your slides and take it away. Fantastic. Well, thank you. Thank you so much first to Lara for the invitation and Kelly as well. Very nice introduction and it's really a great pleasure to be here today. So let me just start the presentation with a couple of slides that I would like to share. All right. So all good. Fantastic. So the intention of today's discussion presentation is to illustrate a little bit about the importance of two main tools and techniques which is one optimization and the other visibility. Both supported by the technology and the idea is how we could use these methodologies, these approaches to actually achieve sustainability strategies. And as you know, there are plenty of discussions around the topic. We've been working on sustainable supply chains and sustainable logistics for many years and the idea is to just illustrate some of the projects we've done in the past to also give you a glimpse how you could use these techniques that you potentially may also learn in these awesome courses, C2X, C4X and all the micro masses in general that are provided by MIT CTL. So let me just start. So the first is of course, many of you commented actually in the poll the importance of sustainability and there were three or four questions related to this topic. We know that it's hot topic. We know that plenty of companies are starting to look into this and there are different dimensions. But of course, there is a particular interest in the environmental sustainability. And we saw it. We actually ran last year around this time a poll with some of our corporate partners. So what you see here in the screen is actually for last year, some of the CTL corporate partners that also engage with us in different capacities. And when I was invited to give a presentation on sustainable logistics, logistics, I asked them this question. I said, either you as a company or key customers have established clear carbon reduction targets for the next years, for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And then I'm giving three options. Yes, no, I'm not sure. And I will venture to say that those that are not sure is probably they have heard something about it. And probably it's not still very explicit. But this is what we saw. The vast majority actually has either companies in their strategy or key customers that are actually moving also their strategy in the supply chain that have a specific carbon reduction targets. And of course, now that we know this information, the question is why are we looking into this from the from the perspective of supply chain management from from logistics? And this is this is a key question. To answer this, in case you are not very much familiar with this with this topic, you know, supply chain management, at least the way that we see it actually has to do with almost all the processes that exist in any business in any organization. And the way that I always like to illustrate this is to just by looking at this at this picture. So this this young lady is buying a blouse or a shirt. And there are there are some statistics that show that all the all the processes that are required and all the strips that this shirt has has done in the past, actually way more than what in average, a person like ourselves, we are going to travel for the rest of our lives. So in other words, this shirts has actually traveled more. And the reason is because of what I just explained, there are plenty of activities related with the upstream in the supply chain that are actually creating a lot of of transportation movements, extraction could be that the materials are coming from, I don't know, cotton extracted in Texas, moving Long Beach, sending China for assembling and dying, maybe send again to Europe for, you know, other type of SKU packaging allocation. But there are different activities that are happening, you know, so that this shirt can actually exist in this show. And those processes in general are designed in a way that we can achieve, you know, either the optimal ordering in terms of having sufficient amounts to serve the the demand, you know, expectations in on time delivery and field rate and service level. But at the same time, are also designed in a way that we are we are looking at the manualization of costs. So we try to be as efficient as possible. Now all these processes again imply different flows of materials, which is, you know, part of the foundation of supply chains. But of course, the one that actually creates the impacts for the environment are actually related to the movement of materials. You know, and that's why also when we look at the supply chain and different topics on sustainability, we tend to pay a little bit more attention to all the transportation activities, or what are the decisions in the supply chain that are actually driving the transportation activities. And what I'm going to do today is explain an illustrate with some of these examples, particularly for the transportation. Now, imagine that you are this company that needs to also serve these customers with certain expectations in demand. So the question is, how can I achieve those carbon reduction targets? While at the same time, I have to meet also my business goals. Now, different approaches. The first one is a key. First, you need to know what is the size of the problem. And the first step usually companies have started to do that probably 10 years ago, five years more intensively is to conduct a carbon footprint. And this is this is key. Again, like in any other problem in business and in supply chain, you get what you measure. So looking at