 All right, welcome to our second live event for SC3x. Sorry, we're running a few minutes late, but we'll get right into the meat of things. So we're in week five now of the course, and we've been through the last four weeks of content, modules one and two. In just a minute, I'll have Chris do just a little quick recap of the first half of the course. Of course, you know me, I'm Alexis Bateman, and we have Dr. Chris Kaplis with us to join us for the live event today. So just a quick, quick course update. So we're in the week five prep week. And so the primary objective of that week is to wrap up some of your grade assignments and prepare for the midterm exam that will open next Wednesday at 1500 UTC. So the midterm will cover the first half of the course all four weeks and both modules. It will be four hours and it will be open for one week. So once you open your exam, you'll have four hours to complete it. Fortunately, we don't have any extensions on that. So make sure you're prepared to take the exam once you open it within that time period. We have our two assignments. We have week four assignment due at the same time. And then you also need to finish assessing your peers for the module two open response assignments. So make sure you yesterday or excuse me, Wednesday, your personal response was due and now you need to finish assessing your peers. So this open response as you saw in the instructions is for grade, the first one was not. So make sure you get in there and complete that peer response assessment so you can get the full credit for the course. If you have any questions on how to complete that assignment, make sure to email us at se3xhelp.mit.edu. So now I'll turn it over to Chris just to give a real quick recap of the first half of the course of the journey we've been on so far. And then for the rest of the live event, we're gonna talk about that case that you saw, week four lesson two, the market reboot case that brought together a lot of the lessons from the first half of the course. So we'll go through some of the poll results there and then we'll open it up for question and answer where we can talk about the case and other issues from the things you learned about in the course and then we'll wrap it up with where we're gonna go for the rest of the course. Over to you, Chris. All right, thanks, Alexis. Let's just step back, the polls are open, the Slido polls that we announced, what that is. Not yet, yes, anyone who joined that first live event but those who have not, yes. So I'll just, yeah. So if you should be logged in, the instructions are there for Slido and you should be in the SE3X case. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna run a series of polls. So actually I'm going to fire up the first one now which is asking how you felt about the module assignment. So go in and put in your response on how you felt about the open response assignments, whether you felt that they're helping you apply concepts about your learning. So if you could, we'll discuss that after. And then if you have questions along the way, please put those in the question section and any questions that others, if you see a question you really like, make sure to upload it. And those are the ones that we'll answer the first. Yeah, that's why I mentioned it, Alexis, because this is the time to enter your questions in. Don't wait till the last 10 minutes to enter your questions because we probably won't get to them. So while I'm talking, if you think of a question you wanna ask about anything, you can ask us anything. Put those in there and we'll prioritize them with your help. You prioritize which ones you wanna hear and we'll just go down the list and answer them till the time runs out. So again, I'm Chris, you've heard my voice a lot and seen me a couple of times in the videos. Let me give you a sense of where you are. First in terms of the whole big sweep of the curriculum, this is the fourth of the courses. Hopefully you've taken zero, one and two beforehand and then after this you're gonna take four and then hopefully the comprehensive final. But the way this course SC3X fits into the whole curriculum is SC0X is all about the models. It gives you the tools in your tool belt that you can analyze any problem, hopefully that you will see within our curriculum but also when you hit your career in the supply chain management world. And so a lot of optimization, a lot of probability, statistics, regression, all those tools. And the interesting thing is we're changing that course to be not led by an instructor but to be on demand. And so starting in March, it'll always be open. We found that it's better to be used as a reference anyway. So even if you've already taken it, you can sign back into it and you'll have access to all that material and it's all getting released at the same time. So you can treat it like a reference guide for all those analytical methods, but that's zero. Then one X, we teach you the fundamentals and that's the trade-offs between inventory forecasting and transportation, how you make those trade-offs. SC2X is all about design, how you set up a model to look at the physical flow of materials along with the financial flow and the information flow. And so those are more the modeling courses. And now SC3X is a flip. And so we take all those models and we say, okay, how is it affected in the real world? And what we do in 3X is we're trying to figure out, okay, things happen, reality happens, what do you do differently? Do the models still make sense? How do you change those? And so I'll talk about in depth the first two modules in a second, but then following this course, SC4X fits really well into it. It's also relatively qualitative, but it also includes some other materials and includes some machine learning materials. Oh, it wasn't showing me. Oh, thank you. Yeah, as you can tell, Alexis and I are not in the same room. So I'm still getting the handle of doing this remotely. So I apologize for that. So SC4X builds on this and it helps us understand how do these models work at scale for a large company? How do they tie together? So taken all together, that's a nice comprehensive course. So we're kind of just past the halfway point. And so the way that we've redesigned SC3X, this run that you're a part of is a little bit different from the previous ones in that it's set up as modules. We did four modules and you've completed the first two. The first module is all about complexity, introducing the whole idea of complexity and what drives it, why do we have it? Do you want to drive it out or do you want to exploit it and leverage it? And we talked about the drivers of complexity and we'll talk more about those in the