How Secure IoT is Transforming Supply Chains

Summary

在本次MITx MicroMasters供应链管理课程的直播活动中，课程负责人Laura Allegue和Kellen Betts与微软产品管理领导者Gerald Jackson展开了深入讨论。Gerald凭借在微软、GE Digital和Accenture超过20年的供应链经验，分享了当前供应链面临的挑战和趋势，特别是技术对供应链的影响。他讨论了控制塔、物流网络和网络安全等话题，并强调了云计算基础设施在提高供应链网络弹性中的作用。此外，Gerald还探讨了AI在优化供应链中的应用，包括预测性维护和3D打印，以及物联网（IoT）如何通过连接设备来提升供应链的智能化和响应速度。他还提到了小公司如何利用现代技术，如云服务和智能设备，以更具成本效益的方式融入供应链系统。最后，Gerald鼓励供应链专业人员掌握数据分析、应用层技术，并保持对全球供应链的端到端视角。

Takeaways

• 📈 **供应链管理的重要性**：随着技术的发展，供应链管理变得更加复杂和关键，需要适应快速变化的市场需求和挑战。
• 🚀 **技术的冲击**：新兴技术如云基础设施、人工智能（AI）、物联网（IoT）正在改变供应链的设计和管理方式。
• 🌐 **全球化与地缘政治**：地缘政治不稳定和自然灾害导致供应链从全球化向本地化转移，企业需要构建更具弹性的供应链。
• 🤖 **自动化与机器人技术**：随着劳动力结构的变化，自动化和机器人技术在供应链中的应用变得越来越重要。
• 📊 **数据分析与预测**：供应链管理者需要利用数据分析和AI预测工具来提高对市场变化的响应能力。
• 🔒 **网络安全的重要性**：随着供应链越来越多地连接到云和互联网，网络安全成为保护企业免受数据泄露和网络攻击的关键。
• 📱 **移动技术的应用**：通过移动设备和虚拟现实技术，专家可以远程监控和维护全球范围内的设备。
• 🛒 **小型企业的机遇**：技术成本的降低使得小型企业也能利用先进的供应链技术，推动创新和灵活性。
• 🌟 **持续学习与专业发展**：供应链专业人士需要不断学习新技术，理解全球文化差异，并发展端到端的供应链视角。
• 📚 **基础知识的价值**：尽管技术不断进步，但基础知识如财务、ERP系统和六西格玛方法论仍然是供应链管理的基石。
• ⏰ **实时更新与创新**：通过IoT技术，公司能够实时更新产品配方，快速响应市场变化，加速产品创新。

Q & A

在供应链管理中，为什么需要建立控制塔（control tower）？

控制塔能够整合供应链中的多个环节，包括连接供应商、分销商、资产等，形成一个数字化的供应链虚拟表示，即数字孪生。这使得供应链管理者能够监控、感知、预测并响应正在发生的中断，从而提高供应链的可见性、灵活性和适应性。

如何通过物联网（IoT）提升供应链的效率？

物联网通过将设备连接到互联网，使得数据可以实时收集和分析。这样可以用于预测性维护，减少设备故障和停机时间；进行远程监控和操作，提高全球分布的设备的管理效率；以及实时更新设备程序，如星巴克快速部署咖啡配方，从而加速产品创新和市场响应。

小公司如何利用供应链控制塔技术？

小公司可以通过订阅基于云的解决方案，利用物联网技术，使设备智能化，从而以较低的成本提升供应链的可见性和效率。此外，小型企业可以利用如Square这样的系统，集成点对点销售和ERP系统，来实现对供应链的精细管理。

卫星互联网在供应链管理中有什么潜在的应用？

卫星互联网可以为偏远或基础设施不发达地区的供应链提供稳定的连接。这使得在这些地区的供应链可以利用自动化和智能化技术，如无人机配送药物的Zipline公司案例所示，实现跨越式发展，跳过传统物理基础设施的限制。

在供应链管理中，人工智能（AI）如何帮助优化决策过程？

AI可以通过分析历史和实时数据，帮助预测市场趋势和需求变化，从而优化库存管理和物流规划。AI还可以用于预测性维护，通过监测设备振动等信号预测设备故障，减少停机时间，并优化维护计划。

为什么说在设计供应链时，需要考虑网络安全问题？

随着供应链中越来越多的环节连接到云和互联网，系统的网络安全威胁增加。数据泄露可能导致客户记录丢失、业务中断和重大经济损失。因此，端到端的网络安全解决方案成为供应链管理者工具箱中的关键部分。

供应链专业人士在物联网和供应链融合的背景下，需要哪些新的技能和培训？

供应链专业人士需要理解当前的分析技术，基本的应用程序层技术，以及财务和ERP系统知识。他们应该对物理流、财务流和信息流有深入理解，并能够掌握这些元素如何协同工作。此外，保持对全球不同文化和商业环境的敏感性，以及拥有端到端的思维方式也非常重要。

如何通过技术提高供应链的敏捷性和适应性？

通过采用物联网、人工智能、云计算等技术，供应链可以变得更加敏捷和适应性强。例如，通过物联网设备提供的数据，可以实时监测供应链状态；利用AI进行数据分析和预测，可以快速响应市场变化；而云计算则提供了灵活性和可扩展性，使得资源可以根据需求快速重新分配。

在供应链管理中，为什么说端到端的可见性是一个持续的挑战？

端到端可见性面临的挑战包括数据分散在不同的系统和地理位置，以及供应链节点的动态变化。传统的ERP系统可能只能提供内部操作的视图，而现代全球供应链的节点遍布世界各地，并且不断变化。因此，如何整合和实时监控这些分散的数据，是实现端到端可见性的关键挑战。

在供应链管理中，短期利润压力如何影响供应链的设计和运作？

短期利润压力要求供应链管理者在不超额建设供应链的同时，保持供应链的弹性和适应性。这意味着他们需要在有限的资源下，快速重新设计和重新部署资源，以应对市场和环境的变化。

为什么说在供应链管理中，预测未来的能力比过去更重要？

由于市场和环境的快速变化，依赖历史数据和过去的经验来预测未来已经不够准确。供应链管理者需要利用当前的数据，通过建立模型和使用AI技术来预测未来的趋势和事件，从而做出更及时和准确的决策。