the different supply chain activities and processes that are actually explaining a specific business are key to really identify what are the different ways that companies can operate their supply chain, make investments in different equipment and technology, and leverage different capabilities to achieve their carbon reduction targets. So first step has to do with that. So you identify what we call the hot spots. So where exactly the supply chain, you can observe certain, you know, increasing in environmental activity. And by looking at this, remember, this can be caused either because you have inefficiencies in the equipment, but could also be caused because of all the decisions you are making. For instance, when you decide different replenishment strategies, these immediately may affect the transportation activity, both, you know, downstream or upstream in the supply chain. If you define different service level targets and inventory strategies, again, you're going to affect again, what, how much you're going to keep in the inventory, how much energy you're going to be using in your own warehouse or in material handling. So the different processes are important in this stage to really spend time identifying these operations. Now, once you have this information, then the next question is, okay, so how I'm going to use this information to make decisions. And one of the frameworks that I used to teach, you know, in the topic of sustainable supply chain management, has this famous impact effort charts that are very common in consulting. And then you have, you have usually here, like those efforts that you require that is less or a lot. If a DMD impact is not really relevant, don't waste your time on those strategies. The question is more whether you need to put a lot of effort to achieve long-term significant reductions to achieve your carbon targets, or you can actually have also what we call the quick wins. I don't need so much effort because I already have the infrastructure, the information, and I can actually leverage that by looking at different decisions in the supply chain. So as I said, one side, the equipment could be investment, for instance, in electrification in the supply chain, or in the other side, looking at the different decisions. And regardless of where is your strategy, both of them can actually benefit extensively from both what we call the optimization and also the visibility. And I will give some examples. So the right approach, the way that we see it, has to do with balancing these two strategies. From one side, how we can squeeze for efficiencies, usually we try to, you know, get as much as we can with the minimum, you know, resources we are operating. So this is the foundation of optimization model. And on the other side, we look at also the consumer facing logistics, which has to do a lot with growing the capacity that you have to squeeze again by having visibility and leveraging the visibility that becomes also like a strategy to involve also customers or consumers in your strategies. All right. So I'm going to illustrate with both and I will start actually with the power of visibility in this example. And hopefully by now, some of you already are aware of the type of projects I'm presenting, because I've been trying to, you know, disseminate part of the projects we call the green button. And here everything starts with understanding, for instance, in transportation, as I said, the importance of e-commerce and the concept of fast shipping that I started three years ago, if I recall correctly, the fast shipping in terms of the same day delivery promise before it was today delivery promise, it was already fast, but it became faster. And then once Amazon launched this strategy, as we know, all the other companies that are offering also e-commerce is starting also both proposing strategies or struggling with this. But as we know, this fast shipping and e-commerce in turn also involves an increase in the carbon footprint. And this is just intuition, because at the end, you have less time to really do the planning, which means probably you're going to be delivering to same neighborhoods multiple times, either during the day or the week, which means increasing in trips. When in fact, you could probably wait if you will have more days to deliver and then improve consolidation and then do better planning, which in turn also reduces the amount of energy and CO2 emissions you will have in this operation. So for this example, we worked on a project sponsored by Coppell, which is one of the Mexican retailers. And what we did is to take information about the different last mile logistics operations. And the idea was to look at this information and try to first understand what are the what are the emissions associated with that operation. Now, to do that, we started working with a lot of data. Remember, in this case, we are talking about plenty of delivery notes, plenty of transportation activities, different SKUs. So what we did is to conduct a very comprehensive estimation of the carbon emissions and then capture the information of what happens every time that we delay one day the delivery. So in other words, if I have to operate and I need to deliver with a window of two days, so how the distribution center will have to operate and how many drugs will I need for a specific demand that I'm estimating. Now, if I have three days to deliver, if I have four days to deliver, how will reorganize my scheduling to make sure that I serve the customer and then I improve consolidation. And by looking at the improvement in consolidation