Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19 with Professor Yossi Sheffi

Summary

在这场由麻省理工学院运输与物流中心举办的MicroMasters跨课程直播活动中，Yossi Sheffi教授分享了他对COVID-19大流行期间全球供应链影响的见解。Sheffi教授是供应链韧性领域的专家，他讨论了企业如何应对危机，强调了风险管理的重要性，并提出了供应链恢复的“打地鼠式”模式。他还探讨了技术在供应链中的快速应用，以及媒体对供应链失败的报道与实际情况的差异。此外，Sheffi教授对全球化、不平等、政治民族主义以及假新闻等问题表达了担忧，并对未来供应链管理职业的机遇和挑战提供了洞见。

Takeaways

• 📚 重视供应链风险管理：新冠疫情凸显了供应链风险管理的重要性，公司需要更加关注供应链中的潜在风险和中断。
• 🌐 加强供应链的可见性和透明度：为了快速响应供应链中的突发事件，提高供应链的可见性和透明度变得至关重要。
• 🛑 应对危机时的应急措施：企业应设立应急管理中心，集中处理信息和决策，确保与所有利益相关者的沟通，并明确决策权。
• 🔄 供应链的灵活性和适应性：疫情中企业展现出迅速适应市场变化的能力，如汽车公司转产呼吸机，以及3M增加口罩生产。
• 📈 电子商务的显著增长：由于疫情导致的居家隔离，电子商务和在线销售经历了爆炸性增长，许多实体店铺转向线上销售。
• 🌍 疫情对全球供应链的影响：不同地区和行业的复苏不均衡，导致全球供应链出现“打地鼠式复苏”，即随机的爆发、关闭和重新开放。
• 🛍️ 消费者行为的改变：疫情期间，消费者的购物习惯发生了变化，更多的人选择在线购物，且一部分消费者打算继续这种购物方式。
• 🏭 供应链的地理多元化：企业可能会采取“中国+1”策略，即在中国以外增加投资，以平衡风险并应对潜在的供应链中断。
• 💡 技术在供应链中的新应用：技术在供应链管理中的作用日益增强，特别是在提高供应链的效率和响应能力方面。
• 🌿 可持续性挑战与机遇：尽管疫情给可持续性带来了挑战，但也为推动技术创新和全球合作提供了机遇，可能会成为可持续性发展的转折点。

Q & A

Yossi Sheffi教授在供应链管理方面的主要专长是什么？

Yossi Sheffi教授是麻省理工学院的长期教授，他在供应链管理的所有领域都是专家，特别是在供应链的韧性方面有深入的研究，并且一直在紧密跟踪COVID-19对供应链的影响。

在COVID-19大流行期间，供应链管理中最大的意外发现是什么？

Yossi Sheffi教授表示，他并没有特别意外的发现，因为大多数公司在供应链管理方面已经做得很好，尤其是在风险管理和适应性方面。但是，他指出政府在风险管理方面的表现不佳，特别是在医疗物资和个人防护装备的储备和补给方面。

为什么说每个中断都是不同的，但管理中断的方法却大致相同？

Sheffi教授引用了托尔斯泰的“安娜·卡列尼娜原则”，说明每个家庭的不幸各有不同，但管理大多数风险和中断的方法却大致相同，这包括设置应急管理中心、沟通、决策制定、审查供应商能力和融资等。

在COVID-19期间，供应链的哪些方面表现出了出色的适应性？

在COVID-19期间，供应链在多个方面表现出了出色的适应性，例如食品供应链在餐馆和机构关闭的情况下，仍然能够满足超市的需求。此外，一些公司迅速转向生产医疗设备和口罩，显示出供应链的灵活性和响应能力。

为什么说COVID-19期间供应链管理的“最佳时刻”？

Sheffi教授认为，尽管面临前所未有的挑战，供应链在满足需求和适应变化方面表现出色，例如食品供应链成功地将产品从关闭的机构转移到超市，而且大多数情况下没有出现严重的短缺。

在COVID-19大流行期间，哪些行业受到了最大的冲击？

受到最大冲击的行业包括那些涉及人们聚集的行业，如航空业、酒店业和体育赛事等，因为这些行业在疫情期间受到了严重的限制或关闭。

COVID-19对供应链的长期影响是什么？

Sheffi教授预测，供应链的长期影响将包括对风险管理和供应链韧性的更大关注，以及对供应链透明度和可见性的更多投资。此外，他提到供应链的角色和重要性已经得到了提升。

为什么说COVID-19可能是供应链管理职业的“正确时机”？

Sheffi教授认为，由于供应链管理在应对危机中的关键作用，以及未来对供应链专业人士的需求增加，现在进入这一领域的职业是一个好时机。

在COVID-19之后，供应链管理中可能出现哪些新的职业机会？

预计会出现与供应链风险管理、供应商保证、经济可持续性以及供应链透明度和可见性相关的新职业机会。

Yossi Sheffi教授对于供应链管理专业人士有什么建议？

Sheffi教授建议供应链管理专业人士阅读更多相关书籍，了解风险管理和供应链管理的知识，并准备好在危机时期应对不确定性。

COVID-19期间，供应链管理中的一个积极变化是什么？

Sheffi教授指出，供应链管理的角色和重要性得到了提升，供应链管理专业人士现在被视为公司的重要资产，与CEO和其他高层管理团队紧密合作。

为什么说COVID-19大流行可能会成为供应链管理的“拐点”？

Sheffi教授认为，COVID-19大流行是一个重大的冲击，它将导致公司更加重视供应链的韧性和风险管理，这可能会引发供应链管理方式的长期变化。

在COVID-19之后，供应链管理的趋势是什么？

Sheffi教授预测，供应链管理的趋势将包括更多的全球化，使用新的技术和方法来提高供应链的透明度和可见性，以及对供应链风险管理的更大关注。

COVID-19对供应链管理专业人士意味着什么？

对于供应链管理专业人士来说，COVID-19意味着他们的职业变得更加重要和需求增加，同时也需要他们适应新的挑战和变化，如风险管理和供应链的韧性。

Outlines

00:00

📚 欢迎与介绍

本段介绍了活动的背景，由MIT运输物流中心的研究科学家Alexis Bateman主持，并邀请了供应链领域内备受尊重的专家、麻省理工学院教授Yossi Sheffi。Sheffi教授在供应链的韧性方面特别有研究，并且一直在密切关注COVID-19对供应链的影响。Alexis Bateman介绍了活动流程，包括Sheffi教授的演讲和问答环节，并强调了参与者需要使用姓名登录以提问，因为不会读取匿名问题。