Outlines

00:00

🎉 欢迎与嘉宾介绍

Laura Allegue作为MITx供应链管理MicroMasters课程的课程负责人，欢迎参与者加入此次活动，并介绍与会嘉宾Kellen Betts和Gerald Jackson。Gerald是微软的产品管理领导者，拥有超过20年的供应链领导经验。活动中还包含了一个实时投票环节，以了解观众的兴趣点，如IoT、网络安全等，并介绍了活动的议程。

05:00

🌟 供应链的挑战与趋势

讨论了供应链领导者面临的挑战，如业务中断的频繁性和影响，以及去全球化趋势。强调了机器人、情境数据和分析的重要性，以及供应链中劳动力的转变。提出了构建具有快速适应能力的弹性供应链的必要性，并强调了短期利润压力、可见性挑战、预测未来事件的重要性以及操作多样化的挑战。

10:01

📈 技术工具与控制塔

介绍了21世纪供应链所需的技术工具，包括云、人工智能和API等。讨论了控制塔的概念，强调了即插即用的重要性，并举例说明了如何将供应商和分销商连接到生态系统中。还提到了将工厂资产连接到平台的能力，如星巴克使用咖啡机预测杯子和糖浆的需求。

15:03

🔒 供应链的可见性与安全性

讨论了端到端可见性的问题，以及如何通过技术实现对供应链的实时监控。强调了智能资产和运输的重要性，并提出了数字孪生的概念，用于创建供应链的虚拟表示。同时，也提到了网络安全的威胁，包括客户记录的泄露、从违规到检测的时间以及安全违规的平均成本。

20:04

🤖 AI在供应链中的应用

Gerald分享了AI在供应链中的应用，特别是在可持续性、反向物流和预测性维护方面。讨论了使用AI监测设备振动、预测设备故障和进行预防性维护的能力，以及3D打印在按需生产备件方面的潜力。

25:04

📡 物联网（IoT）在供应链中的作用

讨论了IoT设备如何适应供应链控制塔生态系统，以及它们如何作为AI引擎的数据源。强调了连接设备的能力，使得远程专家可以监控和指导全球的设备，并通过虚拟现实设备提供远程指导。还提到了通过IoT实现的设备程序更新和产品创新的能力。

30:06

🚀 中小企业的供应链技术

讨论了中小型企业如何利用技术，特别是云解决方案和智能设备，来实现供应链的现代化。强调了技术成本的降低和对安全性的关注。提到了小企业在创新方面的机会，以及他们如何能够快速采用新技术。

35:10

🌐 卫星互联网与供应链监控

探讨了通过卫星互联网监控供应链的机会，特别是在5G和低频带IoT设备方面。讨论了不同连通性策略的影响，包括5G和卫星连接，并强调了连通性的可靠性对设备设计的影响。

40:10

📚 供应链专业人才的培养

讨论了供应链专业人士在就业市场、培训和技能需求方面的挑战和机遇。强调了对技术的理解、分析能力、应用层技术、财务和ERP基础知识的重要性，并鼓励拥有端到端的思维和长期视角。

45:11

🎓 供应链领导力的未来发展

Gerald分享了他的职业早期学习到的经验，即利用数据进行问题解决的六西格玛方法，以及它如何成为他整个职业生涯的支柱。他鼓励下一代供应链领导者使用数据来理解情况、分解问题，并验证解决方案，这是一种强大的工具。

Keywords

💡供应链管理

供应链管理是指对产品从供应商到最终用户的整个流程进行有效的规划、执行、控制和优化。在视频中，供应链管理是讨论的核心，特别是在讨论技术如何影响供应链时，如控制塔、物流网络和网络安全等话题。

💡控制塔

控制塔在供应链管理中是一个集中的指挥中心，用于监控和协调供应链活动。视频提到控制塔能够将不同的供应链元素整合在一起，通过技术连接器如API实现即插即用，提高供应链的可见性和响应能力。

💡物联网(IoT)

物联网是指通过互联网将各种设备和机器连接起来，以收集和交换数据。在视频中，IoT被提及作为供应链中的一个重要组成部分，它允许远程监控设备状态，并通过智能设备收集数据，以优化供应链。

💡人工智能(AI)

人工智能是指让计算机系统模拟人类智能的技术，包括学习、推理、自我修正和感知。视频中讨论了AI在供应链中的应用，如通过分析设备振动数据进行预测性维护，提高供应链的效率和响应速度。

💡网络安全

网络安全涉及保护计算机系统、网络和数据不受攻击、损害或未经授权的访问。在视频中，网络安全被强调为连接更多业务到云时的一个重要议题，需要端到端的安全解决方案来保护供应链。

💡云基础设施

云基础设施指的是通过云计算提供的虚拟化技术，允许企业和个人按需访问计算资源和数据存储。视频提到云基础设施可以增强供应链网络的弹性，允许快速重新部署资源以应对全球变化。

💡预测性维护

预测性维护是一种利用数据分析和机器学习技术来预测设备故障并安排维护工作的策略。在视频中，预测性维护被提及为AI在供应链中的一个重要应用，可以减少停机时间并优化维护计划。

💡数字孪生

数字孪生是指创建一个物理实体的虚拟数字副本，用于模拟、分析和优化实体的性能。视频中提到，通过将智能资产连接到控制塔，可以创建供应链的数字孪生，从而实现更好的监控和预测。

💡敏捷性

敏捷性在供应链管理中指的是快速适应市场变化和客户需求的能力。视频讨论了敏捷性对于建立能够迅速响应的弹性供应链的重要性，以及技术如何帮助实现这一目标。

💡端到端可见性

端到端可见性指的是能够追踪和监控产品从生产到最终用户的整个流程。视频中强调了实现端到端可见性的挑战，以及技术如何帮助解决这一问题，特别是在全球化和动态变化的供应链中。