and amount of trips, we were able to estimate quite accurately what will be the amount of CO2 emissions that we will save by having more days to deliver. And what you are looking here at the slide is actually a real simulation of one of the distribution centers by looking at all this operation of the data conducted in this last mile delivery. Now, what we did in this case is to use this information, not just to improve a squeeze for efficiencies, but in fact, what happens if we are able to use these estimations to actually disclose it with the consumer at the moment of the purchase. And that's the concept. If you know when you are buying that asking for fast shipping will have an effect either in the kilograms of CO2 or all the type of displays in environmental information, will consumers be willing to delay their home delivery? And if that happens, then we are showing in fact that the visibility is helping the supply chain achieve, in this case, sustainability strategies. And this is what we did, what I'm just illustrating here is the short video when we were featured by CNN on this just mock-up in the e-commerce platform. It's just a mock-up, but it looks something like that. Like you have their fast shipping, but then imagine that you disclose this information and then incentivize consumers to select the green delivery option. And what we observe in this case that we took two cities to do the analysis, Mexico City and Monterey, we actually observed that more than 50% of people in fact changed their original decision to select now green deliveries. This is decision, this is not a survey. Now, this is awesome, right? And of course, the question here is, okay, imagine that now we actually get information for all the different distribution centers that by providing environmental information, consumers are willing to wait five days more for the home delivery. Fantastic. Okay, so now what do we do with these five days of delivery? Well, this is when it comes the other side of the coin, which is the power of optimization. And the concept is, okay, so if we have more days to deliver, let me just illustrate the potential of this problem. So this, what you see in the slide is actually a two real trajectories. So in two days, by the end of February and the first day of March, we were having different trucks going exactly to the same neighborhood, the same zip code. And what you see in the notes that are in red, this is the deliveries for one day, and those that are in blue are the second. Now, imagine that you are able to deliver green, sorry, not green, blue and red, any day, right? So you can either deliver the last day or the next day, or actually you have even more days to deliver, which in turn also implies you'll get new orders. But let's say that you have now flexibility. There is no same day delivery. There is no fast ship, and you can deliver any day. The question is, how would you rearrange this? And then what we see here, this is just done with a basic heuristic, similar to the one that we did in the simulation. By rearranging, immediately we see that we are mixing both delivery nodes, the red and the blues in both days. We actually observe already significant reductions in mileage in area cover, more density, which in turn also means much more efficiency that we are expecting here in reduction of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. So we follow this intuition and we say, well, we realize that traditional transportation management systems are having plenty of overlaps because they are looking at the minimization of distance. And what we say is like, what if we create a different mathematical model that instead of delivering following the distance minimization and having overlaps, is actually deciding to consolidate, wait a little bit more, so postpone certain orders so that delivery can be done later. So we work this project with a couple of colleagues, Andres and Sergio, and the idea was to take information of expected orders, current orders, critical orders, and then define a grid for delivery that will optimize the amount of distance travel and the amount of stops conducted in a specific zip code. And just to give you a glimpse, for those that were saying that we are interested in knowing more about optimization, you should be thrilled at looking at this large scale optimization model. So this was really a big deal, managed in the largest settings, and we tried different ways to model this. We started with some good old, we started later with the Google OR, but there are different tools that allow you to manage a large scale setting. And in this case, as you can see, we got more than 70 million variables overall that were actually used to map this optimization. The idea is by having this extended delivery windows, how we're going to use this information to improve the consolidation. And the interesting part is that we actually conducted a pilot to compare the current proposed software that the company was using versus our proposed large scale model. And what you see here are the absolute reductions we obtained. From one side, what I really love is this one, because not looking at the whole cost was actually huge, but just looking at the field consumption, which is the CO2 emissions, the amount of savings is huge compared to just squeezing efficiencies. This is a mix of looking at visibility and transparency, plus also using optimization. And there are plenty of examples on this. I could spend the whole webinar just talking and talking how you could improve your distribution network, delivery sequence, inventory