O que Operações Especiais têm a te ensinar sobre Cadeias de Suprimentos - Keenan Yoho

03:26 - I have the privilege of working together with Dr. Keenan Yoho. Keenan has an impressive range of different experiences, ranging from many, many industries. And, more interestingly, or also interestingly, crossing the border between the civil world and the military world, and that’s part of what we are going to explore with him today.

03:58 - So, Keenan, welcome! Thank you so much for making time for us today. And if I can ask you to just take our viewers through a jorney that you are, you know, going through ever since you earned your PhD, just for them to know the breadth of different experiences and knowlegde that you have.

04:26 - - Ok. Thanks, Dr. Correa, the privilege is all mine when it comes to working together. So I appreciate you having me on the evening.

04:36 - I came about operations, I grew up in a town that had 5 factories when I was growing up, and by the time I was a sophomore in high school, there were no factores left in that town. But I was very, very interested in manufacturing and making manufacturing competitive because these jobs provide a really good living for their workers.

04:59 - I went to undergraduate a school at Temple University and actually it was a liberal arts major. I majored in religion, with a concentration in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, but as I tell people there weren’t a lot of jobs in that area, so I ended up later on at the University of Wisconsin, getting my MBA in operations and technology management and minoring in industrial engeneering.

05:26 - And from there I went to the RAND Corporation, in Santa Monica, California, really to support the army and the air force in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, so…

05:37 - Largely, what we were doing at that time were building algorithms to determinate the types of spare parts that would go in the most foward inventories on the ground, in the theater in Iraq and Afghanistan and those problems, there are 20 foot shipping containers with 5 different bin sizes, so that’s an operations, you know, we call that a knapsack problem.

05:59 - The demand was random, some units that would be on the ground, maybe it would be an armored brigade. You’re storing a tank tracks and road wheels, and such, and then, later, what would rotate in on that might be a helicopter, a brigade.

06:17 - So now suddenly you’re swapping in helicopter parts. So the demand was random, non-stationary, it was a knapsack problem and it was a multi-issue problem. Meanwhile those 20 foot shipping containers are moving all around the battlefield.

06:31 - So, turned out it was a very complicated and analytical problem. But from an execution standpoint and, you know, making sure that we were affective in supporting the army, and that were a lot of managerial issues, we had to adress as well.

06:48 - And there were a host of other problems that came up during that time from how do we manage the 20 foot shipping containers that were out there, when they were empty, getting them back to the port. So, there was a whole detention problem. You can think of that as almost like late fees on library books, or something else. Things from maintenance standpoint with aircraft, how do you minimize unplanned maintenance? So you have scheduled maintenance over time.

Maybe it’s based on flight hours, maybe it’s based on calendar time, what they would call ian isochronal schedule based on the calendar.

07:24 - And on one hand you didn’t want to take the planes out of operation for scheduled maintenance, so you don’t want to expend that period, but as you expend the window of planned maintenance, now you have the possibility of unplanned maintenance coming in. So, how do you kind of optimize that plan schedule to minimize unplanned maintenance? - So there are well quotes for aircraft, right? - Yes, yes! So there are a host of those types of problems, and then, later on, I was at the Naval post graduate school and from there I was ask to come to US Special Operations command in Tampa, Florida, and work on a Special Team, for the commander there, who happened to be at the time, a Navy Admiral, for the purpose of transforming all of US Special Operations and the relationship of US Special Operations and its partner forces around the world.

08:13 - And so that a bigger problem and encapsulated, not only in logistics and supply chain, but things like basing, things like authority and agreements, organizational structures, or a whole host of things that are in there, which I see is largely, you know, all a piece of supply chain. When you think of everything from the demand, where the customer is all the way back into the sourcing.

08:45 - - That’s fascinating. Oh, I’m sorry. I thoughtyou had finished.

08:49 - - No, that’s that, I was just going to say that that’s in a nutshell, where I was and where I’ve been. ; - Then you joined us at Rollins, much to our happiness. So, maybe some of our audiences members might not know, but you went from Temple University to one of the temples of operations research, actually. A lot of important things happened or were created in the RAND Corporation about operations research. And also it is important for students in this field to know that at least operations research and many other initiatives were actually born military, during the second world war, and the British Navy.