reboot case, whether it's the number of things, the variety, the way they interact, how opaque they are, and then the dynamic nature. But we kind of tried to summarize the different ways that a process can be complex and every supply chain of any sort, of any depth is very complex because you have multiple players and you don't control them all, lots of skews. We'll talk more about that in the reboot case. We also talked about the BOEP effect which is a well-studied effect that happens in supply chains whereas you move up the supply chain, the information gets much more spotty so you see greater amplitude and oscillation whether that's in orders and inventory because the information is not shared. And so we talked about how to identify that and remedies to try to minimize that. You won't always overcome it because some of it's naturally there and whenever you force something to ship in a full truckload you're enforcing batching which kind of exacerbates the BOEP effect but sometimes it's worth it because if I ship things individually that might minimize my batching and might minimize my bullwhip but it's gonna be wicked expensive. And so you gotta do that trade-off again because you wanna minimize the bullwhip but you're not gonna eliminate it totally because there's a reason why it's there for some things. We also went into System Dynamics, did the four basic tools, causal loop diagrams, behavior over time charts, stock and flow and went into very simple simulation models. System Dynamics is a whole industry. Some people would argue it's a religion, right? There's a lot there and if you love this stuff you gotta read Professor Sturman's book and you can dive really deep into that pool and there's a lot more sophisticated modeling out there. I wanted to give you a taste of it because we think it's a really good brainstorming tool. It helps you think of a complex system and that's why we included that. So that's the first module. It was all about complexity. How do you recognize it and how do you handle it? How do you model it with the System Dynamics tools? The second module fits on top of that and it's strategy because supply chains don't operate in a vacuum, right? We are not dictating what a company does usually. Usually what the supply chain has to do is align and support the company's mission. So to get a sense of that I wanted to start with understanding corporate strategy and I did just a handful of strategic frameworks. Porter's Five Forces is just a classic framework to help you classify how competitive your industry is and where your competition is coming from. We went over SWOT analysis, the growth share matrix, are you a cash cow? Just trying to give you a framework and help you understand what a company strategy would be. And then we shifted from that to say how should a supply chain strategy support the company's strategy and align with that? A lot of times people think you have to have your own supply chain strategy and it's independent and it's not. It's got to support and align with the company. And so Fischer's two by two matrix is just a classic one whether you have a functional or an innovative supply chain, right? You want to have it tied to that type of product. Am I shipping Campbell's soup or am I shipping bricks or am I shipping iPads or something that's much more innovative? iPads aren't as innovative anymore. But the idea is look at the characteristics of the product and that'll dictate what the risks are and it'll dictate what kind of supply chain you want to have. Is this something that's very cost conscious or is it something that's very responsive? So think pharmaceuticals. You're going to want to be very responsive because cost consciousness doesn't make as much sense because the logistics cost as a percentage of the total profit you can make for pharmaceuticals is tiny. So you're going to want to never stock out the ultra responsive as opposed to if I'm shipping, I don't know, waste paper out or lumber then it's going to be just the opposite. I'm not going to want to be as responsive. I want to be cost conscious. And so you have different ways of thinking about it. And so your supply chain should support the main products that it's delivering. And then taking this down a little closer, we gave you a process to how to identify the gaps and we went through a couple of examples for that. So it's a really useful thing you can use in practice. And then the last thing we did, we went really granular and did some process analysis tools. And these I think are helpful to have in your back pocket. Again, there's a lot more of these that you can go into. A lot of them are lean or six Sigma principles but I love process mapping because everything in supply chain is a process. And so when you're talking to a company or you're in a company and you have a multi person team coming together and you're trying to solve a problem, rarely is your problem going to be something that you control directly. It's going to be in the handoffs, right? That sales gives the order to ops, they give it to the warehousing and something gets changed in between. The best way to solve this is to get everyone in a room with a whiteboard and start doing your swim lanes, right? And understanding where the trade-offs are because the whole idea is it's the in-between actions that cause the problems, the handoffs fall apart. Because we're a supply chain, there's a ton of handoffs. And so that's what these process mapping tools help you do. There's a phrase about stapling yourself to an order. It's such a powerful technique. So if you're new to a company and you want to learn about how does an order get processed? How do orders get fulfilled? All those kind of things, just go to the first place where it enters, talk to the salespeople and follow an actual order all the way through to delivery. It'll uncover so many different things. So that's what we tried to do in that lesson, the first lesson of week four. We gave you some of these tools. We also taught you the fishbone exercise which is also a failure mode analysis and some other tools in there. And again, these are just the tip of the iceberg of things you can use to look at a real process and understand where's there a problem? Where should I focus my resources and help identify what you should do next? So that's kind of what we've done so far. And then after the midterm, and I'll let Alexis talk about that later, we have two more modules. And then so the second and third modules, the second number, I'm sorry, the third and fourth modules, the third one will be weeks seven and eight. And that's where we jump over into international, do global supply chains because they're their own set of