💡小公司与供应链

小公司在供应链中扮演着重要角色，视频讨论了小公司如何通过利用技术，如云服务和物联网，来融入供应链控制塔等概念，并实现成本效益和技术实施的可行性。

Highlights

Laura Allegue 和 Kellen Betts 作为 MITx MicroMasters 供应链管理课程的课程负责人，共同主持了这次活动。

Gerald Jackson，微软的产品管理领导者，拥有超过20年的供应链领导经验，作为特邀嘉宾加入讨论。

活动以实时投票开始，了解观众参与的原因，增加活动的互动性。

Gerald 讨论了技术对供应链的影响，包括控制塔、物流网络和网络安全等话题。

提出了云基础设施如何增强动态供应链网络的韧性。

强调了实时数据和分析在自动化和机器人技术中的重要性，特别是在劳动力转型期间。

50%的供应链领导者表示他们的供应链正面临更频繁、更具影响的商业中断。

讨论了去全球化趋势，包括政治动荡和重大气候灾害对供应链的影响。

Gerald 强调了供应链管理者面临的短期利润压力和对可见性挑战的问题。

预测将成为供应链管理者未来的一个关键技能，使用数据和AI来预测接下来会发生什么。

提出了控制塔的概念，作为21世纪供应链工具箱中的关键组成部分。

讨论了端到端可见性的问题，以及如何通过技术实现全球供应链的可视化。

强调了敏捷性对于满足客户需求的重要性，以及如何快速响应市场变化。

Gerald 讨论了多系统过时且无法相互通信的问题，以及这对建立供应链的弹性和敏捷性构成的障碍。

提出了通过控制塔实现供应链的数字化孪生，以提高监控和预测能力。

讨论了网络安全的挑战，包括客户记录泄露和安全漏洞的平均成本。

通过视频展示了微软如何通过内部红队和蓝队的模拟攻击来提高网络安全性。

AI在供应链中的应用，特别是在可预测性维护和质量控制方面的讨论。

物联网（IoT）设备在供应链控制塔生态系统中的融合，以及它们作为AI引擎数据源的作用。

小型公司如何利用技术，如云服务和物联网，来实现供应链的现代化和创新。

卫星互联网为供应链监控提供的机遇，尤其是在没有稳定地面基础设施的地区。

强调了问题解决能力和使用数据进行决策的重要性，以及六西格玛方法在现代供应链中的持续相关性。

Transcripts

- Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today.

I'm Laura Allegue, your course lead

for the MITx MicroMasters

in Supply Chain Management Program here at MIT CDL.

I'm very happy to be co-hosting today

this live event with Mr. Kellen Betts,

also a course lead at the MicroMasters Program.

Today we are very fortunate to have

Mr. Gerald Jackson joining us.

He's a Product Management Leader at Microsoft.

Gerald has over 20 years of experience

as a supply chain leader at Microsoft,

GE Digital, and Accenture.

So welcome, Gerald.

- Hello everybody.

Hi, thank you so much, Laura and Kellen,

for inviting me to share some of my experience

and some of the exciting things

that are happening in supply chain today.

- Awesome, we are very happy to have you joining us.

And if anyone in our audience has been here before with us,

you already know we love to kick off our events with a poll.

So we want to know why you're here today.

We want to know more about our audience.

So you can see a poll jump in if you are watching live,

and let us know if you wanna learn more about IOT,

if you just want to learn about cybersecurity,

if you are here because you're part of our program

and just love to join us every time.

And while we let this populate,

I will let Kellen share the agenda for this session.

- Awesome, well, hi everyone.

And thank you, Laura.

And welcome, Gerald.

So for the next 15 minutes or so,

Gerald will discuss the impact of technology

and what the impact will be in supply chains,

including new topics, really exciting topics,

I think like control towers,

logistics networks, cybersecurity,

some of those topics you see there

in the poll on the right-hand side.

So hopefully we'll cover what you're interested in.

Gerald will also be available to ask your questions.

He'll also discuss cloud infrastructure

and how cloud infrastructure can enable

our resilience in dynamic supply chain network.

After Gerald discusses these topics for a few minutes,

Laura and I will have a few questions

we have prepared we'll ask,

and then we'll definitely save time

at the end for your questions.

We definitely hope to get the audience engaged here

and answer some of your questions

and cover some of the topics

you're interested in hearing about.

If you wanna ask a question,

please do so with that Q&A feature on the bottom.

There's that zoom button on the bottom called Q&A.

Please use that Q&A feature to ask your questions.

Love, to see your introductions in chat and the poll

or in the chat section,

but we will keep an eye on the Q&A for those questions.

That's where we'll be looking for those questions.

And please be logged in with a name

and we won't be answering any anonymous questions as well.

And so be prepared to participate.

We look forward to seeing your questions.

And with that, let's check on that first poll

and just share those results there.

Awesome, so the poll, the question was,

why are you here today?

I'm just looking at some of the results.

It looks like the most popular result

was I'm interested in knowing more

about the impact of just technology

in general and supply chains.

So that's great.

We'll definitely cover that topic.

Some of the other, it looks like there's some

who are interested in IoT, learning more about IoT,

learning more about

improving their supply chain performance.

Gerald, I don't know if you have any thoughts

or comments on those poll results there.

- Well, I think you've come to the right place,

because we're gonna talk about some of that.

And if I don't cover it in the presentation,

please ask the questions in the Q&A.

There's a lot, a lot of information to share.

So hopefully we can get to the Q&A quickly.

- Awesome.

With that, I'll pass it back to my co-host, to Laura,

who will hit it off with our first question.

And actually no, we're just jumping straight into,

maybe just jumping straight into Gerald.

Gerald, are you ready to jump into your slides

and present and kick it off?

- Ready to go, ready to rock and roll.

- [Kellen] Awesome, let's rock and roll.

- All right.

And sharing.

All right, well, thank you so much for that introduction.

Let me just get it in.

- [Eric] OneHunt is a company.

- Of course there's always gonna be,

it's like doing a demo, right?

There's always gonna be a little flop here or there.

All right, thanks for that introduction.

I won't spend too much time on this.

Laura did a great job.

So you're gonna actually hear my passions

through this presentation.

So I'm gonna talk about some challenges and trends.

Most in supply chain transformation

is a response to a need, right?

There's always good ideas.

People are reading white papers.

But the stuff that really happens in companies

is really when they need to respond to challenges.

So we're gonna talk about the challenges

that are driving companies towards these 21st century tools.

I'll talk about some of the new tools in the toolkit,

including cloud, AI,

and a couple of examples if we have time.

But mostly I wanna get to your questions and comments,

and that's for me, that's the fun part.