And then it went from there, it turned civil, and developed into what we call analytics nowadays. But at that time it was called operations research. So fascinating your breadth of different experiences, Keenan.

09:57 - Let me ask you some more specific things. You told us you have a lot of experience in operations and supply chain in military operations, and more recently you supported like the US top commander of special operations in aspects related to logistics, supply chain as a whole, as you said so rightly. Can you tell us about, because many people might not be aware what special operations is and what’s the importance of Special Ops to modern warfare? And let me just clarify one thing: Keenan is very humble, but he, on top of everything that he does, he’s also the vice president of the Special Operations Forces Foundation.

So, he’s very knowledgeable about many things, but he’s certainly an expert in Special Ops, just as an introduction.

11:04 - - Thanks Henrique. So, yes, the global Special Operations Forces Foundation is the National Military Association for all Special Operations forces in the US. And when I say Special Operations Forces in the United States, what we mean are the US Army, Special Operations Forces, which you can think of as the green Berets. Also, that would include the U S army ranger regiments. That also includes the US Navy seals and air force special operations command, which includes not only their pilots, but their tactical operators that are on the ground, and then Marine Corps special operations command.

11:47 - So there’s a whole host… And that within the army, you also have the special operations aviation regiment. So there’s a whole host of forces from each one of the services: the army Navy, air force and then the Marines, which are, are part of the Navy. And so, each one of those has its own special operations, what we would call components.

12:13 - And, so… Why have those? The legacy and history of each one of the special operations forces and each one of the services is a little bit different, and the role of each one of those units is a bit different. The green Berets, the army special operations forces, they have as one of their missions direct action that’s when, what you see in a lot of popular films where people are fast roping out of helicopters, are kicking in doors and rescuing hostages.

But the other really, really important mission that the green Berets have are, and their motto, De oppresso liber, liberate the oppressed. This is really to work with indigenous populations to help overthrow oppressive regimes.

13:02 - So, they did a lot of work, of course in Vietnam, where some of the earliest forces in Vietnam, and so that’s a big part of their. They do a lot of training of other forces and partner forces, and really being on the ground and developing organically indigenous forces.

13:22 - So, that’s a big part of there’s, the army Rangers more of a direct action force taking down airfields and the such ans, and the same with the Navy seals have more of a direct action mission and the air force, special operations command, everything from insertion, rescue, direct action from some of their gunship platforms, to intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance.

13:46 - So, a wide spectrum of capabilities, and, to be used for everything, from building indigenous forces with small light footprints, sending in 10 people, of course, many people know about the horse soldiers in Afghanistan, the first soldiers that went into Afghanistan after the United States was attacked on September 11th, 2001, where army green Berets. And they parachuted in, then were meetup with the Northern Alliance and on horseback, fought the Taliban to take down the Taliban.

14:28 - So, those types of missions to direct action, those are all of really they’re, the bread and butter of their expertise. So why are these forces important now? And this is a big question as the United States moves into a… It’s national security strategy and its defense strategy focused on what they’re calling great power competition, which is really focused on China and Russia. And the reason why special operations forces are so important these days it’s twofold.

14:58 - One, is that, in the missile age, when you can now take a missile and projected 3000 nautical miles and hit within a 10 meter radius because of precision strike capabilities and GPS, and other things, you have to now disperse your forces and smaller, and smaller, more distributed, more capable footprints. It’s no longer this kind of Napoleonic warfare where it’s just force on force. And we saw the Iraqi army saw how that worked for them in 1992. And it just… That was really a demonstration of what, in the US, is sometimes referred to as a revolution in military affairs, which is this kind of precision strike regime that the US built up from the eighties through the nineties.

15:44 - So now that you can do that, you can hit with precision something very, very far away, you have to disperse. And so, now, I think that the future of warfare looks more like that. .

