From Blind Spots to Blockchain: Rewriting Supply Chain Visibility

Jeremy Coote: Thank you. Great to be here.

Bill Wohl: Well, we’ve been having these discussions for about a year now, and the topics have been wide and varied.  We’ve talked about transportation snarls, ships blocking the Suez Canal, then the pandemic slowing down port shipments, geopolitical issues, of course, like the war in Eastern Europe. All of a sudden, the supply chain is very much in the news everywhere we look. What stands out for you, Jeremy, as we look back over the last 12 months?

Jeremy Coote: Well, I think the main thing is people are realizing they just don’t know where their things are, whether it’s inventory, whether it’s transport inventory, and they’re struggling. And without that level of information, it gets hard to make the right decisions.

Bill Wohl: Well, it’s been kind of fascinating for me to hear you say that. You and I have a shared history that goes way back to the early 2000s when we both worked at SAP and we both had a focus on supply chain. To hear you as a CEO today talk about people in business still not aware of where their finished and in-progress goods are is actually kind of amazing.

Jeremy Coote: It is. It is to reflect on it. I mean ERP and SAP did great things at a macro level, but now people are starting to understand that while they understand the process they don’t understand the exact status. And so we see a requirement now to get to the next level of granularity to start serializing or uniquely identifying at the item level to give you that next level of visibility.

Bill Wohl: Is it the nature of these macro trends that has renewed the focus because people have an understanding of the business process of the supply chain? Or is it the availability now of so-called edge technologies that make a whole new level of transparency possible? What do you think’s driving it or is it all?

Jeremy Coote: Well, I think that the challenge is that people for the most part have a decent idea of what’s going on in their enterprise, but they certainly don’t have visibility into partners, whether it’s 3PLs that are transporting their items or other practitioners in their manufacturing process. And so, it’s really hard to get a cohesive status across the supply chain.

Bill Wohl: Do you think that’s a more reality for finished goods as opposed to in progress materials or is that a challenge across the beginning to the end of the supply chain?

Jeremy Coote: Yeah, so we’re seeing both ends. So there is the ongoing requirements around understanding the ingredients, the components of your product, and where they came from. Are they sustainably produced? Can you trace back to the initial component manufacturer all the way through to the manufacturing process itself and then the tracking of the finished goods at the other end? So depending on what industry you are you have different requirements for this end-to-end supply chain visibility.

Bill Wohl: You’ve heard me comment on this program Jeremy that I’m often surprised that I can watch my package that I’ve ordered from you name the retailer come all the way across the country, even halfway around the world, and even watch the UPS delivery truck on a local map for the final mile. And so, if global retailers can provide that level of transparency for an individual package across such a complex nature of shipping, why does it remain so hard for industrial companies to get their arms around where their products are at any given time?

Jeremy Coote: Yeah, I think that this sort of Amazon effect, where as a customer you can sit at your desk and order laundry detergent and watch it as it leaves the distribution center to your house. And then you try and order an industrial product as part of your job, and then it becomes a black hole is an interesting phenomenon. And we’ve seen this before where corporate life has been impacted by consumerism. And how you are treated by the way you buy things as a consumer.

Bill Wohl: As you talk to customers and get a sense of where they’re putting their supply chain investment dollars, where is a lot of the emphasis been these last few months? What are they focused on?

Jeremy Coote: Well, I think that you know the first mega trend that we were expecting and we’ve been watching is this digitization or digitalization which I think is nothing more than turning analog processes into digital ones and aggregating that information across the entire supply chain. So it is for example putting edge devices in putting trackers in being able to get this this information digitally and until you do that nothing nothing can will happen and then you know the next trend that we’ve been seeing is with that digital information drives visibility and that’s you know this ability to track components in items across the manufacturing process to their final destination and make everyone all stakeholders access give access to to the data. But the new trend that we are seeing that’s sort of changing things  is this whole concept of sustainability and now people are understanding the need to consider social environmental and the financial impact of the product journey and the raw materials required and utilized in the process.

Bill Wohl: This is just not necessarily through a greenwashing of the supply chain. This really gets down to I guess what Gartner is calling this concept of a circular supply chain that that understanding a sort of closed loop system where the containers, the packaging, the materials can move through the supply chain and even return to create sustainable outcomes. Is that what you’re hearing and what you’re seeing?