05:02

🌟 供应链的韧性与COVID-19影响

Sheffi教授分享了他对疫情期间供应链的见解，提到了他关于供应链策略的新书《重塑商业的供应链战略：超越COVID-19》。他强调了“安娜·卡列尼娜原则”，即每个中断都是独特的，但大多数风险和中断的管理却有共通之处。接着，他讨论了企业如何应对危机，包括建立紧急管理中心、沟通决策、审查供应商能力、决定产品分配以及财务问题。他还提到了减少SKU数量以确保畅销产品的供应，并强调了危机过后的恢复计划的重要性。

10:05

🛑 疫情对不同行业的影响

Sheffi教授探讨了COVID-19对不同行业的影响，特别指出了已经处于弱势的公司，如美国百货商店，如何在疫情期间进一步受挫。然而，他也提到了企业如何进行调整，例如汽车公司开始制造呼吸机，以及像New Balance这样的公司开始生产口罩。他还强调了电子商务的兴起，以及企业如何通过增加技术投入和调整业务模式来适应市场变化。

15:06

📈 技术在供应链中的新角色

Sheffi教授强调了技术在疫情期间的快速发展和采用，包括连接性工具、可视化工具、新的计算优化工具和数据处理，以及向云端的转移。他举了一个关于如何通过技术提高供应链可见性和优化库存的例子，说明了技术如何帮助企业节省成本并提高效率。

20:10

🌐 供应链的未来与全球化

Sheffi教授讨论了供应链的未来，包括对全球化的看法，他反驳了全球化结束的观点，并预测了新的白领全球化的兴起。他还提到了COVID-19可能成为可持续性转变的转折点，以及对政治、工业集中度和假新闻的担忧。

25:10

🚀 供应链管理作为职业选择

在问答环节中，Sheffi教授为那些在疫情期间开始从事供应链管理职业的人提供了建议。他强调了供应链管理的重要性，并建议新入行者阅读有关供应链管理的书籍，特别是关于风险管理和韧性管理的内容。他还预测了供应链管理领域的就业机会将会增加。

30:11

🌍 疫苗分发的供应链挑战

Sheffi教授讨论了疫苗分发的供应链挑战，包括全球范围内前所未有的物流和分销努力。他提到了公司之间的合作，以及政府在资金和准备方面的承诺。他还指出了一些政府的民族主义行为可能对全球合作和信任造成负面影响。

35:13

🛠 后COVID世界中的供应链职业机会

最后，Sheffi教授预测了后COVID世界中可能出现的新供应链职业机会，特别强调了风险管理和供应链的可见性、透明度的重要性。他认为，公司将更加重视全球化的新视角，以及对新供应商和新贸易路线的评估。

Keywords

💡供应链管理

供应链管理是指对供应链中的各个环节，包括采购、生产、库存管理、运输、分销等进行计划、组织、协调、控制的活动，以确保供应链的高效运作。在视频中，供应链管理的重要性因COVID-19疫情而显著提升，因为企业必须应对由此引发的各种供应链中断和需求变化。例如，Yossi Sheffi教授提到，供应链管理在应对COVID-19期间显示出其重要性，特别是在风险管理和适应性方面。

💡韧性

韧性在供应链管理中指的是系统在面对干扰或变化时，保持运作并迅速恢复的能力。视频中，Sheffi教授强调了供应链的韧性，尤其是在COVID-19疫情下，企业如何通过建立应急管理中心、优化库存和调整生产来增强其供应链的韧性。

💡COVID-19

COVID-19是指由新型冠状病毒引起的疾病，它在2019年底首次出现，并迅速在全球蔓延，对全球供应链产生了深远的影响。视频中提到，COVID-19对供应链的冲击是多方面的，包括需求的急剧变化、生产中断和物流挑战。

💡风险管理

风险管理是指识别、评估和控制潜在风险的过程，目的是减少或消除这些风险可能带来的负面影响。在视频中，Sheffi教授提到了风险管理在供应链中的重要性，尤其是在面对COVID-19这样的全球性危机时，企业需要有有效的风险管理策略来应对不确定性。

💡适应性

适应性是指系统或组织在面对环境变化时调整自身以维持功能和性能的能力。视频中，Sheffi教授讨论了供应链在COVID-19疫情期间展现出的适应性，如企业如何快速调整其生产和供应链策略以应对市场需求的变化。

💡电子商务

电子商务是指通过互联网进行的商品或服务的买卖。视频中提到，在COVID-19疫情期间，随着人们越来越多地在家中工作和购物，电子商务经历了显著增长，许多传统零售商也开始加强其在线业务。

💡供应链可见性

供应链可见性指的是能够实时跟踪和监控供应链中的货物流动、库存水平和运输状态的能力。在视频中，Sheffi教授强调了提高供应链可见性的重要性，这有助于企业更好地预测和管理潜在的中断。

💡库存管理

库存管理是供应链管理中的一个重要组成部分，涉及对库存水平的监控、控制和优化，以确保产品及时供应并最小化存储成本。视频中提到，企业在疫情期间通过减少SKU数量和优化库存来应对需求的不确定性。

💡供应链优化

供应链优化是指使用先进的分析工具和技术来改善供应链的效率和效果，包括成本降低、服务提高和响应速度加快。视频中，Sheffi教授提到了企业如何利用优化工具来重新规划运输路线和库存分配，以应对COVID-19带来的挑战。

💡可持续供应链

可持续供应链是指在供应链管理中考虑环境、社会和经济三个方面的可持续性，以实现长期的社会责任和经济效益。视频中，Sheffi教授讨论了COVID-19对可持续供应链的影响，以及企业如何在这个领域寻求改进。

💡全球化

全球化是指产品、服务、资本和劳动力在全球范围内的流动和交换。视频中，Sheffi教授提到了全球化在COVID-19疫情期间所面临的挑战，以及企业如何重新考虑其全球供应链战略，以增强供应链的韧性和可持续性。

Highlights

Yossi Sheffi教授分享了他对COVID-19对供应链影响的见解和建议。

讨论了COVID-19期间供应链管理的调整和变化。

强调了风险管理和适应速度在供应链中的重要性。

介绍了'Whack-a-Mole recovery'概念，描述了全球复苏的随机性和区域性。

分析了COVID-19对不同行业的冲击，特别是对零售业的影响。

讲述了企业如何通过技术调整和创新来适应市场变化。

讨论了电子商务的增长以及它如何改变消费者的购物习惯。

强调了供应链中前线工人的关键作用和重要性。

探讨了媒体对供应链失败的报道及其对公众认知的影响。

分析了供应链在危机中表现出的弹性和效率。

讨论了全球化的未来趋势，以及企业如何重新考虑全球布局。

提出了供应链管理中的新兴职业机会，如供应链风险管理。

强调了可持续性的重要性以及COVID-19对其可能产生的影响。

讨论了技术在解决全球问题，如大流行和气候变化中的作用。

预测了后COVID-19时代供应链管理职业的新趋势和变化。

呼吁全球合作和投资技术创新以解决全球性问题。

总结了COVID-19对供应链管理职业的影响和未来展望。

Transcripts

SAM VARNEY: [INAUDIBLE] I need to share my screen.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: Welcome, everyone,

to our MicroMasters cross course live event, today

with Professor Yossi Sheffi.