15:56 - Now, and also layer in autonomous systems that is smaller forces, more distributed, more capable. The other part is that, throughout the cold war, we relied upon special operations forces constantly, because a lot of what’s going on in a great power competition, our information operations, you know, undermining the legitimacy of your competitor, you know, in different places around the world, helping forces that may be aggravated by your competitor to be more effective in resisting them.

So all these things are going to require, you know, special operations forces to be effective. So, that’s why they are important in, in the future. So the smaller, more capable of distributed aspect, but then also the ability to work with partners and other forces that may have similar interests to our own and resisting those that we are in a strategic competition with.

17:03 - - Fascinating, thank you very much for this introduction. And now let’s go back to learning from the military to apply lessons in the Seaville world. Keenan, you’re very experienced in supply chains for military operations, traditional military operations in special forces. How different is it to manage the operations and supply chain for special operations and operations and supply chain for traditional military operations? - That’s a great question.

And as you mentioned earlier at the Rand corporation, around that time in the late, around the mid 1950s through the sixties, were really a golden era in terms of developing theory and methods for managing inventory and material from spare parts to just consumables or things that you consume. So there was a lot of mathematics developed around that time, that some of which we couldn’t even fully implement, because we just didn’t have the computing power.

18:18 - And now that the computing power has caught up to the ideas and the math, it’s really, really a good time to be in that area. But the biggest difference between them is that our systems, previously through the cold war and then, and there thereafter were built for efficiency, it was built for projecting large forces over great distances and sustaining them for prolonged periods of time.

18:44 - So, you know, think about the D-Day invasion, where it’s, you know, you’re trying to project mass and large forces across a great geographical expanse and do it very, very efficiently and consistently. So you’re wanting to do it cheaply, and consistently and large volumes. The big difference with supporting special operations forces is you have small forces that are distributed.

19:11 - And so it’s hard to get scale efficiency that way.

19:14 - The other big difference is that, when you’re projecting a large numbers of conventional forces, a lot of the commodities that they use, you know, the weapons, the uniforms, the ammunition, all of these types of vehicles that they have, they are common, and there are large quantities of them. And the special operations forces they’re often using equipment and gear. That’s less common and maybe even, you know, highly variable.

19:48 - And I’ll give you an example. Explore explosive ordinance disposal teams often are part of a special operations detachment or group of people that will be deployed. And explosive ordinance disposal, there is a lot of technology and tools that are being rapidly developed over time, because, as they’re learning, they’re using things that are commercial off the shelf, things that you might find, you know, at a home Depot or at a camping store, or, you know, another electronics source.

20:22 - And, so, they’re trying to integrate these things in that are not part of the regular inventory. What’s on stock, what’s on the shelf for the rest of the military. So you have that aspect where you’re doing this rapid procurement of things that are just coming out in our new, much more so, and you have a lot of other non-standard things from munitions to optics, to even their uniforms.

20:44 - So, you have that part where they have a different assortment of items that you’re trying to fulfill. In some cases, even a broader range, but in a much smaller volume. So, for the conventional military is designed for efficiency and mass. For the special operations, it’s really designed for a small volume, high mix of items and small footprint.

21:11 - So in some cases, you know, you’re not going to be able to, the way you build up a conventional force, you know, behind the front lines, there would be, you know, supply chains of trucks, moving things that are coming in from airfields that are… Or ship yards in the rear. And these small distributed forces that are forward. You may need to airdrop things in, or you may need to fly it in with a turboprop aircraft.

21:35 - So it’s just… The delivery is different. So the distribution chain is different. The mix, the product mix is different, from a variety standpoint and the volume, and the demand is different. So it just… It’s smaller. So you’re not built for efficiency, you need to build for responsiveness, I would say is the primary. And the ability to insert in an austere environment. And in some cases you don’t, you want to be able to insert the supplies in a way that, you know, you’re not. . It’s not obvious, that’s what you’re doing. - That’s so fascinating. You even use the terms like efficient and responsive. So that gives me an opportunity to hear from you and learn from you. What do you think that are the lessons that can be learned from the military operations? Who in a way you are describing to us, they have segmented supply chains. Supply chains with different objectives, with different characteristics, remarkably different. So we hear a bit about segmenting supply chains for companies and so on.