sourcing, etc. But again, the recommendation is you squeeze for efficiencies using plenty of technology, optimization analysis. But on the other side, you also want to implement some consumer facing logistic sustainability by looking also at the power of transparency and visibility. Anyway, I appreciate your time. I hope that you find this interesting and we can have now a nice discussion. If you're more interested in knowing more about all this content, feel free to reach out to us in our website, sustainable.mit.edu. Thank you so much. And back to you, Kellen and Laura. Awesome. Well, thank you, Dr. Velasquez. It's a fascinating presentation of the example of kind of showing both sides of the balance there, if you will, engaging the customer and seeing if you can gain maybe some flexibility from the customer, gaining more days. That's sort of fascinating to see that 50% of customers will choose a slower option in today's Amazon same-day delivery world. I mean, at the same time, using an optimization to kind of see how you can squeeze out some of those efficiencies. Fascinating discussion. There's tons of questions that we could probably expand on number of different areas. We already have some great questions here in the Q&A, but maybe I want to kind of jump into one particular question and expand on the concept of supply chain visibility. I know you talked a lot about kind of the customer facing side of supply chain visibility. Some of the other side of supply chain visibility involves engaging supply chain partners, also sharing information with upstream suppliers, downstream customers that are other businesses, if you will. So it often involves sending and receiving data with these partners, but maybe sending and receiving emissions data, operations data, et cetera. But often the challenge involved with this sharing of information, if you will, is not as much technical. It's not as much how you send that data, as much as it is the trust and the security and the collaboration with that interaction, with that transaction. So for example, a company may feel that they share their emissions data, will be less competitive, for example. So I wonder if you could discuss a little bit about how some of these other considerations around sharing data on this disclosure and transparency side of supply chain visibility. Yeah, absolutely. This is a very interesting topic and you actually hit already very interesting points related to the trust and the willingness to collaborate. So we know that plenty of the companies at this stage, almost any medium-sized or large company in the developed world, but also in developing countries, are actually disclosing their emissions one way or the other, either because governmental reasons or because they want to also be part of their carbon disclosure project. So you look into this and you will find almost all of them are disclosing their emissions, disclosing the methodology they follow. And they commit for carbon reduction targets. But again, for me, the question is, okay, those are absolute numbers, then you start growing as a business, then you report again, and it becomes an exercise that is not that clear particularly if you are as a company aiming to involve customers or consumers in your sustainability strategy. I believe there is an important gap that at this stage, those estimations are not translated, not just into something that can be understandable for the customer and the consumer, but also that they haven't seen the potential to really help their own strategies. Now, when they start doing it in the operational level, this is what you were describing, it's very hard. So at this stage, if you are using a carrier, for instance, you are, I'm just going to say, largest cosmetics company in the world, and then you're using 70 different logistics providers. Again, the question is, I need to assess performance, but they are going to disclose their own emissions, and again, it's going to become a competition how they are going to use that information, and it can be very tricky. On the other side, they can always say, this is the fuel consumption I have in your operation, but disclosing that information means they're going to give a strong point that can be used against them in the negotiations. Divine, no, this is what you're spending a fuel. This is, wait a minute, why you are changing me 10 times that price. So those things become, of course, difficult, and that's why, at least to my understanding, it's always important to define the specific scope of that collaboration. So I was describing now with the consumer and the e-commerce company, but if we look at B2B, for instance, we've seen also examples in which a company is looking at the carrier, and it's saying, can you help me? A shipper is saying to the carrier, can you help me? Because you need to help me achieve my carbon reduction targets for the scope 3, those emissions that are not related to the assets that are known by the company. And say, okay, so I can reduce emissions, but you guys are asking me, for instance, to have various strict delivery windows. So you ask me to deliver between 9 to 10 all the time, your place orders that are not consistent, you change both frequency and amounts, and that actually creates a more complex environment for me to reduce emissions. If you can help me do better planning, if you can actually send more information, just collaboration, those things can actually imply significant reductions, probably in the magnitude of what I was just showing here with the 30% and above. So I believe there is potential, and this is