It's where I really get to focus

on the things that you care about.

So some of the challenges and trends,

if I covered one thing,

I'd look at the lower right-hand corner here,

which is 50% of supply chain leaders

say their supply chain is facing more frequent

and more impactful business disruptions.

Now the rest of the slide

just talks about a few that are happening.

On the right side, you see 30% are anticipating

a decrease in exports from China.

Really this is a very current trend

around deglobalization, right?

About 20 years ago, 15 years ago,

we talked about nearshore and onshore

as a way of providing better service to customers

at shorter lead times and that sort of thing.

But now the driver for deglobalization is political unrest,

significant climate disasters that are happening all over.

And so you're seeing more and more folks

moving away from the fixed low cost supply chain sources

they've had in the past to other alternatives.

In the upper right-hand corner,

I wanna talk about something about

it's robots and situational data and analytics.

People are looking at data.

They're looking at automation,

because we're actually going through

a transition of the workforce

where most of the boomers are in their retirement ages.

They've built up a lot of tribal knowledge

in terms of how do they do their jobs,

and replacing them is very difficult,

because the subsequent generations aren't as big,

and quite frankly, not many of them

have gone into supply chain and manufacturing.

And so they're looking towards automation and robotics.

So there's a number of big challenges coming our way

that companies are trying to respond to.

Now what does that mean to supply chain?

Here I just have your traditional,

on the left side is tier one suppliers,

on the right side, you're getting

to your customer's customers.

I wanna just highlight a few pressures

that we're all facing as supply chain managers

that are driving us to create these resilient supply chains

that must adapt quickly.

And I'll talk about sense and respond

in the next slide as well.

One, short-term profit pressures

are not gonna change, all right?

So the fact that we need to have resilience

in our supply chains,

if we had unlimited resources,

we could be building factories and distribution centers

and set up transportation lanes all over the world,

and we would be ready to go.

We would just failover like you do in a data center, right?

When one cluster gets overwhelmed,

you just move over to the next.

Well, you can't really do that in a world

where short-term profit pressures

are demanding that you don't over-build your supply chains.

So all those really cool things you're learning about

in supply chain design are very, very relevant,

but you're going to have to figure out,

well, how do I rapidly redesign and redeploy resources

when the world requires me to do so.

The second one I wanna call your attention to

is over on the top around challenges with visibility.

And traditionally we've wanted to see what is.

The challenge now is seeing what's going to happen next.

How do we use the data that's coming in today

to help me to predict what's gonna happen tomorrow?

So much of our supply chain tools of the past

have been based on historical activity,

whether it's historical shipments, historical sales data.

Assuming that the past was prologue, right,

we could look at the past

and estimate what was gonna happen tomorrow.

Well, the reality is that there's things happening today

that didn't happen tomorrow.

Every year we hear about the hundred-year storm, right?

The last time this happened was a hundred years ago.

I don't think that's in my data set.

So we've got populations

that are moving towards urban areas.

We've got folks moving from state to state.

So whatever you, if you look at last year,

I mean, we had COVID-19 over the last couple years.

I hope and I think most of us hope

that the last two years aren't predictive

of the next two years.

So in this world where things are just changing constantly,

the challenge is how do we use data and get visibility,

build these models, use AI to predict

what's gonna happen next.

So prediction is gonna be sort of the forecast of the future

for supply chain managers.

I'll talk a little bit more about diversifying operations.

Right now we definitely know that we're going to,

we're challenged with figuring out

where's our new factory going to be,

where's our distribution center need to be,

when our customers are changing,

geopolitical unrest is happening.

I need the ability to plug and play

the nodes of my supply chain wherever they need to be

so that I can run my business.

And so I'm gonna talk a bit about

some of the barriers to making that happen.

And in the interest of time, I'll only talk about a couple,

and then feel free to ask me some questions later on.

But end-to-end visibility continues to be a problem

for supply chain managers.

Back in the day, it was all the data

was stuck in my ERP system.

So companies were investing

in business intelligence solutions,

data, data stores, that sort of thing,

so they can just see what's happening

inside the four walls of their operation.

Actually about 50 years ago,

when all operations in the supply chain

were happening out of one factory,

managers would take their offices

and put them in the middle of the factory

so they could actually see inbound, outbound,

production, distribution,

and they were visually managing the entire shop

from the middle of the facility.

Well, that's just not possible today,

especially when the nodes of your supply chain

are all over the world and they're constantly changing.

How do we create the visibility

in a very dynamic global supply chain?

Next is lack of agility to meet customer demands.

When I was starting my career,

it took about 24 months to set up a new factory,

up to 18 months to get a distribution center online.

And so we were thinking about,

in the retail space, we were thinking about Black Friday

two years out so that we could build

the supply chain infrastructure today.

Well, today we don't have those options,

because two years from now,

we don't know what the world is gonna look like.

So companies are now trying to figure out,

well, how do I spin up or spin down

elements of my supply chain,

new nodes in months and not years?

So companies that don't have this agility,

they're not gonna be the winners in the future.

And when you're plugging and playing your supply chain

with outsource partners or even factories

that are changing different products

based on the demand of the market,

having multiple systems that are outdated

and that don't talk to each other

becomes a significant barrier

for establishing the resilience

and agility that the company needs.

So this is all creating the need

for some 21st century tools.

And one that I'm gonna take a bit of time to go through

is around the control tower.

I think the control tower kinda pulls

a lot of these pieces together,

and I'm gonna go a little bit slower

as I walk through this as it builds.

First, the foundation is plug and play.

This is technological connectors.

In the IT world, you call them like APIs

or these integration elements.

This allows organizations to digitize their processes,

turn them into inputs and outputs

and enable folks to plug them together.

In fact, this is the backbone of the way Amazon works.

You've got a number of different services

that represent things from distribution,

logistics, even manufacturing.

And they've got them digitized,

and so when they need to light up a new factory

or light up a new distribution center,

they literally sort of plug it and play it.

So having the ability to build those,

to have those connectors where you can plug and play

is a fundamental part

of a 21st century supply chain infrastructure.

Next is around connecting suppliers into your ecosystem,

connecting distributors into your ecosystem.