problems. And Dr. Bruce Arnstein is gonna take you through those two weeks worth of that module. And it's interesting and it applies to almost every supply chain because all of our supply chains are global at some point. And then the last module, weeks nine and 10, excuse me, you're gonna have a mix of people. Professor Yossi Sheffi is gonna come in and talk about disruptions because that's another way that reality enters into our supply chains. And then I will be back with Alexis and we'll be talking about exogenous factors. And these are things you cannot control that you need to be aware of in your supply chain and whether you wanna leverage them or protect against them, that's the choice, but the whole idea of exogenous factors. So what I'm gonna do now, I think I'm gonna turn it back to you, Alexis, so we can talk about the reboot case, but are there any questions that have come in that we should address? Not at this point relevant for the first half, but I can say that in terms of the poll, have the module assignments helped you apply the concepts you learned. I'm really happy to say that 78% said yes and 22% said somewhat. So I'm gonna say just jumped up to 25%. So a good amount of people feel like those open response assignments are helping you. So keep making sure to get in there, read the prompts, see what the rubric, answer that question fully and use all the different pieces you've learned along the way to apply to that question. So, and in the same regard, when you've looked at that rubric, make sure you look at what a good answer looks like when you're grading your peers. So that you are grading your peers as you would like others to grade you. So I'm glad that those, that new approach we've introduced this run is seeming to help everyone. Zero percent said no, so I'm glad that that is a good change for this run. So now we're gonna talk a little bit about week four lesson two. So as you all saw, that was a different, much different type of lesson. And what Chris and I tried to do there was bring back some of these lessons as he's just recapped into a, to apply it into a case. So that you could see how some of these tools are used in practice and give you a chance to play around with them. They were, you know, a lot of them are open-ended and they can be different depending on how you look at it, but an opportunity applies in these tools in a case setting. So in week four lesson two, we introduced the lesson by introducing how to do a case study method. So there was a discussion on how, while we're not able to offer that as interactive opportunity as you would in a in classroom setting, we tried to simulate that in this space as much as possible. So we broke it down into multiple different components. We introduced the case topic and then you were able to read more in depth about what was happening in the market reboot case, answer a question about them, take a poll and then discuss it in. And I was really happy to see that a lot of people were in the discussion forums discussing how they perceive that topic and how their opinion on it and how they differed maybe from what we said in the answer and solution. And so I encourage you guys, it's that, you know, it'll be open for another week and to still get in there. And, you know, we discuss with your peers if you have comments. So that was the main different structure of this lesson. So I just wanted to run a quick poll also to see if you guys like the design of this lesson. So obviously yes or no. And then yes, but I would change it a bit. So if you liked it, but you have some comments, we would love to hear that. So just, you know, you can write it directly into the case in the last lesson or you can email us directly at se3xhelp.mit.edu. So now we've talked a little bit about the structure of the lesson. Who is market reboot? So what we're gonna do is just go briefly through each of the case parts and just review very, very briefly what happened there, what were some of the results that the polls we saw and some quick discussion topics. And after we go through that quickly, what we'd love is if you could pop populate some of your questions about the case, about some of the concepts you learn and then we can discuss that together. So I'll let you, Chris, if you wanna start off with introducing market reboot and the poll there and some of the discussion topics there. Okay, so yeah, so you all read the case, I assume. And so I'm just gonna go straight to the question that I asked and I'm gonna put the poll up here. And I think you guys can see that. Let me just make it a little bigger. There we go, maybe that's too big. Let me see if I can make this go. All right, so what we wanted to do was to figure out that we gave you a situation with this market, it was a company and they're getting into the e-commerce grocery business or have been in that. And then the whole idea is they're expanding into other areas. And so one of the questions that I asked initially was they scroll up, we asked, where's the complexity, the drivers here and hopefully everyone got this correct. But let's see if I can just show the answer. Yeah, so the whole idea of CEO selection, software selection, those were all red herrings, didn't mean anything. But looking at the real drivers here, here's the poll. And so thinking back at the case, yeah, I agree with this more or less. I think I said this also in my solution. So hopefully you looked at this, did the poll before you went and saw the little video that we did. But the idea is that the number of skews usually, that's almost always the number of drivers, the driver of complexity. And that's why you see so many examples of reduction of skews or rationalization of skews because it's easy to introduce new products. It's very hard to kill them. No one wants to kill their babies. And so you always have someone on that long tail who loves a certain product. So it takes a lot of political will within a company to do that. On the other hand, one thing that the company that Margaret Rebou could leverage is if they can efficiently manage a long tail of products, have a high diversity set of skews, if they can do that economically, then it's a competitive advantage. That's the challenge. And we didn't give you too much detail to see the cost that it would take to do that. But that's something that you would look at. The other is the number of customers coming in as well, because they're going to increase. And I would also add on here, I didn't have it on here, but I probably should have, is the diversity of the different customers. Because as you move into different markets, especially in the US, the US and the Canadian markets do have some differences there