So do you think these lessons can be applied to the civil world? Like corporations, with different market, different products, maybe they might need different supply chains? - Yes. So, I think that one of the big differences is that, even in e-commerce versus, you know, your standard big box or brick and mortar stores, you have a very, very different type of system for delivery, the distribution centers, the design is different. So let me give an example from just Walmart and Amazon.

So Walmart supply chain is designed… Their distribution centers are designed to pick and pack items among a very relatively narrow assortment of products. So, typically, they, in their stores, they stock the top five market leaders.

24:08 - This is how they’ve gotten their velocity, and this is why they’ve been so dominant in retail for so many years. So that distribution center is packing trucks to replenish Walmart stores that have a much more narrow range of products, and every week, every multiple days they’re replenishing that store.

24:30 - So the location and the mix of items is set, and the periodicity in which it will be replenished as also set. The difference from thinking about the design of that distribution center, that’s replenishing those individual Walmart stores, that set up and how the picking and the packing is going on in there is very different than if you are an Amazon and you’re wanting to deliver to a single address. And, in Orlando, Florida, you know, a Husqvarna lawnmower, you know, half pound of yak, milk, cheese, and some specific, you know, oatmeal soap, and you’re going to deliver it to that person one time.

25:17 - So the entire information system, - And quickly.

25:19 - - Yes, quickly. In two days. - Yeah. - And so the entire infrastructure, the physical infrastructure of the distribution center, the information systems infrastructure and just the delivery, the home delivery infrastructure are very, very different. I would say that that is much more closely what is necessary for supplying special operations forces than the previous model that I mentioned, which is to replenish a big box stores.

25:50 - And the real difference is: one is just the responsiveness to new and emerging needs.

25:57 - So when you have small groups of people trying to do big things on the ground, they will often be, you know, they’re encouraged to and they’re selected to innovate and experiment.

26:09 - And so they may come up with, or need, certain supplies, equipment. That’s not in the military system and they’re going to start procuring that off the shelf. So I think that intense customer focus is one part to be really, really focused on the customer and what they need.

26:25 - And then, again, this delivering wherever they are, and being able to follow them around, and also keep some data to be able to analyze what the demands were in the past, how items are cycling, which items are coming on the books, which items are coming off, that capability from an information system standpoint is fairly sophisticated. Because, again, you don’t have as stable an assortment, or catalog of items that you’re keeping. So there’s, you know, again, there’s the distribution piece, which is all the way from the warehousing, you know, to delivery.

And then there’s the product mix, paying attention to what is it that the customer wants, why do they want it and how do they use it. And, then, responding with that mix of items and having that assortment available so that you can deliver anywhere that it’s needed.

27:19 - - Right? - Yeah - Absolutely. Yeah. But it reminded me of, like, when you think about Kellogg’s, right? Producing their staple, their morning cereal and working very much to keep products flowing in an efficient way. It’s pretty predictable, they know what they are going to do day in, day out. When you go to a companies like, I don’t know, Apple or more innovative companies like this, sometimes, or most of the time, you don’t know exactly what to expect, because the products are much less predictable, and therefore you have to be much more responsive.

28:01 - So, I think the parallels are incredibly… They hope, I mean, they are there. And for our audience, if you want to go a bit more in depth about this, read the classic article by Marshall Fisher, 1997, Harvard Business Review, called “What’s the right supply chain for your company”.

28:24 - I’m sorry, “What’s the right supply chain for your product”. Although in 1997 this was a discussion, even now, when I visit companies, I don’t know if you have the same experience, they are still struggling with the idea that they should maybe treat supply chains in a segmented way, the same way that they treat factories within a factory or sells within a plant.

28:52 - Because I think it’s so ingrained in people’s minds, in manager’s minds, that they should work to always reduce costs, always gain scale. And not necessarily. They are thinking with the same emphasis about responsiveness, or about agility, or about speed of response.