My name is Alexis Bateman and I'm a Research Scientist here

at the MIT Center for Transportation Logistics

and Director of MIT Sustainable Supply Chains.

Today, we're super fortunate to have Professor Sheffi, who

is a longtime MIT Professor and really highly regarded

expert in all things supply chain.

He's particularly an expert in resilience

and has been really closely tracking the impact of COVID-19

on supply chains.

And today, he's here to share a little bit

about what he's learned and some recommendations.

Yossi, thanks for taking the time for us today.

YOSSI SHEFFI: Thank you for having me.

Sure.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: So just a quick update on the agenda

for the session--

so Yossi will be presenting for about 25 minutes, some

of his insights from his newly released book.

And at the end of the discussion,

we'll have a chance for questions.

So please use the Q&A webinar feature to ask questions.

Be sure you're logged in with a name

because I won't be reading any anonymous questions.

We'll also share a poll at the very beginning of the session

to get it started, just to better understand you guys.

So on that note, let's kick it off with our one poll.

Sam, can you fire that up?

Great.

So while we're answering this poll,

let me just start off the session with one question

before we get started in your presentation.

So back in March, we actually had this exact same event,

right when COVID-19 was really starting

to circulate across the world, and we were really

seeing just some of the first impacts beyond China.

We held a MicroMasters live event

to talk about these expectations and how supply chain managers

can prepare.

Is there anything that changed over

the duration of the pandemic that

surprised you or you didn't expect back from March

until now?

That's on that, Yossi.

It's for you.

YOSSI SHEFFI: Oh, it's for me.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: That's for you, and then we'll go to the poll.

YOSSI SHEFFI: Yes no I don't want

to influence the poll so I want people to tell me

what they think and then--

ALEXIS BATEMAN: OK, and then we'll respond to that.

YOSSI SHEFFI: I can discuss it in the presentation

or something.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ALEXIS BATEMAN: Perfect.

YOSSI SHEFFI: But this should not take too long to click on.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: OK, all right.

Anyone, grab your last participation in the poll.

And then we will close it up.

I think we can close it up, Sam, and we'll use that

as a basis of discussion.

All right, so can you see the results, Yossi?

YOSSI SHEFFI: Yes, I can see the results.

I can see the result. Seems like lack of risk management

takes the prize, speed to adapt, the impact on certain industry,

shifting demands, sure.

These are some of the--

let's go back to this after the presentation.

Let's put it up for the presentation

and discuss some of this.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: OK, that sounds great.

YOSSI SHEFFI: [INAUDIBLE] on some point, not on others.

So let me maybe share my screen.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: All right, take it away.

YOSSI SHEFFI: OK, here it comes.

OK, I hope you can see the screen.

It's actually a talk about my book, some of the stuff.

The last six months or so, I was working

on a book about supply chain during the pandemic business,

during the pandemic.

I call it Reshaping Business's Supply Chain Strategy

Beyond COVID-19.

I'm going very quickly, so try to leave room

for some conversation.

So start with what I call the Anna Karenina

principle, because as you know, the pandemic is not

the only problem that we ever had.

There's all kinds of disruption [INAUDIBLE]

books before about risk management and resilience.

Tolstoy wrote, "Happy families are all alike.

Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

And every disruption is different.

No two are the same, yet the management of most risk

and most disruptions involve almost the same things,

regardless of what they are.

So let's quickly go over what companies are doing.

First of all, they set Emergency Management Center.

It's a central place where information, decision making

are focused.

They have to worry about communication,

communicating to all the stakeholders,

communicating to the employees, to the market,

to the communities.

They have to decide who makes what decision.

This is from a famous coach of the New England football team.

That's the American football, not the real football.

Just do your job.

Don't always try to help in areas

that you don't understand-- so clear decision making

authority.

Looking at suppliers, reviewing what is the capacity.

Are they struggling or are they solid?

Decide, if you don't have enough product, which

customer gets what.

Which is the most important customer?

Worry about financing.

In times like this, when we go into recession, cash is king,

but you have to worry about not extending term of payment

to supply too much.

You put it in danger.

Many companies reduce the number of SKUs.

General Mills, for example, went from 90 to 50 varieties

of its infamous Progressive Soup.

Why do they do it?

Because they try to ensure that the supermarket aisles

are full with the fast runners.

They also save costs because they

don't have so many changeovers.

Finally, one has to plan for the recovery.

As they say, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

So a tough look at which customers continue

serving which of your divisions, or even employees

are doing a good job and are part of your future.

Anyway, moving very quickly--

so people talk about what is the shape of the recovery.

If you read the media, it's a V. It's

going to be a V. It's not going to come right back up.

People hope it's a U after a while, if you come up,

or stay low, or up and down.

Actually, what happens, people forget the spatial dimension.

I call it a "Whack-a-Mole recovery."

It's a game, children's game, when stuff pops up

and you have to beat the moles that come out of the ground.

And we will have a Whack-a-Mole recovery.

And that's random flareup, shut down,

reopening around the world, in random time and random regions.

This will be the shape of the business in the next year

or two years at least.

So who did COVID hit?

We know which people it hit-- people

who were old, weak, previous condition, comorbidity, old.

Same thing with companies.

Companies already weak, already deteriorating conditions,

already over-leveraged-- for example,

this is US department store revenue, all department stores

in the US.

They went from 1998 from over $30 billion to just

before the pandemic to about $11 billion in sales.

And during the pandemic, they're now down to $8 billion.

So famous companies like J.Crew, Neiman Marcus, Lord and Taylor,

JC Penney, Pier 1 and many others

just are leaving the business.

However, we do see significant adjustments

in many other companies helping.

For example, auto companies started making ventilators.

So companies like Ford and GM and flex--

flex as a contract manufacturer--

started making ventilators.

And in fact, in short order, the US

started having enough ventilators

for anybody who needed.

Lots of companies started making masks.

New Balance, which is the shoe company, started making masks.