in terms of groceries particularly and the food they eat. So you're going to get some diversity there. So you might have to start having suppliers that are more local because there's a lot of things that consume more in Canada that are not consumed as much in the US and vice versa. So you might need to separate your supplier base, which again, could be another area of complication. But I think the polls kind of said, everyone kind of agreed there was a number of skews was the big driver. So I agree with that. And then I think Alexis, you have the next segment. Yeah, so in the next segment, we talk a little bit about generally the e-grocery industry. So what's happening there? Who are the main players that some of the main players are coming onto the scene but they're offering more in-store pickup as opposed to direct to home as your market reboot is in this case. So looking at the size of the industry and then markets reboots position within that that they have highly automated order fulfillment centers. They have very committed and customers to their company. And then they also have an opportunity to improve their last mile. So in this case, we did something a little different. We did a drag and drop swat. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats exercise. And so we thought here would be a nice opportunity for you to really think through the position that market reboot is in and drag and drop those accordingly as in terms of where that falls. And so that was a good opportunity to apply that into our market reboot case. And in the poll, this one was actually just a fun one. We didn't do a real serious poll in this question, but we asked as a customer, would you be interested in using market reboot services to get groceries? So 81% of you guys said yes and 19% said no. So that would be as far as perhaps your current adoption of e-groceries, whether that's available in your region or if it's something you're interested in getting in your personal life. But what we talked about in the discussion forum was really understanding some of the key opportunities for market reboot and seeing where they could expand. So as kind of within the SWAT, we saw that some of the key opportunities were exploring new technologies, contracting more local carriers, expansion to new regions. So based on their position within the scene, what they could do. And so a lot of people really were excited to talk about the new technologies that they could explore. And so we'll obviously come back to that at the end in terms of whether they might think about things in the far future about autonomous vehicles and drones as some of their competitors are exploring. So we can bring that discussion in full circle once we get to that point. So let me bring up a point, Alexis, with that. Because it's interesting that e-commerce with groceries, because groceries are historically one of the thinnest margin businesses. And so to do that for, it's interesting that that's where e-commerce is going. Because yes, everyone needs the groceries, but there's not a lot of room there for margin to take steel margin there. So you have to say, is it going to increase volume? Are they gonna be able to suddenly start increasing maybe higher priced, higher margin products in there? But I'm always baffled by how a company can do e-commerce to make money. Because it's still e-commerce for groceries, it's still almost a loss leader, because the idea is it'll lead to more business. But it's another area, so it's neat to think about drones and robots delivering groceries. But I'm always curious how the companies are gonna make money off that in the long run. Or whether it's gonna be just a fad or something's gonna come with that. Right, yeah. So I've certainly something to think about in terms of where market reboot's gonna get that additional value and be able to invest in something of technology like that, whether that'll even make them have a more sustainable competitive advantage or whether it's gonna put them out of business. Yeah. Okay, so the next section was the customers. Alexis, and you had this one as well. Yeah, yeah, so to kind of bring context to who market reboot is selling to, we introduced some of market reboot's customers. So they put out a survey to really understand who is using e-grocery and what's the potential to really grow that segment within market reboot. So we introduced five types of customers, one being the traditional shopper and they each had their own kind of descriptors that they were, the traditional shopper was more those that had large families and they were possibly one of the, they had children and one of the parents might stay home and they were able to shop several times a week. They also liked to see and touch items. So obviously their adoption and interest in e-grocery was lower. We had passive shoppers who are really the shoppers of convenience. So they wanted to shop at convenience stores in small supermarkets and they liked opportunity with e-groceries but they were passive about e-grocery adoption if the timing was, the delivery times weren't tight. We had value seeking shoppers. Those were the ones that only really adopted e-groceries if it was free or low cost. And so, and they had very small basket sizes. We had head of house shoppers. These ones were full-time and they had families and they liked to, once they adopted e-grocery, it was slow but once they would, they would have big basket sizes. And then we had the time strap shoppers and those were the ones that really have no time to go shopping and so that they really have a big opportunity to adopt e-grocery because of the convenience. So on that, we kind of surveyed you guys on which group of shoppers do you think grow the most for market reboot based on the kind of components that we introduced for each of those shoppers. And it kind of aligns with what was kind of prompted there was a 51% of you guys thought that time strapped which was the shoppers who have very little time to go shopping, that they would be the biggest adoption and also one of the biggest opportunities because they had fairly large basket sizes. The next was the head of house, that those that they also like to, or that they also have a fairly, they have actually the biggest basket size and that they wanna spend more time with their families so that their adoption of e-grocery would be potentially very high. And then, and that was about 34%. Then the last three types of customers were the traditional at 8%, passive at 5% and value seeking at 3%. So those kind of were the lease of interest and focus that possibly market reboot should invest in and really kind of the question that we followed up in the discussion