29:15 - So, one more thing that we can learn from the military, right? - That’s a great. I like how you frame that, Henrique, especially the innovative versus the kind of the standard, you know, the efficient supply chain. Because it’s definitely on the special operations side, it’s more geared toward the innovative and the responsive.

29:38 - - So Keenan, the other day we were team teaching. And I learned a lot when you were talking about yet another difference between special ops and traditional military, which was about the characteristics of people involved and organizational structure. How different they were. And I saw some parallels with, you know, startups, more agile versus very well established corporations, rigid, hierarchical, and so on.

30:15 - Can you share with us a bit of the insights you gave our students that day about the differences in organizational structure between these two remarkably different operations within the same army, within the same military? - Sure. Yeah. I think that the biggest kind of innovation, organizational innovation, or change, or transformation, that’s taken place, especially among the more tactical units and special operations, been this adoption of what a retired general Stanley McChrystal referred to in his colleagues, Chris Fussell, “The team of teams approach”.

And they wrote a book about this, which is you still from a human resources and management standpoint, you still have this kind of tree-like structure that we would all recognize in an organization with, you know, one person at the top.

31:11 - And then, you know, it kind of goes down where there are many at the bottom. To this team of teams where you’re pulling people into groups that are very, very flat, they’re empowered to make decisions on the ground, because they’re closest to things on the ground and they’re closest to the change. And empowering those, those people to make decisions based on what’s often referred to as mission command or the intent of the leader.

31:41 - And so that’s been a big change and that’s been necessary to flatten the organization in order to become faster and more responsive, because that’s just been a real competitive differentiator, especially at a tactical level, as the ability to respond to the conditions on the ground. So whether that’s if you’re a FedEx and you have what they refer to as the purple promise, which is to make every experience outstanding, and you empower the FedEx delivery driver on the ground to whatever is happening, whatever’s may have gone wrong with the delivery of the package to do whatever is in their power to make it a right for the customer.

32:21 - And then, each week, their senior executives get together and they basically do a post-mortem, or they look at those problems each week and decide: was that a special cause problem or was that a common cause problem? Was that something that occurred because a tornado hit the area that day, or is that something because of our business processes allow these things to slip through? And then they take the appropriate response. So that’s the way that they manage and empower people is very similar to the way the shift that took place and US special operations.

32:55 - And I would say, is it starting to take, hold throughout, you know, the US military more generally, but a lot of the innovation happens at the U S special operations forces. Innovations, and technology innovations, and tactics innovations, and organization often take place there. And then are, you know, laterally deployed later, you know, things like night, vision goggles, for example. Special operations are the first to have those, now they’re common throughout the rest of the military.

So I want to make sure that I answer all of your question here and regain. That organizational structure has been really, really critical. I think it’s important for private firms to start to adopt that. The thing that’s really different is that this is an organization that does essentially serial startups and high impact projects.

33:57 - So they’re constantly, you know, each mission is at least a very high impact project that has been planned for, typically rehearsed for and prior to its execution. And there are many, many, many different pieces and parts from satellites to drones, to helicopters and planes, to individual people, to working dogs, to explosive ordinance disposal. All those things coming together as a specific time and place to conduct an operation. And then, you know, retrieve, and everyone get back into place to get ready to do it again.

34:36 - So at the very least it’s that, but in many cases, it, what I would call a serial startup, is that, you know, if we’re trying to build capability with a partner or we are deploying into an area where you think that the United States may have an interest in may want to be there for a while… Well, then that’s essentially, you know, a startup operation with maybe a determined or an open-ended mission, but that does have these kinds of startup capability characteristics in the sense that you have new people on the ground, you’re trying to get momentum.

35:12 - You know, you have very small amount of resources, you’re trying to get people bought in. And so I would say that that you’re trying to recruit people, not only that have these kinds of physical characteristics to pass through the rigorous selection, the mental resiliency to perform well under duress, but they also have to have, I would argue a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset to be able to do these high impact projects over and over, or to be what I would call almost serial entrepreneurs.