Companies like Avnet, Arvato, Ingram Micro,

these are companies that are used to being,

I'll call it 3PLs, third-party logistics providers

that support many companies.

For those companies to survive,

they actually have to work in this plug and play world.

So there are already stubbed out

to connect into n number of companies.

Now, unfortunately, if your company

doesn't have the ability to plug into that,

you won't be able to take advantage

of the power that comes from being able to adapt

and light up a factory in Brazil for one season

so that you can take advantage of the upside

of whatever is happening in that country,

or the ability to ramp down a factory in Vietnam

when the local economy is taking a turn

and you don't wanna be saddled with that physical,

the fixed infrastructure.

So being able to ramp up and ramp down

is dependent on your ability to plug in

these suppliers, these distributors into your network.

Here is one of my most interesting areas.

It's now connecting the actual assets in your factory,

in your supply chain into your platform.

In the past, we would do procurement

based on looking at inventory that's on hand

and then a human being would do the math,

and then a human being would figure out

what they need to order.

In today's world,

we could actually put the intelligence of reorder

down to the machine level.

In fact, companies like Starbucks

are using the actual coffee machine itself

to determine whether or not they need to buy more cups.

They're able to look at the recipes

that are being used today to predict what types of syrups

are gonna be needed later in the afternoon.

So relying on point-of-sale data

or relying on historical shipments or historical receipts

is not something that you have to do anymore.

You can actually look at the equipment

that's actually running the production operations

in your supply chain to trigger

the actions that need to be taken.

Also here in the transportation space,

everybody's heard about vaccines by now,

many of you have had them.

But transferring vaccines around the world

presents a particular problem.

Vaccines, for example, need to be transported

at a very specific temperature over its journey

or they become no good.

Now this is fairly easy to do

when you've got good roads like you have in the US,

but it becomes a problem

when you're starting to transport things

like vaccines in the developing world.

So cold chain technology becomes really important.

Now the transportation equipment has to have sensors in it

and they have to be monitored,

and you have to be able to remotely

turn up or turn down the temperature

so that things can stay within their good zone.

So having smart intelligent assets, smart transportation,

connected suppliers, all plugged into your control tower

give you the ability to create a virtual representation

of your supply chain in terms of a digital twin.

Now you can get that visibility

that managers used to have 50 years ago

by sitting in the middle of a factory.

Now you can get that sitting

in your control tower in your control room,

where you've got digital representations

of your entire supply chain on the board

or on the wall or even on your phone.

And so you can monitor, and you can sense,

and you can predict, and you can respond

to the disruptions that are happening.

So I said a lot there.

So I'm expecting a few of you

to have some questions about that.

Now one of the big challenges here

is when you're connecting everything into your supply chain.

You've got visibility to financials, customer data.

You've got the ability to control

different nodes of your supply chain.

And so the question is what happens if I forget security?

Well, I can tell you what's been happening, right?

4.2 billion customer records have been compromised

due to cyber threats.

And so if you're connecting

more and more of your business into the cloud,

you're actually exposing, you're expanding

the surface area for you to be impacted.

99 days from breach to detection.

This is kind of scary.

What this means is for about a quarter,

somebody's been in your house,

looking around, taking things,

stealing things, using things,

or just listening without you even knowing about it.

And the last but not least,

17 million is the average cost of a security breach.

So as breaches are starting to go,

it's not just about security.

it's also about dollars and cents.

So when you're connecting your infrastructure

all to the cloud,

making it accessible globally,

end-to-end security solutions become key

to a supply chain manager's toolkit.

Now I'm not gonna bore you guys

by talking about all the various

hacker technologies and cyber threats.

So what I've done is I've actually created,

I'm gonna show you a video of something that we do here

to make sure that we're monitoring all the cyber breaches.

And this is a capability that I'm expecting

many of your companies are gonna be tapping into

or building themselves.

So give me one minute and I'll play this video.

(soft music)

- OneHunt is a company-wide annual event

that we do to bring together

the red teams and the blue teams.

OneHunt gives us an opportunity

to simulate real adversaries.

It gives us the chance to be able to defend

against those adversaries.

- I think it would surprise a lot of customers to know that

Microsoft is heavily invested

in developing these state-of-the-art attacks.

This is a real world where adversaries

will use whatever techniques

or resources are available to them

to breach and get access to that data.

- [Man] It really is who can outsmart who

between the red and the blue team.

- The red teams know our product

better than anybody else.

They're able to attack in very unique ways.

As we do this type of exercise,

we're able to build defenses against that

before it can be used against us.

What differentiates Microsoft is we have defenders

who are responding to real attacks.

We're actually putting our plans into action,

testing them, finding weaknesses,

and being able to get rid of the weaknesses

and strengthen that which works better.

- This is a war game at a massive scale at global scale.

- Our time to detect to time to respond has to be fast.

It has to be in minutes, not days, not hours.

- The blue team has definitely gotten better

at detections and remediation.

It's making things a little bit trickier for us.

- As you look at the resources

that Microsoft brings together,

anti-malware, Office 365, the Cloud Enterprise Team,

the Windows Devices Group,

they're able to quickly put protections in place

in the middle of the activity

to help stop the attack from being successful.

All the learnings that we get from OneHunt

directly improve all of our product the customers use.

The OneHunt operation enables us as defenders

to keep on top of the game.

(soft music)

- All right, hopefully from there,

what you get a sense of is

when you're connecting your company essentially,

and even if it's not just to the external internet,

but when you're connecting it,

and you're actually exposing yourself

to people driving by and sniffing your network,

there's lots of new threats

that we need to be worried about.

And it's not enough just to be

a really great supply chain expert,

but you need to now partner

with folks that really understand the mindset of the hacker,

that can look at your supply chain design,

look at your connectivity strategy,

and help you identify where those threats are,

and then quite frankly, know how to attack them.

And so what you saw here is there's this internal war game

that we do here at Microsoft

for ourselves and for our customers,

where we actually pretend to be the hacker.

We come in and we try to breach.

And then we also have a team that is looking for detection.

And so by doing that,

we try to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

And so each of you that are leading supply chain teams

that are driving towards more connectivity,

leveraging AI, leveraging the cloud,

this is something that needs to be on your radar.

I highly recommend that you get

with your chief security officer

and make sure that they're really in tune

with your supply chain plans.