always a discussion. I fully agree with you, Kellen, that this is no more a discussion about whether we have the technology or the software, is whether we both want to and have certain rules in how to use this information and how we are going to also allocate the benefits that we are going to be obtaining by this collaboration. But this is a very interesting point that definitely needs to be even discussed further in the transparency and visibility topic. Thank you, Josue. And even though we are talking a lot about the technology and it, I love the fact that we're talking about collaboration and communication as a way to make our plans more actionable and to actually be able to achieve results. Like sometimes our goals are different to the actions we're taking, trying to get those. So it's very important to have that in mind at all times. So I am a huge fan of optimization. So if you're okay with it, I would like to go back to that part of the presentation. In your presentation, you described how to optimize the network design, considering longer lead times accepted by customers in order to do, as you just say, this reduction on the carbon footprint. And we usually use in our courses optimization for achieving a budget restriction or a service level. And we also know that it's possible to include a variety of components. And we were wondering if you could share a little bit more on whether it is possible to include something like kilograms of CO2 as a decision variable in a model and with that in also in our goals. And I would like to add on that that some of the members of our audience like Remy is also asking, how can algorithms deal with the additional complexity of adding those variables? And if there's anything else like I mentioned, CO2, is there any other variable that you usually include in models when you're thinking on optimizing towards sustainability? Awesome. This is great questions. Obviously, you're where my student taking my class and sustainable supply chain management one day, but I need, I should say the lower actually got an A plus. But this is true. So let me start answering some of the questions. So from one side, your first one is, is it possible to include an estimation of kilograms of CO2 or environmental estimation when doing optimization models? The answer is, absolutely yes. And most of the time, I'm not a fan, even though I showed that example, I'm not that a fan of showing the kilograms of CO2 as a part of a cost objective function. A single objective. And this is very common also in supply chain. We do it because it simplifies. And that's okay. We did it also because the company was interested in looking at the cost. But it's possible to actually measure this separately, either as a constraint, as you were describing with the budget, say, okay, so we have a carbon reduction target. This is what we want to have now with the new design of the network. Let's make sure that all the flows we are going to have on the location of facilities are going to guarantee we will not exceed this amount of CO2. And then you're going to start playing with that. You can, in fact, look at the model and say, well, I will just change my objective function. And I will look at the minimization of CO2 emissions instead of looking at the others. Or you could include all of them, the multi-objective optimization. But the answer to your question is yes. Kilograms of CO2 is usually the one that is potentially easier to include in a model that you are aiming to include sustainability criteria. Although there are definitely many others. Like, for instance, last year, we advised a nice capstone project for UNICEF in Zimbabwe. And Tim Kim and I co-advised that with Vitaute. These guys did an awesome work. They took information to establish an objective of minimization of kilograms of CO2 for the network design. Plus the minimization of cost. And plus they also look at the social perspective. They say, what happens if certain sourcing are going to be limited by only buying from local? So that we help the community. And then you can change your network. This is, as you probably know, just changing certain constraints to make it work. But you're going to be able to measure how many of the suppliers are actually coming from the region and get an estimation of the ratio. How many or quite the proportion. And then understand also another social sustainability criteria. So there are different ways. And in general, you just work with them with different techniques to model it. Similar to what you teach in the course in AC2X for sure. Now, you were asking me the algorithmic part. That's the part that always, oh my, it's always very complicated. But there are a couple of things to say. From one side, there is a lot of advancement on the use of different heuristics, right? Like, you know, genetic algorithms, meta heuristics, there are plenty of things already exist in the literature and the advancement has been impressive in the last decade, mainly also because of the advancement of the power of computers. Now, with the new large scale software, like the solvers, right? And I'm talking probably, you know better, but there are plenty, as you know, it would all be Cplex, Yps, which others, Lingo probably, but that's, there are plenty. I don't want to cause here, there are ones that I'm missing. Google OR as I was saying, right? All of them have already some sort of heuristics coded already. And it's possible to call them to actually solve some of these complexities that you are increasing because of now having more variables and other type of objective