forum was to say within that particular customer segment, do you think market reboot should offer big promotions or continue to work on their operational performance to really bring in those new customers? So based on sort of the segmentation of the different customers, many of you guys agreed that instead of offering big promotions, obviously that they're already on a very low margin that they should instead work on operational performance so that their customers would become more committed and more committed to their offering. So many agreed with that discussion. So Alexis, let me ask you a question then. So what are some of the operational things that would make them more sticky? Is that like tightening, having tighter time windows or looser time windows? Or what do you think that will be, not just in the case, but in practice for other e-commerce grocery deliveries? Right, well, I mean, one for the case would be that they need to continue to improve that last mile because they have the real challenge meeting the hour delivery time during those peak period time. So during rush hour in the morning and in the evening. So I think that the operational performance would be having tighter, in terms of e-groceries, even personally, my own feeling is to have those, continue to offer those tight delivery windows because that's really the differentiator between having a very large, two to four hour delivery window. If you want the convenience of e-groceries and you don't wanna have to go to the supermarket, which probably takes you about an hour and it can be delivered to you without having to leave your home, I think that's really the opportunity there. So then to internalize that within market reboot, they need to make sure that their operation fulfillment centers and last mile and our delivery are all aligned with that so that they can fill a basket in a very quick time period that it's correct. So that would be another factor would be that the actual basket fill has the products that the customers has ordered. So making sure that all their systems are aligned to get that and then it's good quality products so that fresh produce, not damaged, no broken eggs and then getting that to the customer's door in the right temperature setting within the hour. So I think that that kind of continuity of that operational performance from the different products to end delivery at the consumer is really what they should focus on to make sure that they build that trust with their customers. All right, and then the next segment kind of looked a little bit different and looked at the competitive advantage. So looking longer, kind of strategically, what should they be concerned about? And I think Alexis, you had this one as well. Yeah, yeah. So we, in this one, we talked a little bit about the operating environment and kind of how their, what position they're in at this point. So are there new players entering? Is there a lot of existing competition? How are the suppliers operating in this case and their customers as well? So in this case, we had introduced the Porter's Five Forces in week three strategy. And so we decided at that point to apply that to this setting. So we had introduced some of the different components of market reboots operating environment. And we surveyed really which force do you think will affect market reboot most in the future? And kind of aligned with the case, many of you felt that threat of new entrance was really their big, was really a big component here. So 58% of you. And so that was, in the case we discussed about how there's a new e- grocery competitor coming on in the New England area that was really offering some of the same offerings that they were very tight delivery windows. And so, and they were also expanding rapidly. So thinking about potential new entrance into their market into the region that they were operating in. Another component would be the power of customers. So in this case, the customer is king, right? So they are the ones that are creating the demand and they're asking for kind of the whole experience of e- groceries. So 16% of you said that the power of customers was something that will affect market reboot. Then 15% on internal rivalry amongst existing competitors and then 10% of ease of customer substitution. So the internal rivalry among existing competitors, we had talked about that. So some of the big guys, the Walmarts and others that are offering at this point the pickup in store, but not so much a bigger offering to direct to home. So seeing whether that was gonna become a bigger part in terms of competition in the future, definitely does something to keep in mind. But I think that very much aligned with what was discussed in the case, the threat of new entrance that there were those that were going to offer similar delivery windows with a similar kind of operational performance that they need to start to prepare for potential more entrance into their market. And then we talked a little bit about, in discussion for about whether market reboot has a sustainable competitive advantage and why or why not? So some, this was a great discussion where some said not yet they need to make sure that they have a stronger customer base and that they need to kind of have a long term operational performance that's showing that they can continue to offer those very solid delivery windows and good quality baskets right to the door. Some said that they do and that by working with local suppliers and local, contracting local last mile operators carriers that they could definitely have a sustainable competitive advantage to the one that would come in that would not be as regionally situated. So another point for that, what's happened in practice, it's what's funny is e-commerce grocery has been around for 20 years, right? It used to be mainly from the large grocery stores like Stop Shop in my area. They all introduced a sidearm for home delivery right around 2000. Before that it was more complicated because you'd have to use a phone but as soon as there was an interface with the internet, it started popping up. And then right in like mid 2000s, I don't know if this happened with you on the West Coast, Alexis, they most of them just disappeared because there's no money in it. And then it suddenly rebirthed with a lot of companies are getting VC money because this was the next big thing. And so these new competitors what makes them so dangerous is they've got a lot of money. Now they're probably gonna burn through it rather quickly but a traditional grocery business, those margins are 3%, 5%. I mean, they're really tiny. So for them to kind of grow this and support something they're gonna face some stiff