Now I've got a number of examples in here

that I wanted to talk about,

but I think I'll pause for now

and go to the questions that the team has,

that you guys have for me.

So I'll stop sharing now

and I will be happy to take some questions.

- Thank you, Gerald, for a great presentation

on all those insights on things

we probably didn't have in mind

we need to consider when designing

or building our supply chains.

So thank you for that.

I want to go now to a little bit of AI.

You briefly touched on AI,

and I really want our audience to learn about

how can we use AI to optimize our supply chains.

We are thinking on AI to speed up decision-making,

using prescriptive analytics.

And I'm wondering how algorithms

can improve that, enhance that possibility

of changing our designs on our supply chain,

making that faster,

or even if you foresee

that AI is changing the way we design

from scratch our networks.

- Yeah, there's a couple areas

where I'll just share some of my recent experience with AI

and integrating it into supply chains.

One of the big drivers

is actually on the reverse supply chain side, right?

In the world of sustainability,

we're trying to keep products out of landfills

and we're trying to keep equipment

that's running our factories,

that's running our logistics facilities,

distribution networks,

we want that equipment to be up and running.

And I don't know if any of you have ever worked

in the reverse logistics part of your organizations,

where you've got spare parts that are being managed.

Well, those spare parts, usually the inventory tracking

is about looking how many inches of dust

are on those components that they just need to buy

just in case, right?

And if you look at the balance sheet,

you actually have a ton of money stuck

in the balance sheet in spare parts

in most organizations that are actually building things.

And so one area where AI is coming into play

is they're using, they're instrumenting equipment

so that you're able to keep track

of things like vibration, right?

Vibration is one of those things

that we're able to take as time series data,

use algorithms to detect anomalies.

And then you can start to,

everybody here who drives a car,

who's ever driven what I call a bucket, an old car,

you can start to hear when something's gonna go wrong.

You can hear when you need the oil changed,

you can hear when something's not right with your wheels.

Well, that's what vibrations do.

Vibrations are sort of a leading indicator

that something's gonna go really, really bad.

And so they're using AI to detect, to monitor vibrations,

to detect when something might go bad,

so they can actually do the spare parts

and they can also do the predictive maintenance.

Now in the past, maintenance,

proactive maintenance was done on a schedule, right?

And the issue was over-servicing equipment.

You're spending too much money,

your downtime is too much,

and so what we're using now is AI to figure out,

well, I'm only gonna fix it when it needs to be fixed.

So you're able to use AI to tell you

that basically the equipment tells you when it's sick,

and it tells you how much time it's got

before it needs to be taken offline.

And so now you can be a bit more surgical about

when you service it.

And for the most sophisticated AI,

it will tell you which piece needs to be replaced.

So you no longer have to hold onto equipment

for 50 years just in case it breaks.

You'll be able to buy it or make it

based on you have a better way,

opportunity to use your lead time.

Now you didn't ask this question,

but I'll tell you a complementary emerging technology

to this predictive maintenance world is 3D printing.

Now I don't need to have stuff in stock at all.

I can actually just 3D print my components when I need them.

And so it's not like 3D print print the stock.

It's like 3D print on-demand.

So I can imagine a world where I have a supply chain,

a spare parts team that drives its inventory down by 75%,

increases the uptime of the equipment while reducing costs.

So that's one of the most exciting areas

where AI is impacting supply chains today.

Another one I'll just say it's really easy,

okay, it's relatively easy, but doing quality.

Quality today, you have a quality engineer,

they write their stuff down, they put it in a big database.

We're using AI now to actually read all the reports

and pick up the themes.

And now you're using the same sort of AI

that's used in sort of like Google

that helps you do a better search.

We're using AI to actually mine data

that's been put into systems by humans

to come out with themes and corrective actions.

- That's fascinating especially the concept

of like predictive maintenance

and getting ahead of the curve

and getting ahead of those equipment failures

which can obviously like bring a node down, for example,

in your supply chain or something like that.

It's a fascinating concept.

And I think it kind of builds on maybe like one area

I wanna dive into a little deeper as well.

I know it was part of our kind of our theme for today,

which is IoT.

And I'm wondering how like IoT

fits into this ecosystem of the control tower,

you're connecting into suppliers, right?

You have your AI engine inside

that's trying to make predictions

based on some of that data that it's collecting.

I'm wondering how IoT like these connected devices

kind of fit into this ecosystem.

I mean obviously that's probably the data source

for the AI engine that's sensing--

- Yeah.

- Equipment status, et cetera.

Maybe can you dive a little deeper into that topic?

- Yeah, there's, I'll talk about,

so I talked about the predictive piece, and I'll just,

if you're a, let's say you're Proctor & Gamble

and you have over a hundred and something factories around,

or you're GE with 300 factories or something like that,

and you've got a situation

where all of your experts are retiring, right?

Let's just say that hypothetically, right?

That's actually happening in many places.

When you have the equipment connected,

you now have the ability to have an expert sit somewhere,

not in each factory that can actually remotely monitor

equipment of a certain type that's all over the world

and be able to provide instruction or guidance.

In addition to that, you've got the ability,

and we're actually rolling this out in some markets

where you have local technicians or local operators

that will pop on like a virtual reality set of goggles

and they will get guidance and instruction from the expert

that's sitting thousands of miles away

sort of like remote surgery that you've seen

in like the movies and stuff.

Well, we're doing remote surgery

for equipment in factories and in warehouses now,

where you get the instructions,

you get the heads-up display,

the work instructions, all that stuff,

that's happening now and it's powered by IoT, right?

Connecting the equipment is the first step

in enabling this sort of distributed virtual

way of maintaining your operations.

The other thing that I think is really cool

is when you have equipment that can do many things,

oftentimes what it does

is a function of the program that it's running, right?

And so whether you're in a quick serve restaurant,

or you're in a process manufacturing plant,

these recipes are really driving the action.

And so in today's world, the way these recipes are updated

are literally people driving around

with like briefcase with USB sticks that are like,

hold close to their vest and they go

and they upload the recipe on each piece of equipment.

And so if you need to start making

a different product in a different factory,

it's gonna take a human and time to go and do that.

Now when you're connecting equipment in IoT,

one of the big use cases that are driving investment

is the ability to do over the year updates.