functions. And now the power also, because you know, in OR, there are the guys that are fans of heuristics, and there are the guys that are fans of exact methods, right? So those that are in exact methods, they also have better techniques now, better formulations of the model, a better way to really conduct just typical methods coming from the branch and bound, but actually doing even with more power, better cuts. So computing power has grown significantly. And I believe now that gives us access to really solve even much more complex problems. And I believe we should not be scared of that. We should in fact, go into the high level of detail, as you know, I'm very big fan of providing as many data points and detail as possible, so that really the formulation of the problem captures to the best of the possibilities, what is exactly happening in reality, so that the solution will actually be practical and impactful. Awesome. So many, so many fascinating topics to jump in there. And, you know, we could expand on so many of those and, you know, even explore ideas like incorporating machine learning and AI into some of, you know, solving some of these optimization problems as well. But in sake of time, Laura, I might jump to kind of our last pre-prepared question before we get into the Q&A. And if you have any questions, again, please pop those into that Q&A feature and we'll jump into those next. But just jump into our kind of last prepared question. Some of our participants here today are part of our MicroMasters program. Let's shout out to all our MicroMasters learners out there. And they may be looking to involve themselves using optimization or technology to help achieve more sustainable supply chain. You mentioned the importance of this, obviously we discussed this in many different ways already as well. But it might seem like kind of a daunting task to a MicroMasters learner just kind of starting out on their journey. So I'm wondering if you could kind of maybe give some advice to our MicroMasters learners on where they maybe where they should start, you know, where they should start their journey during this program. You know, they're just kind of learning these topics maybe for the first time, you know, where can they go from here? So those that are starting the journey should definitely take both of your courses and the whole MicroMasters. That will be honestly a good start, right? If you take also the zero X, you will get also an idea of what, if you haven't heard of optimization and everything else. Now, once you have completed this, then definitely there are plenty of ways to work on this and either you, you know, it's very modest at this stage all the data scientists that many of the companies have and careers on that topic, many of other courses also on data analytics and machine learning. As you mentioned, this is something I probably missed just because it brought me back to my time when I was doing heuristics, but definitely telling you are totally right. There are better ways also by combining techniques of machine learning now to solve problems like that. But there are careers both in practice by looking at how to develop with certain courses, participating in companies that are working with this type of problems, both in logistics as well as to understand consumers. And on the other side also academia, right? So some of the students may potentially want to either join the SEM program in some moment or a more technical because the SEM is more like in between, right? Like business with engineering, but there are also maybe they say, no, I want something in operations research. All of those things are opportunities to grow the understanding. So this is honestly what will be my recommendation. There is so much information at this time available for those that are interested in growing this understanding. But make no mistake, getting more knowledge and abilities in both as I said, optimization, all the technology or the visibility, all the things that we are discussing. It's something that will serve you for almost any problem. In this case, I'm talking about sustainability because this is something actually quite new in a way to be able to leverage that to improve your strategies and sustainability. But this could be used for almost any field, any discipline, anybody that is working in supply chain knows this is really, really key. So my recommendation is embrace it, learn it, practice it and disseminate with others. Tell everyone about it. Thank you. It was a great piece of advice and definitely something that everyone in our audience can apply no matter if they are taking the courses or not. I'm just willing to launch the last poll before we go to the Q&A from the audience so that we can let that populate meanwhile. So I appreciate Lisa's help to launch that one. This is just to know what are you taking away from today's meeting, today's event? What was the most interesting part for you that will help us a lot to get some feedback and to see what are you into next for our next webinar in the series? So I will let that populate. I want to connect one question from the audience. It is from Arslan Ahmed with some thought I had while you were going through the presentation, because Arslan is asking about other ways to ensure sustainability in supply chains. It's also asking about different initiatives like probably going paperless or using renewable energy for your manufacturing processes. But I was thinking a little bit of e-commerce and you talk about just patch upon e-commerce growth and the challenges that may bring with the