competition from someone coming in who's got venture capital money and they're just going gangbusters. And if it burns like a candle, that's what happens because a lot of the traditional grocery stores the way that they try to increase their margins. So that's why they still a lot of prepared food because they can have a higher margin on that because they're selling against essentially going to a restaurant. And so there's all these different strategies with the new entrance versus the existing which makes this kind of an interesting case. Great. Yeah. I think the next one is you on order fulfillment. It is. Yeah. So what we did here, let's see, where am I? Right. So the whole idea we talked about some of the order fulfillment centers, the OFCs and traditionally they, and this is the strategy that they had which is not unique to them is it's tough to put a DC right in the middle of an urban area, so they put it outside. And so that's what they were trying to do because space, there's more space, more open land. It's generally cheaper land. You have better access to highways. So the supply side is easier, right? The delivery side's a little bit longer to get in but you save a lot by having easy access for supply coming in. And that's a strategy and they had been doing this but they were having problems with OFC 51 which is located right outside of Portland. And so the question was, what should they do? And first we asked you a question of what process tool you should use. And I think you guys hopefully got that corrected that the fishbone made the most sense. We didn't give you enough information to understand the swim lane. Swim lane's better if there's, once you identify a problem to see where it happened. It's a great tool for that. SWAT's more of a strategy tool, a longer term tool. Scenario planning has no business being here for this but hopefully you didn't pick that one because that's really all about long term, 10 years out kind of things where you can't do a forecast. So the fishbone or the fill your mode analysis tool is the one that makes the most sense here. And then the way hopefully if you drew something out the whole idea is that you try to understand where the problems were. And you try to see, let me get back up to here whether it's a problem with the process, the people, the technology or something else. And so hopefully when I did mine out and you saw where those problems laid out it's just kind of illustrating a concept that you can do for this. What I've done in practice for this kind of fill your mode analysis is again on a whiteboard when you have a team there and you identify what the problem is and try to just a way of brainstorming where things are. And a lot of garbage will come up initially but it's a way of honing in the discussion. I also like the why's, the five why's that I discussed because you keep asking why, why, why and you finally get to something that, oh, okay, this is something I can do. So it's a way to get to the causal action for a negative outcome. The results for what you think they should first address overwhelmingly employee training versus an events procedure for when the different bad events happen and insulating the warehouse was kind of a low. We kind of just put that in as a side comment but an employee training is the number one. I think I gave some recommendations in there that what I've seen that works before is you bring in some veterans and you transplant them in for a number of weeks or months and you work side by side because it sounds like you need to upgrade the people that are there but also you should think about the hiring because it's not just training the people that are there as new people come in why don't we be a little more selective on the type of people that we pick? So I agree with that that that's where you would want to focus in on. And again, the fishbone diagram is just a great way to hone in on where you should focus your energies. Alexis, anything you want to add to that one? Nope, I think, yeah, we should move along through the last couple of parts so that we can see if we can answer a handful of questions. So the next one, I'm going to bring it up here as well is the basket, the promotions. So the whole idea you have these promotions going on that's how they mainly manage their business. It works really well because remember they do that basket approach. And so, did I lose my, you guys can't see the polls, can you? Da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah, I lost my connection there. So we'll have to describe the poll results to you. So the idea, this is similar to what companyjet.com does this. If any of you order things from Stitch Fix, they do the same thing, where you get a bundle of things that you don't always pick yourself and you get a discount over all those. If you return some of them, then the discount gets lessened. That's how some of these mail e-commerce sites that have furniture or excuse me, have clothing delivered to them like Stitch Fix. And so for here, you have a basket and then you get that discount and it's a great way for the company to introduce new products, see how things go and get promotions from suppliers. And we give the case of the minis one. And the problem with this is that they ran into problems and that they found that they, there was a lot of demand for it that far exceeded what they had were capable of delivering for a bunch of reasons. And the big thing was that they did not share, talk to their supplier ahead of time. There was a whole loss of information there. And so hopefully you went through the causal loop diagram and it helps to illustrate this. This is where CLDs I think are very helpful because you can understand the dynamics and why certain things happened. Because as the case described, first you had all the shortage and the natural reaction when you're being shorted something is to keep ordering more of it. And the problem is that suppliers never forget and so it eventually comes, but it comes way later. This sounds like it's really a made up and this case is fictionalized, but this stuff happens all the time. We've done work with large CPG manufacturers and retailers where they do promotions for different products and you see the exact same thing happening. Human behavior is to keep ordering when you're short and it comes later and it always comes at the wrong time. So you see this shortage during a promotion and then you have access where you've got to further discount things later on. So it's a case again where a causal loop diagram will help you understand the dynamics of what the problem is and help you get better clarity to prevent that from happening in the future. Okay, I think it's