35:44 - - That’s absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for that. Keenan, Some of our viewers our young professionals, they are students, production engineering students, them. And some of them are certainly considering a career in supply chain management. From your extensive experience and knowledge: What do you think are the most important personal attributes? Like attitudes style, or/and acquired skills for a young professional who is willing to go in and build a career in supply chain management? - I’ll start with the technical parts first.

Because, as we know, coming from engineering background, you have you know, you have necessary and sufficient conditions for success, right? So I’d say a necessary condition is to have an analytic mindset, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be able to code and four different languages, or maybe you’re not even great at coding in one, but you do have some… Maybe you have a little bit of experience in that, but I would just say more importantly is: an analytical mindset and that you think and make decisions, you think about data and the kind of data that you need to make effective decisions, and you use data to drive decisions.

37:20 - So there’s kind of, you know, a scientific and experimental mindset. I think is useful.

37:27 - And I think that that’s kind of necessary to just make sound, sound judgments in this area. And there is so much data available now, that the real challenge is deciding what is the critical information that you need to make your decision. So that’s the first part. The second part is a real comfort with uncertainty and with dealing with problems.

37:54 - So if you aren’t comfortable with uncertainty or facing problems, and anticipating the future, and anticipating all of the worst case scenarios, or really thinking through all the doom and gloom that could potentially invite itself upon you… That’s really, really helpful, because part of your job is to build systems that are resilient to disruption, but also to build systems that are resistant to disruption.

38:33 - And we’re not going to be able to eliminate all the uncertainty that’s out there, but we need to build systems that are resilient, with respect to that. I think, as a leader, it’s also really important, because supply chain crosses every function, it’s important to have a comfort with people that are outside of your function, and that think differently than you. And in fact you want to build a team of people that are different than you.

39:01 - You want to build a team of people that cross functions you know, mixes of introverts and extroverts, analytic and intuitive. And I’d say, just build as a diverse team as possible, because you’re going to touch every aspect from the customer facing side knowing your customers, not just what they need now, but anticipating where their markets are going.

39:26 - Don’t always leave it to them, because if your customers go out of business, that doesn’t just impact them. So you want your customers to do well, not so well that they dis-intermediate you, but you want them to do well so that you continue to do well.

39:40 - So it’s always good to help your customers anticipate the future, too. Especially if you, in some cases, your organization may be more sophisticated than some of your smaller customers. But then all the way back into, you know, the supply side of the organization and to, and to raw materials. And each one of those parts of the supply chain is going to have different types of characteristics and they may exist in a specific geography, where you’re going to need, you know, language, or cultural skills, or experience.

And, so, you want to have a diverse team. And the other part is to get comfortable with finance. What I’m seeing is more and more companies start to pull supply chain into finance, or the supply chain being elevated much more closer to the CEO. Whereas, in the past, you would see it was really the CEO and the CFO finance, and the chief executive like this. You’re seeing supply chain being much closer because, in for-profit organizations, we plan operations for financial outcomes.

40:43 - And so in a nonprofit, we budget for operational outcomes, but in a, for profit, we plan operations for financial outcomes. And if you understand operations, and you have some comfort with finance, I think you’re going to be a tremendously effective leader as, you know, again, so long as you’re a good, you have all these other general leadership characteristics, you’re a good listener.

41:05 - You make sure that you recognize your people. If you want your people to take risks, then you have to take risk on their behalf. That means you push them out and tell them to take risks. And then if something blows up in their face, you take responsibility for it, not them. On the other hand, if they do something that’s absolutely fantastic. They get all the credit, not you. So those are the kinds of characteristics. I think if you want to be a good leader and get your people to move fast, be very, very aggressive and to take risk, that kind of taking risk on behalf of your people and recognizing them as just, you know, one small thing, but I think is important as a leader.

41:46 - - Wonderful. So much good stuff in that answer. Finally, out of all the new technologies that we are seeing becoming mainstream, some of them, becoming ubiquitous, some of them. Which ones, that we normally associate with the so-called industry, 4. 0, which one do you think, or which ones, do you think will be more disruptive for supply chain? Management specifically.