Etsy now has-- not now, about two months,

around April, was already having 60,000 sellers on its website

selling masks.

3M, which makes the gold standard N95 mask

tripled its production.

So companies have been adjusting,

but the adjustment takes many, many forms.

For example, going online, so moving from in-store

to online--

so Burberry, for example, started

having an app in China that shows people how to dress,

what to buy.

Savas is leather garments.

And this doesn't show it, but these are actually

videos, show people how to take measurements

and how to order online.

Sephora, makeup, showing women how to put their makeup on,

what to buy, what colors to use, how to put their makeup on.

IKEA has augmented reality, could show you

how a piece of furniture will look in your space.

So you can order it online.

So companies were adding a lot of tech

and a lot of adjustment.

And of course, e-commerce just took off.

So this is from Q2 revenue at the end of June.

So you see Walmart sales were up 9%,

but online sales were almost 100%.

Target, Lowe's-- all of these companies were up

significantly.

And of course, Alibaba and JD.com,

the e-commerce native companies, went up also

significantly from a very high base.

Companies like Shopify, which makes--

Shopify basically helps small and medium retailers

to get online.

It now has over one million customers.

This is 1.3 million retailers that are using the Shopify

app to get online.

And we had this--

we collected some data about how people shop during COVID.

This was collected in May and June.

So pre-COVID, about 13% of people shopped online.

During COVID, home delivery went to 31%.

Now, the interesting thing is how many people

are going to stay with the choice.

And about a third of the people are

going to stay with the choice going forward.

Moving right along, remember after 9/11,

we had created safe zones in airports, in shopping malls,

in sports arena.

You had to go through a metal detector

or you have to answer questions, just to make sure

that they allow people to start flying again,

started going to arenas, movie theaters, whatever.

Now we have something similar.

We have to create safe zones.

And people are creating safe zones for COVID-19.

We create minimal infection danger areas everywhere

people congregate.

So what do we do?

We do testing.

We look at temperature.

We quarantine people who are sick, remove them

from the population.

And people will do it when it's creating

a competitive advantage.

It's creating, whether it's retailers or hair salons

or gyms, people who are diligent about it

and do it well are creating a competitive advantage.

We can go later more into it.

What we see is a lot of new systems.

Tech is-- one of the characteristics

of what happened during the pandemic

is that the development and the adoption

of all kinds of technical tools increased almost exponentially.

Interesting, many of the supply vendors of tech

that I was talking to said that the time

to get from presentation to a company to adoption

has been cut by 90%.

People are just doing this because it becomes do or die.

So where there's all kinds of connectivity tools, visibility

tools, new computational optimization tool, new data

processing.

And everybody's going to the cloud.

So let me give you one example of a company that

does shipment visibility.

And the problem-- they build on shipment visibility

to do something much bigger than just that.

So think about an automotive plant.

And automotive plants, every morning, the plant manager

and the production manager will look,

do we have enough inventory for today's production.

Invariably, for today, for tomorrow, for the next one,

two, maybe three days, do we have enough inventory?

And what's coming to us?

Is it enough?

Are we going to be able to make the production?

And invariably, things are missing.

So this is the plant manager whose job is on the line.

If you stop production in an automotive plant

and you don't make so many cars, you'll never recover.

That's it.

So the plant manager needs to fix the situation now.

And what's happened is you call the supplier and you expedite,

which means if really you need it for the next two hours,

you actually send a helicopter.

Otherwise, it's usually very expensive trucks

that go directly from the origin to a destination.

And this is, of course, very expensive

and a lot of wasted dollars.

So there are companies who do visibility.

And for most vendors, visibility means, where's the truck?

And they do some updates and update ETAs

and even do geofencing to tell the plant manager when trucks

has just crossed, for example, the Mexican border

if it's coming from Mexico.

The problem is that the plant manager doesn't really

care where the truck is.

They want to know where the part number is.

They need to know where the part that is missing is.

And so this company has the information,

that they were able to get all the information

from the vendors, from the [INAUDIBLE] shipping notice

and translate it from the part number

that the vendor used to the part number

that the motor company used.

Anyway, they have the information.

So what they do is the following--

there's the daily production schedule.

They actually look at the inventory

in terms of days on-hand, how much we have of each part.

And then they identify the shortage by part number.

And now they scan all the inbound trucks,

not for a particular plant, but for all the plants.

By the way, General Motors does this.

They scan all the inbound trucks--

there are 40,000 50,000 of them at any one

point coming to all the plants.

And they look identify how many parts are in each truck,

where is it, and where it is going.

And now they run a massive optimization.

They reroute.

They relay.

They tell one truck to offload at some truck

stop and other trucks to exchange trailer

with some other truck.

And they send new instructions to all the trucks.

They also, in this type of optimization,

ensure that there's no shortage developed in any other plants

because of this.

And then they update the plants at all the plants.

This saves the company, actually, millions of dollars.

So this a combination of visibility and optimization

and the cloud.

And there's a lot of AI in this, and just

an example of something that was adopted a month ago.

This is totally new.

Changing, let me talk a little bit about what

happened during the pandemic, talk about what

happened with the media.

So we still have a relatively hysterical media

over the world--

well, the Western world.

Talk about the failure of supply chain-- supply chain fail--

the end of just-in-time, talk about the end of reliance

on China.

Everybody leaves China.

None of this is actually the case.

So failure of supply chain?

I would argue that this was their finest hour.

Take, for example, the food supply chain.

What happened to the food supply chain?

So there were no restaurants suddenly.

All restaurants were closed.

Institutions were closed-- I mean,

universities, industrial parks, whatever.

So not only half of the food that

was going at the institution rather than supermarkets

changed.

Also, the items that were consumed were changed.

People bought less fresh items, more canned food,

more bread and pasta, what we call "comfort food."

In addition, there were plant closures.

And still, there was actually very little a shortage.

I mean, you might not have had the your--

in the Western world--

the cut of meat that you like, but you had other meat.

You didn't have the flavor of granola that you like,

but you had other flavors.

And maybe you didn't even have the toilet paper that you like

and you had this industrial Erlang-type toilet paper.

But by and large, there were no shortages.

The problem is that this is what you saw in the media--

empty supermarket shelves.

The problem is that the media likes--

we say in the media "if it bleeds, it leads,"

which means they're looking for something that is scary,

because it gets clicks, and gets eyeballs, and journalists,

they get Pulitzer Prize or whatever.

Anyway, so they took these pictures every night,

not realizing that if you come to the same supermarket

the next morning, this would be the picture.

Because they didn't realize the way

the supply chain works, that you supply the supermarkets

overnight, and you put stuff on the shelf overnight.