It sounds very simple, you do it every day on your phone,

but in the industrial space,

because of the security threats that we just talked about,

people are very reticent to actually connect the equipment.

But once they do,

once they overcome that security challenge,

they're able to actually do things

like Starbucks can now deploy coffee recipes

in minutes as opposed to over a week's time

doing literally truck rolls to 30,000 stores

to make sure that they're doing things.

The other thing they can do is innovate faster.

So pushing down recipes is one thing,

but being able to take what's coming off, what's being used,

people are asking for custom stuff.

You've all been to the movie theater

where you kinda make your own soda or whatever.

I don't know if you, those push button new soda fountains.

Well, what Coca-Cola is doing is they're actually listening.

They're paying attention

to the combinations that customers want,

and they're actually putting that

into their product development cycle.

And so now they're coming out with these flavors

that they can put in grocery stores and mass market,

and they're actually using your experience

to drive their innovation.

And that same concept can be put in place

in your supply chain, right?

If you're monitoring

the types of equipment that you're using constantly,

you can now go and update your ergonomic plans, right?

So when you have the assets

in your supply chain become intelligent,

you have a whole another layer of data

that you can use to drive optimization.

- Thank you, Gerald.

And I love how you mentioned all those huge supply chains

and you mentioned all those huge companies,

and that's what we usually talk about,

very large global networks.

But within these networks, however,

there are many, many small actors.

So those small companies are still playing

a vital part of our supply chains.

And my question is,

and I also saw some questions from the audience on that,

how do small companies feed into the concepts

like supply chain control tower?

Or how do they plug into the systems

and how can they implement the technology?

Is it feasible?

Is it a long-term thing?

Is it too cost expensive for small companies?

How do you see that?

- I'm actually seeing the companies that are,

I was just talking about this the other day,

the last companies that come to the table

with reemerging disruptive technologies

are the biggest ones.

We call them the tier ones.

The tier ones are laggards, right?

They're the last ones to the,

they're like, oh, I don't want the cloud.

I have so much money, I can build my own cloud.

I don't need to go do this thing.

And so you're seeing a lot of that.

And so it's the mid-sized businesses that have some resource

that are actually taking advantage

of public cloud-based solutions.

They're working with startups and they're innovating.

And so they're actually starting to push the curve.

For a smaller company, let's say you're a,

I think there's so much techno,

the cost of technology is continuing to go down, right?

We're still living in the world of Moore's law.

There's also a convergence that's happening

between your consumer technology

and industrial technology, right?

And so it's no longer required

for a company to buy $30,000 servers and $100,000 software

to be able to have like an ERP system, right?

It's now all available to be rented or subscribed

based on cloud providers, right?

Also you're seeing that the equipment manufacturers

are making their equipment more intelligent.

For example, Welbilt is, they make the ovens

that go in your local coffee shop, right?

Those ovens are now being connected, right?

They're making them available to connect.

And so now I actually, my daughter runs a small coffee shop,

and so one of the things that we're trying to figure out

is like if we get one of these connected ovens,

can we start doing things like paying attention

to the types of things that our customers are asking for?

And how do we integrate that into our point-of-sale system,

which is we're using Square.

Square essentially provides me

with the same functionality of an ERP system,

but I can do all that in a small coffee shop.

So the technology is actually quite accessible

for the smaller folks in the organization.

The thing that I would caution is we need to make sure

that they're also paying attention to security.

Now the security solutions are available.

There's encryption.

We just need to be smart about

our wifi passwords in our shops.

It shouldn't be 12345 or psswd, and we should be okay.

So there's tremendous opportunity for experimentation

all the way from raspberry pie

to what we use here at Microsoft.

So I think the small folks have an opportunity to innovate

at a pace a lot faster than the big ones.

- That's awesome perspective.

Fascinating, we often hear about the big companies

like Coca-Colas with their machines,

but we don't often hear about the opportunities,

and maybe even the innovators

that are some of the smaller or medium-sized companies

that are really driving some of that frontier

'cause they have some of those opportunities

and some of those pressures

that are forcing them there maybe as well.

- I tell you, Kellen, one of the areas

that I'm personally very bullish about

is the developing world, right?

I've always believed that constraints

drive innovation, right?

And there's a company called Zipline in Rwanda.

I don't know if you've heard about them

or if they're part of like your curriculum,

but they're trying to figure out,

well, how do I get medicine from A to B and there's no road?

Well, they're using drones

and they're actually using like zip lines,

and they're just innovating.

And so they have this connected intelligent

logistic solutions that are necessary

because the actual physical infrastructure isn't there.

So they're figuring out how do we leapfrog, right?

If 5G is available,

if they've actually got the ability to use drones,

if there's remote power capabilities, right?

Solar panels tied to batteries

where you can actually then connect into Starlink,

so you've actually got connectivity

in the middle of nowhere.

Now digital infrastructure can be in place

faster than physical infrastructure,

and the types of solutions that you can put in place

literally leapfrog what you would see

in the developing world.

So I would say the supply chain innovation of the future

is gonna come from areas on the planet

where they must innovate to survive,

and that's happening now which is pretty exciting.

- Yeah, that's super exciting.

I know we could probably have a whole session

just on that specific topic.

So I'm just taking a look at the time here.

And so maybe in the interest of time,

I wanna give a chance to jump into some of the questions.

We have a whole bunch of questions here from the audience.

- [Gerald] Yeah.

- But maybe before we do that,

can we launch our second poll here?

We'll jump into a couple questions

while you get a chance to fill out that second poll here.

But let me see, there we go.

So we got the second poll up here.

So just for those who are able to see it,

so the question is what's the most interesting part

of today's session?

We're just interested, we're always trying to learn,

test and learn from these events,

and so we're interested in learning about

what you found interesting in today's events.

And while we do that, maybe Laura,

I don't know if you wanna,

if you have a question picked out from the Q&A there.

You wanna jump into that first question.

- Of course, thank you, Kellen.

And we have so many question

that probably we'll not get to most of those,

but I want to bring one and it covers one of the topics

you briefly named on one of your slides

when we were talking about the challenges that are coming,

and it's about workforce composition.

- Yes. - And Mohamed Amir,

if I'm pronouncing it well,

is asking with IoT and supply chains,

what challenges and opportunities

are there for supply chain professionals

in terms of job market, training?