42:18 - - I think that the continued development of sensors and being able to integrate information on the status of goods in particular, and I’m just thinking about the goods piece right now, will continue to play a big role. You know, two decades ago, RFID and looking at things like barcodes are important. That’s all important, but I think that we have much more sophisticated sensors now and just knowing the status of the goods. For example, there is a ship that’s a quarter mile long stuck in the Suez canal right now.

So, if you have a container on that ship you’re really gonna want to know, you know, not just is the container, but if… I have an order, is my order on that ship? But, when will the ship be loose, which is as good as anyone’s guess is gold, I guess, at this point or not worth anything, cause I don’t think anyone knows… But, even where is it on the ship? Like, will it come off first or will it come off last? Because there were about 20,000 containers on that ship.

And so, you know, knowing where that thing is at any given point as Fred Smith, who, again, I’ll just use a FedEx example again, the chairman of FedEx said: The information about the package is more valuable to the customer than the package itself.

43:51 - And so why would he say that? Well, he would say that, and this is precisely why FedEx invest more than $1 billion a year and its own proprietary information systems. Because, under they understand that, if I know that the package is not going to be here in two days and I need it in two days, now I can plan for it. Now I can put a contingency in place. Now I can do things, other than I just don’t know and I’m managing by hope.

44:18 - So the information, as we know, as in supply chain, is exchangeable with inventory, right? You give me the information or give me the inventory. If I have perfect information about the demand and the status of things, I can draw my inventory down a significantly and reduce the bullwhip effect. If I don’t have the information, if I’m forecasting, now I’ve subjected my entire supply chain to my forecast, and now I’m definitely going to have it, especially over longer lead times.

I’m definitely going to have full with the facts. So I think the sensors, you know, just from that basic dynamic that we were so familiar with and supply chain, the bullwhip effect will continue to be important. I mean, of course automation, I mean, once tractor trailers are fully automated on the roads you know, that’s going to be highly disruptive.

45:11 - We’ll likely make things faster. Potentially if you were accidents, that could be a little ways off from a technology and more likely a regulatory standpoint, but that will be important. So that’s just one aspect of automation and the audit, the artificial intelligence and machine learning. I mean, I think that that’s just going to start, will begin to organically embed itself into everything.

45:35 - So when I talk about sensors, I’m kind of taking for granted the fact that there will be machine learning and artificial intelligence just layered on to that. Like you would a coat of paint, quite frankly. So that’s just one. I’m not necessarily saying it’s the most important one, but it’s one that I think, because sensors are so cheap and as you said, ubiquitous, use that term earlier, I think that that’s, that has the potential to have huge impact, - Keenan fascinating! So many valuable pearls of wisdom and knowledge that you shared with us.

And I have to thank you so much for making time for us on a day that I know is very busy for you. Thank you so much for being with us. We really learn a lot from you as usual, my friend.

46:35 - - Oh, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And for those young people out there interested in supply chain, there’s so many areas that you could jump in and I would say don’t fret too much or worry too much about whether or not you’re jumping into the right part of the pool. I would just jump in and get in the water. If you don’t know whether or not you’re going to like the customer facing side or the distributor, you’ll find that out.

47:04 - And the first several months or year, but you’ll have that experience, and if you really wanna be an outstanding, effective supply chain manager, you’re going to make get some experience in these different parts of the supply chain. So, having that experience, even if you decided that’s not what if for you and you wanna move into a different area, that wil be valuable to another organization.

47:27 - So I would not worry about too much, wether or not, I’m entering the right part of the organization.

47:33 - If there is an industry that attracts you, or there is a function that attracts you, I would said: get in, be very, very curious and get some course working in finance, if you can, and complement your operation experience. But getting that solid operations experiences.

47:51 - Getting your self familiar with basic concepts that I’d call are the Bedrock of supply chain, like de bullwhip effect, you know, some basic material management, some forecasting, and things like your course, Henrique, of making supply chain meet them. And there are all really good foundations.

48:09 - - Wonderfull. Keenan, thank you so muc for beeing with us. Folks, for thoso of you who are watching, don’t forget: always, on mondays, at 7pm, we’ll have a new episode with fascinating people like doctor Yoho. So mark your calendar,.