Because you don't want the people who break the pallets

and put the stuff on the shelf to be mixed with the people who

are shopping.

So I would say that by and large, supply chains

deserve a prize.

We can talk later about one part that failed,

but this was not supply chain.

This was actually the government in terms

of the PPE and some medical necessities,

in terms of supply chain.

But I have a whole chapter in my book related to this.

Then people said-- the media talk

about the end of just-in-time.

Well, no.

The Toyota Production System, which

is where just-in-time came from, was

one of the most important manufacturing supply chain

innovation ever.

I would compare it almost to the Industrial Revolution.

So it calls for minimum inventory,

but it also results in resilience and flexibility

because it ties suppliers and manufacturing customers

much closer together so they can respond

much faster to both disruption and demand changes.

It's resulted in high quality because there was not

much inventory.

So people, if there was some flaw in a part,

people could not just go to the pile of inventory

and get another, but they had to find out what's the problem?

Why'd this happen?

This is the essence of the Toyota Production System.

They brought low waste, worker participation,

and a lot of good things.

So basically, it results in a low cost, high quality product.

And companies cannot get away from this.

Now there is a way, and we can talk about it

about doing, actually, both of them.

We can run just-in-time with, actually, emergency inventory.

But it has to be done in a certain way.

Let me just explain for a minute.

What's the problem with extra inventory?

It costs money and it brings bad processes

that lead to low quality.

So what do you have to do, if it's a national critical part,

the government has to pay for it or at least part of it and you

cannot use it for day-to-day fluctuations or for day-to-day

quality problems.

You need a government or a presidential approval

in order to use it.

And by the way, this is how the US ran the Strategic Oil

Reserve.

It didn't use it to modulate day-to-day fluctuation.

You need the president to open the Strategic Oil Reserve.

So just-in-time is not going away.

Maybe it will be run a little different for critical parts.

For most parts, it doesn't go away.

Then a lot of people are talking about everybody's getting out

of China, leaving China, or let's say a lot of people.

The media is talking about it.

Know that most companies are not in China due only to low cost.

Costs in China are going up.

And companies who moved to China because of low cost

are moving out of China.

Like garment manufacturers are moving

to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Even Chinese garment manufacturers

are moving out of China.

Sectors like automotive, high tech, aviation, textile,

any sophisticated product, cannot move out of China.

There is a whole country of Chinese suppliers

that have the speed, the capacity, innovation,

responsiveness.

Hard to compete with, and these are not easily found elsewhere.

However, some companies are balancing China with what they

call "China+1" strategy.

They stay in China because they have their whole ecosystem

of suppliers and sub-suppliers, sub-suppliers

developed over decades in China.

But they may put some additional investment out of China

just to balance.

And they started doing it, actually,

before the pandemic, when the trade war between the US

and China started.

But note that some Western companies

are moving into China just to balance, if they

have it strong Western base.

Let's not forget also that China is a very large and growing

market, and right now, it's probably the only country,

the only significant economy, that is basically

beyond the pandemic.

It's growing.

Let me end with final issues of concern, in general.

The first is something that is close to Alexis'

heart is sustainability.

In the book, I talk about why sustainability is now

in trouble.

And I also give some ideas of some optimism about it.

So it's in trouble because--

I always argue that consumers and everybody, consumers,

governments, companies-- they're all talking a good game

and not nearly enough to do something about sustainability.

And now we're getting into recession,

it really becomes a luxury good.

It's hard to imagine people are going

to pay more for sustainability.

It's hard to imagine companies are going to invest.

It's hard to imagine governments,

who are worried mostly about getting back

to business, getting their economy going,

and are hugely in debt.

It will be very hard to make other investments.

There may be, actually, some silver cloud--

and we can talk about it later--

how COVID possibly, if we have enough right-thinking people,

can actually be a inflection point in sustainability.

Another thing that I'm worried about

is actually more globalization, not less.

People are talking about the end of globalization.

No.

First of all, globalization means more resilience

because you're not depending on one part of the world.

But we will see new white-collar globalization.

What will happen is, if you have a company in Boston

and you can work from, I don't know, Kansas City,

because your parents live there, you

can also work from New Delhi.

You can work from Buenos Aires.

So we may see new labor globalization of white collar.

Inequality exposed-- we call it the "K recovery".

We talk about V or U or W. The K recovery,

we see white-collar people are doing OK and even doing better.

Tech workers are doing better.

And we see blue-collar workers are losing.

They're losing their job.

They're losing their livelihood.

They are falling behind.

Not only this-- so there's a problem

with education, with broadband access,

with ability to work from home.

But it's also inequality between countries.

Many countries in Africa are now falling much further behind

on a lot of metrics, and some countries in Latin America,

as opposed to the Western world.

In politics, we see the rise of populism and nationalism.

And you can add your pictures to this,

whether it's whoever you want, but this

is a worrisome development.

We see industrial concentration-- companies

like the tech companies in the US

are getting bigger and getting more and more influence,

being Facebook or Amazon or Google, Microsoft,

to some extent.

The big are getting bigger.

They're buying other companies, which

means in the future, less innovation and more power

concentrated in fewer places--

not good for democracy, not good for competition

in the long term.

Finally-- it's not finally.

I can go on at least for a while, but fake news--

I'm bothered by this, the fact that, say, you're

entitled to your opinion.

You are not entitled to your own facts.

And now we don't agree on facts.

Especially in the United States, the government

is becoming unable to govern.

The country is divided.

But you cannot even believe the news.

And I'm not even talking about the far right wing.

But even on the left, even a newspaper

like The New York Times and others.

It's very hard to distinguish between opinion and actual news

facts, whether it's on Fox News, or on CNN,

or on MSNBC [INAUDIBLE] some of the American channels.

What you see is opinion and bias mixed in with facts.

So you don't know what to believe.

OK, let me stop here and give you-- these are all my books.

And you see the last one, the new (Ab)Normal right here.

You can have a lot more information about my blogs,

about my book on my website, which you see-- sheffi.mit.edu.

Anyway, so let me stop here.

I promised Alexis 25 minutes.

I think I did on time.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: Perfect, right on time.

YOSSI SHEFFI: All right.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: All right.

Thank you so much, Yossi.

That was super insightful.

And I saw already a bunch of comments

in the chat about how timely it was,

and how useful it was to get that presentation.

And I even saw a little bit of optimism

around sustainability in that slide.

So I'll take that and run with it.

But so I think--

so super insightful.

I wanted to return to the question that we presented.

Now that you've seen such a huge--

and you've been documenting all the changes in supply chain

and impact as a result of COVID, was there

anything that turned out unexpected?