fast shipment. And then I think with that there is a trend to be closer to the customer and I know you have some research on that. And I wanted to know about the inefficiencies and what is the cost in terms of carbon emissions or in terms of sustainability for an inefficient supply chain or for a process that is not working as expected, not only because you're not delivering on time, but also because there is this need to return the product back or to attend some emergencies, probably. Yeah, and also there are many, many topics that you touch, Laura. And of course, we discuss about the design of a network that also is going to consider returns. We should probably be talking with Eva Ponce, right, on those topics in closed-loop supply chains and reverse logistics, which by the way, these are topics we definitely discuss in our edX course on sustainable supply chain management. As you were saying, one of the things that I definitely have studied with the team on the lab related to the proximity with customers, right, with consumers, particularly in e-commerce. When the companies, the bigger retailers launched the strategy to do fast shipping, their main argument was saying we are having a higher footprint, we are getting closer to consumers, we are going to be able to react very fast to unexpected changes in the demand. And this is also what Walmart.com and Amazon and Target, many others have said. What we study is that this cannot be just taken as granted, because every time that you change proximity with customers, you are definitely extending the footprint both in the logistics side, but also in the environmental side of your operation, right? And this is important, like if you do it in that way, that means you're going to have to revisit your inventory policy. You're going to probably have a little bit, what we call the water bed effect that by reacting very fast here, somebody has to be prepared with you. And that also creates more inbound transportation on expected changes. So those challenges need to be considered, right? So part of the things that we study is also to capture the changes that we've seen in the different landscapes of delivery of cities, right? Like when we look at the network designs, the course discuss about using the Weber model. So I never know if I'm pronouncing it correctly because I believe his last name is German, but there is a model that comes from more than 100 years that helps understand the center of gravity approach. And what we argue is that the approach still definitely works, but you need to consider that now there are streets that even if you are assuming a collision distance, a stray distance, now you have congestion, now you have limitations in the type of vehicles you can access. So again, you know, all of these things that I'm saying, I know it sounds a little bit like, well, how do you account for that? Well, there are ways to really capture what is happening in a network and try to include that in the models so that again, you help companies achieve everything that they need in the business goals, but at the same time also achieving their carbon targets. So I hope that, you know, I know that your question worked plenty. Laura, so I don't know if I was able to answer, but at least to create a little bit of the awareness how we deal with these issues. Thank you. That's fascinating. There's so many different angles and I think maybe what it really does is just to show the complexity of this space, you know, whether it's sustainable logistics or sustainable spike chains more broadly, just the complexity of the space and so much opportunity to learn, to explore from a research perspective, from a business perspective, you know, just a fascinating space. Awesome. So maybe in the interest of time, maybe we do one more question, Laura, and then we jump into our poll results and wrap things up here. And so I wanted to kind of expand on a question here from Linda Lynn and expanding on it, you know, in the context of, we're obviously in a very challenging pricing environment. Obviously, I have inflation running high, you know, everywhere, you know, we're now, we're facing maybe like, you know, economic slowdown in some places or economic slowdown globally. At the same time, you know, when you present, you know, different options to customers price is kind of a key feature of that decision making process, right? So her question is about the green button, you know, project that you explore and whether or not the two different shipping options that you presented were the same price? And what is where there's kind of a number of different angles we could take on that concept of what are some of the different price sensitivities versus shipping speeds versus your carbon footprint shipping options that the research is showing in that kind of space? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for the question. So in the example that I show in the slides is merely an illustration of how it looks the mockup, right? But we actually did a much more comprehensive analysis. So from one side, we started the project surveying first 1000 approximately consumers, right, during the home delivery operation. And part of the questions was first to ask in a specific region, what was their perception of the delivery, whether it was fast as low or normal. Without really saying more, we will say, well, what if now I need to deliver maybe with more days, like three, four days, will you have been willing to wait longer? And there are some that actually responded, yes, no, because some actually were saying you deliver on a Wednesday and then you actually, I was not even at home and I opened the package on the weekend, which, you know, we usually all do that. I would push for shipping, we have it at home and we take five days to actually open it if not more. So we detected that. And then later, we actually asked about economic incentives and said, well, what if I give you some, you know, a gift card or certain money for you to wait more days for the delivery. And then finally, we asked, well, what if I tell you that every day you delay the delivery, I'm able to have a specific savings and environmental impact. And we actually tested different ones. So the project is, you know, we test the killer, I'm substitute, we tested trees, we tested other things. Now, what we saw is that first, people that still are very sensitive to economic incentives, right? And you were talking about the pricing and everything for sure. 71% of consumers claim that they will have been willing to wait longer if given economic incentive. Now, but in that survey, we also asked about environmental incentive. And what happened is that we didn't get 71, but we got 70%. So 70% of customers claim I will have been willing to wait longer if you will have given me the information of the environmental incentive. Now, what we know is that, well, the 70 is not the 52 that I show. But the 52 was at the moment of the purchase. And we didn't have any, both were same, like it was for free to deliver, right? Like they already were members or whatever is the scheme that they are using, but it was not one more expensive or cheaper, right? Because by the way, in the case of green deliveries, it still is for me suspicious why somebody will actually charge more, right? Particularly if they are delaying, right? If you delay, you actually as a company, you are saving a lot of money as I just show in the model. The question is how you also shared that. Maybe you are saying I'm willing to put part of that money to offset certain carbon, so finance some projects. Who knows? But yeah, my point is, we have studied plenty, right? And we detected first that customers definitely have sensitive to economic incentive. We also detected they claim to be under the environmental incentive. We actually captured 52%. They actually changed their decision to delay, which is awesome. But of course, again, that experiment was done before all these issues, right? And I argue that we argue that those results for sure are contingent to plenty of things. If you're buying things because of urgency, could be because hopefully there is a wedding or a party you need to buy a present, could be maybe, you know, in a pharmaceutical context, something that you really need, right? So you're not going to be willing to wait. There are others that maybe you're saying I'm buying coffee, I don't mind to wait a little bit longer. So depending on the type of product, the purpose of the purchase, you know, a lot also of your profile as a consumer. So whether you have time or not to check all the delivery options when you're buying, so there are plenty of different conditions that definitely need to be discussed. And in this project, we have some settings and those that are interested hopefully will see a working paper very soon available to analyze at least our context. But all those questions you are commenting telling are definitely relevant. And it definitely it matters the context, the audience, the conditions in which you are running this analysis. Thank you, Josue. And in the interest of time, I would like to share the results of the poll and just let you know that there is plenty of questions and answered. And we are going to share those with you afterwards just so that you see what the audience interested in. And the interesting part of the answers to the poll is that most people here got what we promised. So they are expanding knowledge on sustainable supply chain and they found that interesting. They also learned about the use of technology and basically to improve supply chains. And that's awesome. So thank you for bringing those insightful presentation and discussion comments to us. I would like to give you the word and let you say some final words. They are very interested in knowing where to find all your research projects or your papers. If you want to repeat again, your website, that would be awesome. Fantastic. Yes, now absolutely. So if you are interested, sustainable.mit.edu. And we should probably have also sustainable logistics.mit.edu. So both will take you to the same one. And yeah, we have also plenty of social media. You can try and find us everywhere. We have, you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, everywhere. Feel free to reach out and connect. And we will be more than happy to expand on your questions as well as the research we've been doing. But no, I mean, just to wrap up from my side, Laura Kellen, really a great pleasure to be here with you. I enjoy very much your questions and also sharing part of the things that we are doing. And I look forward to engaging and working together in this MicroMasters course as well as the new edX course. And thank you again for the opportunity. With your best of luck. Thank you. Thank you, Koso. Thank you, Kellen, for a great discussion. And to everyone in the audience, the winter webinar series is just starting. So we hope to see you all soon in the next live event that Kellen and I will be co-hosting. Right, Kellen? Awesome. Looking forward to it. Thank you, Laura. And thank you, Dr. Vasquez. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone. Stay tuned. Bye-bye.