now in the last mile, Alexis. Yeah, so the seventh part of the case tackling the last mile, we asked you to think about how a process might, so we talk about how that last mile is getting a little bit delayed and one way to kind of think about and potentially understand where some of the delays are occurring would be to apply the process map to what a driver needed to do before they actually delivered the delivery, the basket to the customer. And so we asked you to do a little drag and drop exercise where you could review the case and drag and drop and see that process map in terms of what was potentially how many things they needed to do before they actually even delivered that to the customer's house. And so getting that perspective was that they had a whole lot of things to do before along from picking up from the order fulfillment center to navigating through urban areas and then parking and then also delivering. So many of you guys did that real nicely and then we asked you just very simply in the poll would be would making a process map like this help you make a decision. And so overwhelmingly 91% of you said yes and 9% of you said no. So 91% of you you can definitely take that tool to kind of break apart a situation to understand really where some of the delays are occurring. And in this case, it showed that the single driver was having a real challenge with doing each of those different components and then being able to deliver within that very tight delivery window. So potentially a solution as some of you guys discussed in the discussion forum would be that possibly they could better understand what part of that process was taking the most amount of time using some of the tools that we talked about in lesson one of this week. And then potentially a driver might need someone to come along with them to navigate some of these issues and inefficiencies that were occurring along the way. So I'm just briefly gonna go through the last section so that maybe we can get to one or two questions where we're running low on time and just kind of wrap it all up. So the final case was the future of the e-grocery last mile. So this is where we got a little bit more future oriented to think about just being kind of thinking about where market reboot was going within the existing setting and how they might think about what they should do. And so the quick question asks you what tool can the team use to think through any number of strategies and technologies the team was in the case being suggesting all these different options they could pursue and what approach might they use to kind of think through all those options. And so hopefully you picked scenario planning as was discussed in week three, lesson two to kind of think about what are the current events that might come down the align and then how that might affect market reboot and what different things can they do to potentially change the long-term outcome. So in the case part eight poll, we said to keep their edge which often you think market reboot should pursue in the long-term. So you weren't given a lot of details about obviously cost here and some of the margins. So some of it is not perfectly reality. This is a hypothetical case, but the results show that urban DCs and major zones was 31% of you guys thought that that was kind of the most realistic option to pursue in the long-term. So then instead of having some of the overseas that were on the outskirts of town to possibly improve the last mile, they might potentially look at small format urban DCs that they could then operate and have different kind of possibly higher per excuse to then deliver quicker within those tight delivery windows. 20% wanted you guys to think about drones. And so maybe the Amazon route to think about how drones might even deliver in the house in those in the urban areas. The 16% said contract local carriers, 14% two drivers per trip, which is probably some of the nearest term change they could probably include 12% autonomous trucks and 7% a new routing software. And then no one said nothing keep as is. So there was agreement that something needs to be done and possibly the scenario planning exercise could think about what is potentially how those different approaches might be imagined and how that can play out within the market reboot case. Any last thoughts on that, Chris? No, I think you've covered it. And so I think I just released the questions that had come in. And so we can go through those, but any last things you wanna say about the reboot case? We've got about eight minutes left. Real quick is that the great thing is 78% of you guys liked the design of the lesson. So that was the poll. So yes, but I would change it a bit 17%. So I asked those 17% to share with us how you might change it. So I'm happy that you enjoyed this different type of lesson. And then we'll just release a final poll, which is would you like to see more of these types of lessons in the future? And then so we have a couple of questions. So the questions that a couple came in. So well, one question is, is SE3X key concepts document now fully updated? It looks like it was not aligned with the flow of the course from Mark A. So yes, it has been updated. I've been putting in those updates into your email. So those, if you guys, hopefully the course emails, make sure to read those. I try to put in a very relevant content for you. And so if there's been any changes in the key concepts, we update it at that point. We also have a version on the key concepts. So it'll show you that some, that it's been updated recently. So we'll continue to update that. I'll remind everyone in the email to download that so that you have the most recent version. So the next question I can take is, what's the best supply chain strategy for pharmaceuticals? I kind of alluded to that earlier because I saw the question. So the pharmaceuticals typically have very high margins. And so, and if you're on patent, you have a certain time, a number of years where you're protected in the market. And as soon as it comes off patent, a bunch of competitors will come in. And so the whole idea is, if you want to have a pharmaceutical supply chain, cost efficiency is not really an issue until it comes off patent. So what you really focus on is having a very responsive supply chain. So make sure you have a lot of inventory pushed out there, use expedited travel. You have track and trace all there. So it's a very high-end responsible, responsive and agile supply chain because the biggest problem is not spending too much on the cost per whatever being delivered, it's missing the sale. You can't miss any demand. So that's the big difference with a pharmaceutical versus say, a