And Sam, can you bring back the pull one

results so that we can take a look at that, just

to kind of revisit.

YOSSI SHEFFI: The lack of risk management

I was not surprised by, because I don't

think it's true, actually.

The lack of risk management-- wait, it's

true in terms of governments.

Governments were just unimpressive.

Governments in the Western world, certainly the United

States, but all over Europe--

governments were just not impressive

in terms of the preparation, the speed

that they moved, the information they give.

It's all part of risk management-- communication

and preparation.

Let me just mention the PPEs and medical supplies.

In the United States, the Clinton administration

started building--

and this was because President Clinton read a book about it.

It's not because of any event.

He started building a national safety

stock of medical supplies, PPE and some items.

The Bush administration built it significantly.

Of course, it had 9/11, but it also built it significantly,

and they got, and handed the Obama administration,

was actually very well stocked pile of medical supplies.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration totally blew it.

They used it for the H1N1.

They used it for several other pandemics.

And they never replenished it.

The funny thing, there is actually

quotes from the Obama White House saying that what they do,

they have a committee if something happened

rather than have a supply.

And of course, the Trump administration

didn't even think about it.

So we got to where we got.

But I think it's mainly failure of government.

It's hard for companies in the current climate,

even for medical companies, for pharmaceutical companies,

to be uncompetitive.

They live in a system.

So that's why I fault the government much more

than specific companies.

In terms of some of the other issues that are, of course,

impacting certain industries, it's not surprising

that all industries that involve people coming together

were hurting, whether it's football games, or airlines,

or hotels.

Shifting demand-- I was not surprised by this.

The minute that we close restaurants,

people started eating at home.

So OK, maybe we didn't expect the extent of this,

but it just makes sense.

The speed to adapt was impressive

in several industries.

I mean, I was talking in the book,

for example, from several industries I was talking to.

And I made the example of shifting to making ventilators,

making masks.

But these are only some of the things.

We see now that companies are hoarding hundreds

of millions and billions of syringes

and other supplies for the distribution of the vaccine.

So now they're doing it ahead of time.

You see they're prepared.

We know that some type of vaccines are coming.

And so companies are ready for this.

Now, when I say companies are ready,

the government is funding a lot of this.

The government is funding parallel production

and parallel preparedness of supply chain

and helping companies.

It's American governments.

It's the EU, the Japanese government, certainly

the Russian and Chinese government

are pouring billions of dollars into preparation

and development of vaccine and distribution.

So a lot of it is government, in some sense,

are learning the lessons.

They're hearing from population.

Lack of visibility is inexcusable

because if you're talking about visibility for decades,

and there are apps, there are ways to do better.

But it's now Internet of Things.

So the lack of visibility is unfortunate.

The role of frontline workers--

yeah, it's now obvious.

It was not obvious before.

I'll tell you one more thing that's not obvious,

and this is that people used to ask

my wife until December or until January 2020,

what's your husband doing?

And she said, he's a researcher in supply chain management.

They said, what is this?

What is he doing?

Nobody asks this question anymore.

My wife says, my husband is in supply chain,

people say, wow, that's an important.

The role of supply chain in general

has been elevated significantly.

In all the companies I'm talking to,

people are talking about the fact that in some companies,

the CEO came from--

a few companies' CEO came from supply chain.

Most companies still they do not,

but they become the right hand of the CEO.

They are working daily consultation with the CEO,

with the management team, about how to move forward.

So these are some of the changes.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ALEXIS BATEMAN: That was super interesting.

And yes, my dad finally knows what I do in supply chain.

It only took him eight, nine years.

So at least at the minimum, there's that.

So that was great, Sam.

You can close the poll results.

Thanks for popping those up.

So I see a lot of questions.

So you can close them.

I see a lot of questions going in.

If you guys have any further questions,

please make sure to put them in the Q&A. I'm

scanning in right now and selecting some.

But I'll just ask one more question

before I go to the audience questions, which

is, we have a lot of MicroMasters learners

on the line, some of which who are really brand

new to supply chain management, are entering it as a new field.

Do you have any advice for those entering supply chain

during such a pivotal time, a time of disruption and change?

YOSSI SHEFFI: Yes, sure.

First of all, lucky you.

You choose the right profession at the right time.

So that's great for you.

In the coming years, clearly more people

will be hired in supply chain management.

Look-- now we're in the middle of the pandemic, still.

So in some parts of the world, it's hard to hire.

It's hard to get into companies.

Companies are hiring but the rate of hiring is low.

But clearly, in six months, in a year, the floodgates will open.

So I expect a lot of people will be hired.

Read a lot.

In terms of getting into the profession,

there's much more being written about the supply chain

management.

Of course, I know of a few book by a young professor at MIT,

excellent to read.

And you may want to get some of my books

about supply chain management, and about risk management.

Risk management is becoming much more important.

So the idea of understanding how to deal with suppliers, how

to prepare your own plan, what to watch for when you're

running business is becoming much more important

in terms of preparing for the unexpected.

Because we still have earthquake, and tsunamis,

and fires, and lots of other things that impact

the supply chain.

So I think the importance of risk management and resilience

management is high.

And you may want to get schooled a little bit in that.

In addition, of course, I'm not minimizing

understanding other aspects, like financial aspects,

and communication aspects, and others.

But as I said, the number one thing you should take from this

is you couldn't come at a better time into the profession.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: A good sentiment there.

And Marcus also chimed in that to get your start,

you should attend the MicroMasters in Supply Chain

Management program.

And I fully agree.

So you're here.

You're already on the first step.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ALEXIS BATEMAN: So we have an impressive list of questions

that we're not going to get through,

but we will do our best.

So Nick [? Cronshaw ?] asks, given Whack-a-Mole recovery

and varied lockdown and isolation policies,

it seems reasonable to expect shifts in trade imbalances,

leading to excess and insufficient container

capacity in regions.

What are your thoughts about how the shipping industry is

likely to react to unequal recovery by country and region?

YOSSI SHEFFI: Yes, actually, we saw it.

We saw in March, April, we saw that there

were lack of containers and we had this problem.

I think-- look, we are going to see, in this fall,

we're going to see, we already start

seeing the beginning of resurgence

of the pandemic in the US, in Europe,

in several other parts of the world on the one hand.

On the other hand, companies know it.

We now expect it.

It's not as unexpected as it was before to the trade imbalances.

I also don't expect it to be as massive as before

in the following sense--

especially in Southeast Asia, many countries,

whether it's China, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan,

have learned how to deal with it.

They're actually dealing with it very well.

So internal Southeast Asian trade, I think,

is not going to suffer much.