Jeremy Coote: Yeah, I think that every corporation major corporation anyway is taking the whole concept of sustainability seriously. In fact, remarkably so given that it’s not legislated yet.

Bill Wohl: Right.

Jeremy Coote:v And  I think there may be legislation. I think Europe is further along on this topic, but nevertheless, these annual reports, these sustainability reports, and even the accounting for sustainability are here to stay and are a significant driver. 

Bill Wohl: When you talk to customers, are they focused most on the gains that they can more easily capture in reducing waste and in reusable packaging? Is that a lot of where that’s coming from?

Jeremy Coote: It’s starting. It’s starting. Although, I think that we’re seeing the sustainability teams siloed from the operational teams. And that is slowly starting to change. And in fact,  you know that there’s an excitement that changing up distribution processes can actually drive sustainability opportunities.

Bill Wohl: For your customers, for the industry. This isn’t simply just meeting sustainability goals. There is that nice place where not only are you seeing a positive sustainability outcome, but the supply chain gets more efficient, moves faster, and reduces risk because transparency increases. That’s ultimately the goal here, right? To see where those lines cross and get wins in lots of different locations. Data is at the center of that.

Jeremy Coote: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, the one thing that we have been seeing over the last year and started to really focus on the company returnable transport items whether that’s totes, cases, pallets, cylinders whatever the mode of transport is used and that’s a move away from corrugate to plastic and then this whole concept of embedding in the device a tracking unit, a tracker.

Bill Wohl: We know from all the work we’ve done through the years that sometimes businesses can be overwhelmed with the amount of data that’s flowing in. So I suspect the concept of leveraging software and technology to sort of manage these massive flows of data has to be in the midst of thinking about this next generation of transparency because there’s so much material moving, so much data being captured. Is that a challenge for some customers to just get their arms around the whole thing?

Jeremy Coote: Well, you’re right. We’re talking about the creation of a massive net new data set around information that’s never been captured before. But I think that’s where machine learning and AI artificial intelligence have a big place to play in this data set. And you know, people come to me when we’re talking with customers, they’re saying, “Look, don’t tell me about the 95% of things that moved and arrived exactly as we thought they would. Tell me about the 5% that didn’t show up.

Bill Wohl: It’s exception managing. That’s that’s where the opportunity is.

Jeremy Coote: Yes.

Bill Wohl: And that’s where AI and machine learning can more quickly unearth where the problems are as opposed to where things are working.

Jeremy Coote Yeah. I mean, simply put it to start with, it’s alerting when you can recognize an activity that is out of place. Something’s happened. Something’s got stuck somewhere. It didn’t show up where it was meant to be. But then, over time, you can start to add more prescriptive measures where you can actually learn from processes. Obviously, the whole goal is to create a level of autonomy when something has gone awry that the system then self-corrects to source other inventory that’s close by to substitute.

Bill Wohl: Interesting. Well, Jeremy, you and I have known each other for some 22 years now. The opportunities to apply technology to the evolving nature of supply chain management have never been more rich and it’s good to see ACSIS in the center of it. Speaking of sustainability, I know your team has done a great job of putting together an ebook that really looks at the components of sustainability and the relationship to supply chain. And the listeners to this podcast series can easily find it on the ACSIS website at acsisinc.com. That’s aciscinc.com/sustainability. Jeremy, we have a lot more to talk about in this podcast series. It’s been a real pleasure to work with you over this first year. We’re looking forward to many new guests and topics to be covered in the year ahead. Thanks for your personal support of this series and for being on today.

Jeremy Coote: My pleasure, Bill. Keep up the great work.

Bill Wohl: Well, thanks and we really do appreciate the support of everyone at ACSIS for making this podcast series possible. We welcome your comments and questions about the discussions on these podcast. You can engage with us directly at the official ACSIS Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Please be a part of the discussion and don’t forget to learn more about supply chain sustainability at ACSISinc.com/sustainability. I’m your host Bill Wohl and for everyone at ACSIS, thanks for joining. We look forward to our next podcast. Talk soon. 

Narrator: Thank you for listening to Supply Chain Visibility Stories brought to you by ACSIS, the 100% supply chain visibility cloud solution provider. Visit us on the web at ACSISinc.com. That’s acsisinc.com or join the dialogue on social media. Look for ACSIS Inc. on LinkedIn and Twitter. Join us next time for supply chain visibility stories brought to you by ACSIS.