What skills are needed

for our future supply chains professionals?

- Yeah, hey, Mohamed, thank you for that question.

I think the, first of all,

the opportunities are growing, right?

One of the things, one of the benefits of COVID

is that supply chain ended up

being on the news all over the place.

And so those supply chain opportunities are there.

It is an industry where we see the impact of retirements

hitting us pretty hard.

And so, one, the opportunities are there.

Two, the focus on, I'll just say the focus on diversity

is also important in supply chain

because supply chains are global.

They are local and require understanding

of different cultures, different ways of,

different parts of the world for supply chain professionals

to be relevant in the 21st century.

And so you're seeing a very diverse pool

for all types of diversity

in new leaders emerging in supply chain.

So from a skillset standpoint though,

I would say it's really important for you

to understand the technologies

that are available today, all right.

You don't have to be a coder,

but you should understand analytics,

you should understand basic application layer technologies,

you should understand the fundamentals of finance and ERP.

There's physical flows, financial flows,

and information flows in every single supply chain,

and you need to be able to master and understand

all of those elements and how they work together.

So I think those that are

like just actually interested in the way the world works,

that are not averse to technology,

and then have some sort of acumen

around finance and business,

those skills will take you very, very far.

The last thing I'll say is

keep an end-to-end mindset, right?

Over a long career,

you will touch every element of supply chain

if you're lucky and if you're focused.

Planning, logistics, plan, source, make, deliver, return,

the whole thing, order management.

So be open-minded, think end-to-end, and take the long view.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

And you can have 25 years career

and still not touch everything like I did.

So I still haven't touched everything.

So sky is the limit for new supply chain professionals.

The last thing I'll say is be good at something,

like pay attention to what's going on

and pick an expertise, right,

every five years or so, and like go deep.

And then at the end of the day,

you're gonna be an expert in like four or five things,

and you'll just be super valuable to everybody.

- Well, that's awesome perspective, I appreciate that.

Definitely lots of learners are starting,

learning some of that and building some of that knowledge

just with our presentation here today,

so I appreciate it.

Maybe so we'll be able to take a look at

our poll results here and we could share those results.

But what was the most interesting part of today?

Looks like everyone was interested in kind of

expanding their knowledge generally.

So I think that really resonates

with the comments you just made,

building some of that knowledge and going deep

maybe on some of these topics.

So that's awesome.

So maybe I'll jump into that next question here in the Q&A

and we're running short on time here,

but I think this is a pretty good question.

You touched on this kinda briefly,

and this is something that I had

some recent experiences with,

and so it's a scenario I'm fascinated with as well.

But Remesh Safar has a question about

that satellite internet opportunity

I guess you'd almost say. - Yeah.

- And he also says some of the lower frequency bands

suitable for IoT gadgets.

So you probably would be able to maybe address that

a little more than I could.

But what are some of the opportunities

to monitor supply chains

through that satellite connectivity?

- Yeah, I think the opportunities are there.

I'm actually seeing in terms of the most modern

sort of connectivity strategies that I'm running into,

I'm seeing a lot of 5G is being introduced.

I don't see a lot of practical,

okay, let me back up.

In sort of the developed world,

I'm seeing a lot of 5G interest.

One of the things I do is some sort of consulting

to healthcare supply chains in Sub-Saharan Africa,

where there's a lot of experimentation happening

with sort of satellite or very,

yeah, I'll just call it satellite types of connectivity.

The type of connectivity doesn't really make

a huge difference in what you can do.

The key question is the connectivity reliable, right?

And what that does is it drives you to figure out

what your solutions need to be able to do.

If it's intermittent, then you need sort of

asynchronous sync up type technology

where you're able to do a lot of things on the device.

So the devices need to be beefier

when the connectivity is spottier, right?

If the connectivity is solid,

then you can put some of the beefiness in the cloud

and have cheaper devices, right?

So that's one of the big trade-offs

that I think is there relative to connectivity.

I can't say too much about

the different bands and how that implicates.

I haven't run into that.

But what I have run into is intermittent

versus stable connectivity

and how that impacts the types of devices

that you're bringing into your supply chain.

- Awesome, thank you, Gerald.

And we are running out of time.

So I would like to thank everyone in the audience

for the awesome questions.

We will share those with our speaker

just in case you want to get to know our audience

and what is interesting for you all as well.

Remember this is the last webinar of the session.

So we are very happy that you came through

all the three of them with us.

Thank you, Gerald, for joining us today.

We've learned a lot and thank you for your great insights,

because as supply chain professionals,

we hear a lot about technology,

and sometimes we don't know where to begin with.

So you've given us great insights on that.

Thank you, Kellen.

It's been great to co-host with you.

So I don't know if you have some words

for Gerald and the audience.

- No, I just wanted, yeah, thank you, Laura,

for being a co-host, so always a pleasure,

and Gerald for sharing your time

and your expertise with us today.

I know we could probably dive into a lot of these topics,

like some of those ones you just mentioned

like healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There's some of these topics

that we could probably dive into

with many hours of webinar,

so maybe we'll try to bring you back here

one of these days soon and expand on some of these concepts.

But thank you for sharing your time

and your expertise with us today.

- Hey, it's been my pleasure.

And one thing I'll leave

this next generation of supply chain leaders

is I learned something really early

that has stuck with me and has really helped me

throughout my entire career,

and it was actually Six Sigma and problem-solving

and using data to ask questions, answer questions.

And it has been the backbone of everything that I've done

for the last 20 something years.

So while it might be old technology,

having the ability to use data to understand situations,

decompose problems down to their essence,

and use it to validate that you're on the right track,

gets you out of opinion and into fact,

and it becomes a really, really powerful tool.

So I'm just doing a plug

for my old Six Sigma capabilities out there

is a foundation even relevant for the 21st century.

Anyway, thank you both very much.

And thanks everyone for your engagement and the questions.

It's really been an honor today, thank you.

- Thank you, Gerald, and thanks everyone.

Stay tuned because we will have

another webinar series coming soon,

and hopefully we will see you around again.

And also Gerald, hopefully we will host you again.

Thank you very much everyone, bye-bye.

- [Gerald] Buh-bye.