We'll have small pockets that will open and close.

In Europe, we see now Ireland just announced

they're closing for six weeks.

That's a big [INAUDIBLE] But there's a lot of work in the EU

and not so much in the US, unfortunately, but in Canada

and other parts, about getting up good testing and contact

tracing, which is some of the ways

to keep this Whack-a-Mole spread from becoming national spread,

by dealing with them immediately.

The United States is a problem.

We are just not dealing with it.

Some parts of Europe are just not dealing with it.

I see huge increase in France, in Italy, in Spain.

Spain is seeing a huge increase in cases,

and they're going to close.

So we will see return of some of this,

even though the liners is getting better

at anticipating and repositioning

containers in the right [? grades. ?]

So I expect it to happen to some extent,

but not as bad as before.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: All right, thanks for that.

So Lenore says, I couldn't buy toilet paper for six weeks

and it took six more weeks for it to be delivered.

Given that the shelves for toilet paper

were cleared, and then overstocked,

and then cleared again, is the beer game

going to be recalled the toilet paper game?

Or any thoughts on those shifting demands?

YOSSI SHEFFI: Yes.

In my book, I interview Jeff Flake,

who is the supply chain Executive Vice

President of Georgia-Pacific that

actually makes toilet paper.

So he said that the problem they had is the following--

the problem is that they could not shift fast enough.

They increased 40%.

Took them about two months to increase the production by 40%.

But increase in what?

The soft toilet paper that goes to home--

demand was through the roof.

This thin toilet paper that you get in airlines

and when you go to the bathroom in McDonald's, there

was no demand for it.

Because restaurants, airline, hotel, they're all closed.

And furthermore, it's all machine driven.

This is not, as you can imagine, there

are not a bunch of people rolling this toilet

paper by hand.

It's all done with automation.

So it was very hard to shift.

Actually, automation locks you down

to a way of doing business.

So when you have a machine that makes a thin toilet

paper that's done in pallet and truckload quantities,

it's very hard to send it to homes and supermarkets.

So we had this case.

And, by the way, a lot of it was the media.

The media, the lack of understanding--

what happened is the following-- the media start having--

I actually describe the whole process

of what happened with the toilet paper.

It started in South Asia, actually.

But then the media in the Western world said, oh,

lack of toilet paper.

People panic and start buying toilet paper.

So some stores did the right thing.

They said, consumer can get only so many rolls.

The media got totally apoplectic.

They start saying, my god, people

are restricting the buying.

The situation must be a lot worse

than we thought, not realizing that retailers are doing

absolutely the right thing--

that they should restrict.

And it's the right thing to do.

But the media took it the wrong way.

So it [? exasperated ?] the panic.

And my son sent me a caricature of somebody sitting

on the toilet looking in the year 2030,

holding a bunch of toilet--

a toilet roll to say, this is the last toilet paper

that my father bought in 2020.

So keep it to remember the days.

So now I finish 10 years worth of toilet paper.

So yes, it's an absolute example of a bad bullwhip,

that it started with the media, that influenced the consumers.

The supermarkets did not, most of them

did not react fast enough, did not restrict.

They should have restricted immediately.

Just like, by the way, they started in the US,

for example, for a while, people worried about egg shortages.

And supermarkets immediately restricted it to two cartons

for the consumers, and the egg shortage disappeared.

So it's not knowing how to deal with it.

It's media.

When I said the media, the media is not bad.

It's just there are two things.

First of all, they like alarmist headlines,

and second, they simply don't know.

I cannot tell you how many times--

I was interviewed a lot during the pandemic by lots

of well-known media outlets and newspapers.

And half the time, a journalist calls me and said, look,

up until yesterday I was a sportswriter.

Now they told me to write about supply chain.

So tell me about supply chain.

They really didn't understand what was going on,

with many good exceptions.

I mean, The Wall Street Journal by and large did a good job.

Some newspapers did a good job.

The New York Times did a reasonable job,

even though it was alarmist sometimes.

So yes, it was a classic bullwhip,

but it could have been cut if both, if the supermarket would

have reacted immediately and if the media understood

what they were doing.

So it's only communication and doing the right thing early.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: Right, right, and it

seems like as supply chain professionals,

weeding out the true news and the kind

of hyper over-sensationalized news will be a key role,

kind of that critical thinking going forward.

All right, I have next one from Jonathan Smith.

I promise I did not pre-seed this one.

This year, there seems to have been an uptick in talk

about sustainability, which surprised me given the presumed

focus on recovery.

Can you speak a little bit about that?

YOSSI SHEFFI: Yes.

We can talk about sustainability.

First of all, because as I said, on the one hand,

sustainability is in trouble.

For the next two, three years, clearly

the focus is not going to-- focus of companies

is going to be revenue and costs and risk management,

[INAUDIBLE] sustainability and consumers are going

to have less money, so they're not going

to pay more for sustainability.

And companies are not going to invest.

But this has alarmed many environmentalists,

and they raise the volume of talks about sustainability.

But let me talk about the optimum side

being not negative about it.

There is a chance, and that's what many environmentalists

and governments are committed to talking about.

If you think about COVID and global warming,

these are very similar problems.

They are global.

The solution requires global cooperation.

We have been warned about it for decades.

In my book, I give about six or seven,

I don't remember, the front cover of the Time magazine,

they talk about the incoming pandemic.

And of course, there are countless covers

talking about the incoming global disaster.

So we say warnings, and the solution is technology.

And that's where I part with many environmentalists

because most environmentalists look at this solution

as they change behavior.

I think it's not going to happen.

It's a pipe dream.

But we see that some technology--

we see that, for example, renewable cost

is coming down significantly.

This is a technology solution.

It's not a behavior change, it's technology solution.

Now that a renewable in some cases

costs less than digging bitumen from the ground,

well, more and more companies are starting to say it works.

It works economically.

So why not?

In the pandemic, we also saw that the solution

is technology.

We started by changing behavior.

By the way, I talk about the fact

that since biblical time, what we do today

in terms of closing economy was done in biblical time.

In biblical time, when somebody was sick, they had to--

and I have quotes from the Bible.

Same thing in the Quran and similar things--

they had to go in front of a priest.

And the priest used to look at their face

and their discoloration, everything.

They were the testers.

They said you have to isolate or not.

And then there was the quarantine.

This was [INAUDIBLE] 3,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago,

I mean, a while ago.

Not much has changed.

What did change is that now, people

are counting on science and engineering.

So we are developing vaccine.

We are developing therapeutic.

These are science and engineering.

I think that as we go out of the pandemic,

we'll realize we better listen to the scientists

and engineers who are telling us that there's a problem coming.