traditional supply chain that's delivering low-cost food, let's say. Great, great. So the next question, so we can mark that as answered, would be, are there, and I'm gonna let you answer this, Chris, are there a set of metrics that define what a good supply chain looks like? And are there tools in the market that provide a supply chain health assessment? Yeah, we talked about this in SC2X a little bit. The problem is there's no single metric for a supply chain, that's why you need a dashboard. You can measure a supply chain like a process, right? So you have inputs, you transform them into outputs. And so you can look at, how well am I using my inputs? That's called a utilization metric. I can look at a transformation metric or productivity. So how many inputs does it take to create an output? Think of dollars per mile that it takes to deliver something or warehouse hours to process an order. That's a transformation or an efficiency or productivity metric. And then at the other end, you have an effectiveness metric of my deliveries, how many were on time, how many were perfect. So you have utilization, productivity or efficiency and then effectiveness, you need metrics in all three of those. And so in SC2X, the last chapter, the last lesson I wanna say week 10 talks about this. And so look under logistics performance metrics and depending on the industry you're in, you're gonna stress different dimensions. If you're in say paper manufacturing, big heavy assets, utilization is gonna be the big driver there. If you're in high tech or in pharmaceuticals, you're gonna be all about effectiveness. How well am I delivering? Also for manufacturing, you're gonna have very high productivity metrics too. So we've done studies to see where the focus is and it really falls along industry lines. Great, thanks Chris. All right, so the next question is, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were running it too. Oh, it's fine. So when a student Arapin asked if the next live event's also gonna be at this time. So we try to move around the live event time, the first live event, we had at 1400 UTC. So that was a three hours earlier. This one is at 1700 UTC. So we try to move them around so that we try to hit a lot of time zones. I know that these are really late for many of you guys in Asia and if you're even able to join. So, but we try to move it around. We can't, it's challenging to meet every time zone. So I apologize for those that this is too late, and then it kind of is more suited to those on the Pacific standard time. So we try to move it around to make it more as best, fit it to as many schedules as we can. So it's recorded. It's recorded. It's recorded, so you can look at it at any time. And so the amount of interaction, we find that it's usually what six to 10 times the number of people watch it after it's been recorded and watch it live. Cause even if this fits your time zone, you might be working. We all have lives. So that's why we record them. So you can always watch them after the fact. Yeah. So if you, you know, for those, if you can't make the next one or you missed that first one, we go right back into that exact live event in the course. And so the link is posted right there. So you can go there and watch it. You know, the last one we had Don Woodlock talking about system dynamics. So if you weren't able to see that, go and watch it. The same will be for this. So absolutely, if you, if you aren't able to hear, be here and engage actively in the discussion at that time, but you can watch it after the fact and still benefit from, from that discussion. So I think we have time for one more question. Yeah. So Charmin says, do you have any, a name for scenario planning tools? The one, are there ones that are available in the market currently? There might be something out there. There's, there's one coming. I don't know the name of it that has like little flashcards where you think of, you know, new trends coming up. But generally, if you, there's a couple of references and I list those I think in the key concept document. Peter Schwartz is the long, God I'm blanking on the name right now. The long view is a great reference to it. It's essentially a soft technique you can use. So there's not really a software package or anything out there. If you look at the references that we put in the key concept document and also for some of the materials that we did here at Future Freight Flows at MIT, we give you guides for all this and it's all there for free to include the videos that you probably watched and some of those other materials. So there isn't any single like branded tool out there that I know that's worthwhile. I think it's just looking at the concepts and adapting it to your own need. And it's really just a chance for people to talk in brainstorm thinking outside their normal day to day habits and operations thinking about the future. Right, great. Great, thanks for that Chris. Yeah, so like we did in that last part of the case, we talked about scenario planning and thinking about the different choices they had to, they could make in terms of what they were gonna do to improve their last mile. That was very small scope application of scenario planning and you would wanna do that with different people involved in that decision-making so you could think it through together. So just as sort of a small application of that in the case. So just as a quick wrap up, we're in our last minute. So the poll question said, would you like to see more of these types of lessons in the future? Overwhelming, 100% said yes. So I guess that means we have some more work to do. I will be thinking about how we could do this in other settings, possibly in SE3X. And so as far as we've wrapped up this lesson and so make sure to get your graded assignment done for this lesson as well as the open response assessment for module two. And in this kind of break week prep week, make sure to prepare for that midterm. So go back to your practice proms and graded assignments, review the key concepts and just be prepared to take that exam when it's open and allot that four hours. We don't believe it should take all four hours, should take about two, but just make sure that you have that time to allow and don't take it two hours before the end of the close because it's just not gonna work. So make sure you have your solid chunk of time to take that midterm and that will cover all or most of the concepts from the first four weeks of the lesson. So we really appreciate you being here today and hopefully you got a good feel of that, this new type of lesson and applying some of these tools and we hope you enjoyed it. All right, bye guys, take care. Thank you.