We now know we should invest a lot more in technology,

not only to reduce the rate of emission, which

can be done, maybe, with behavior,

but to take CO2 out of the air.

CO2 is already in the air and we must do it,

because half of the world's population

lives on less than $5 a day.

They want to be middle class.

They want cars, and meat, and concrete houses.

We cannot it.

so we have to take emission, we have to take greenhouse gas out

of the air.

And there are technologies in the lab, not yet in scale,

that are working on this.

And finally, we realize when the problem is big,

there are trillions of dollars around the world

to invest in a solution, a technological solution.

If a small part of this will go to the technologies

to develop and scale the technology to take emissions,

to take greenhouse gases out of the air, we have the solution.

So as I said, COVID and global warming

are very similar problems.

So I hope we listen to the scientists.

We will get cooperation because we need global solutions.

We will pour money into new technologies

and get the problem solved.

So that's the optimism.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: I appreciate the optimism

and we definitely agree on most of the points, some of which

we can't rely on consumer behavior

and also that we should rely on scientists going forward.

And if at the minimum, the pandemic taught us that,

then that's something.

That's a silver lining.

So I think we can have probably two more questions.

So Bam asks a question--

I know you've been thinking a lot.

What do you think about the preparedness

for vaccines distribution and the supply chain?

And how are supply chains preparing for that?

YOSSI SHEFFI: OK, so there's a lot

of work going on in this area.

The good things-- we need, by the way, about 3

to 5 billion vaccine per year going forward,

because it's not a one-time thing.

And this is an unprecedented effort.

There's nothing like it in the annals

of logistics and distribution.

But companies are getting ready.

Some things are very encouraging.

What's most encouraging to me is the cooperation

between companies.

We see companies that--

so their cooperation means the following-- as you know,

we are now doing parallel manufacturing.

So there are many of the people who develop vaccines and are

in trials now, the government gives them money

to start manufacturing, to start building plants,

to set up warehouses, and usually

cold warehouse for the vaccine.

Some of these some are going to work.

But there are already agreements between companies to lend

this capacity to each other.

So we are building worldwide capacity, at least

in the developed world.

There is a worldwide capacity that's

being built in order to do it.

How good it is, it is hard to say because as I say,

it's unprecedented.

So is it something that will be enough?

I don't know.

I think that there are a lot of good signals.

As I say, I especially like the agreement.

You see a lot of agreement between companies

that will help.

We see governments that are committed to this.

One thing that's not working well

is that many governments are saying, first for me and then

for the rest of the world.

This does not bode well for anything.

It does not bode well for their fight against the COVID-19,

because it's a global problem.

We solve the problem [INAUDIBLE] US,

we don't solve it somewhere else, it doesn't matter.

Because it's clear-- several things

are clear-- not everybody will take the vaccine.

So in the US, I don't know how many, 50%, 60% will take it.

And second, it does not give you lifetime immunity.

This is already clear, that it's effective 70%, 80%, by the way,

just like the flu vaccine.

So it's not a total defense, which

means that we have to have the rest of the world vaccinated.

When people are only for themselves,

it creates ill will.

Actually, it's one of the things they're worried about

with regard to the last question about sustainability,

that we also need global cooperation for sustainability.

And this behavior will make it harder

for people to cooperate in the future

because it erodes trust between countries.

So for whatever it's worth, but companies

are getting with-- the problem will

be not so much the rich world because it

has money to throw into it.

The problem will be Africa, some parts

of Latin America, some parts of Southeast Asia,

how to get to all those places and vaccinate people.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: Right, thank you.

Super good insights, and I can already

see a lot of comments on how helpful that was.

So I think we have time for one more question,

but I just want to--

I know we're coming up on the hour-- to direct you guys.

Yossi's book is available.

And you will have the link there and it's been populated.

So in case you've found these inside insights interesting,

please go take a look at his book.

His books are always super interesting

and very easy to read.

And regarding supply chain sustainability,

we do have a live survey on that.

Can you please take a moment to fill it out,

to tell us about if supply chain sustainability is

shifting in your company.

We would love to hear it.

I just populate in the Slack or you can

go to our website to find it.

So I'll conclude with one final question

I thought was kind of interesting,

which is [? Ramkumar ?] asks, do you think there'll

be new supply chain career opportunities that are

developing out of the post-COVID world,

as we've seen with other trends with quality,

chief quality officer, chief sustainability officer.

Is there going to be any kind of shifting

roles as a result of COVID?

YOSSI SHEFFI: Yes.

The role will be risk management, supply chain risk

management.

That's going to be--

that's becoming big.

And the assurance of supply, worrying

about supplier, supplies, economic sustainability,

companies will worry a lot more about what's happening

along the supply chain.

So that's one.

Second, a lot of effort in trying

to understand very quickly something that is happening

in the bounds of the supply chain

that can affect your company.

So a lot of visibility, transparency,

are becoming much more important.

But this is just an acceleration of trends

that were happening before.

But this pandemic is such a shock.

It's what it is.

It's an inflection point, if we have another minute.

| like after World War II, we had the UN and NATO

and lots of things.

After 1918, we had lots of changes.

There will be a lot of changes, but for companies

in particular-- the question was about companies

not about government.

I talk also in my book about the changes to government

and expectation from governments, because government

was huge during this pandemic.

But companies will start thinking much more seriously

about the resilience and the risk management.

This does not mean that they remove

all of their operations and suppliers

to the United States or Europe--

absolutely not.

In fact, I think there will be more globalization because you

want to be more spread out, especially

in the Whack-a-Mole pandemic, Whack-a-Mole recovery,

and beyond.

But it should be a new lens to look at globalization,

and new lens to look at new suppliers, a new lens

to look at new trade routes.

So yes, I think this would be one of the immediate changes.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: That's super interesting.

And on that note, for those of you guys in [? SE3X, ?]

Yossi's lessons on risk and resilience are in week nine.

So I think you'll be taking some interesting takeaways

from there.

And I think throughout this discussion,

we've touched on numerous other concepts and issue areas

across the MicroMasters program.

So hopefully, you guys can take that with you.

But I just want to thank you, Yossi, for the great insight--

super interesting.

There's been a lot of echoing of thanks and appreciation

for your deep insight.

I'm sorry we didn't get to all of your many, many questions,

but I think some of them would be answered

in the book and any forthcoming information we have coming out.

So please stay tuned.

Thank you, Yossi.

YOSSI SHEFFI: Thank you very much, guys.

There's more information on my website and my blogs,

I write on some aspects of--

many of these aspects.

ALEXIS BATEMAN: Thank you.