March 21, 2024 • 40 mins
For our March episode, co-hosts Ted Stank and Tom Goldsby spoke with father-and-son supply chain researchers Dale Rogers and Zac Rogers, the proprietors of the Logistics Managers’ Index, about diversifying supply chains, global redesign, friendshoring, and much more.
Dale is the ON Semiconductor Professor of Business at Arizona State University, where he directs the Frontier Economies Logistics Lab and the Internet Edge Supply Chain Lab. Like Ted, he is a member of the Supply Chain Hall of Fame and the recipient of numerous awards and grants. He is a leading researcher in reverse logistics, sustainable supply chain management, supply chain finance, and secondary markets.
Zac is an associate professor of operations and supply chain management at Colorado State University. His primary research areas include the financial impact of supply chain sustainability, emerging logistics technologies, and supply chain cybersecurity.
To start the episode, Ted and Tom discussed the positive February jobs report, consumer sentiment, the impact of the election cycle, manufacturing activity, international trade, and more.
The episode was recorded remotely on March 8, 2024.
Related links:
- U.S. added 275,000 jobs in February but unemployment rate climbs
- Inflation rate ticks up to 3.2%, hotter than expected
- Consumer sentiment retreats slightly in February
- SEC approves rule requiring companies to report greenhouse gas emissions
- No end in sight to Red Sea shipping diversions
- Manufacturing activity contracts in February following 2.5 years of growth
- Attend the 2024 Spring Supply Chain Forum in Knoxville (partners only)
- Subscribe to GSCI’s monthly newsletter
- Read the latest news and insights from GSCI
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain
Management podcast.
Listen in as co-hosts Ted Stankand Tom Goldsby set sail into
the world of end to end supplychain management, diving deep
into today's most relevantbusiness topics.
They'll share insights andpressing industry issues and
tackle the challenges keepingsupply chain professionals up at
night.
If you're enjoying the ride,download and subscribe to
(00:22):
Tennessee on supply chainmanagement on your favorite
podcast platform now.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hey everybody, this is Ted Stank, one of your
co-hosts for our Tennessee onsupply chain management podcast.
This is our third podcastcoming to you from 2024.
And we're really, reallyexcited to have a couple of
great guests with us here.
We'll introduce them in aminute.
I'm also happy to have myco-host, tom Goldsby, back with
me.
Tom's been going all over thecountry the last couple of
(00:48):
months.
He missed our February podcastbecause he was out at an
industry conference in Las Vegas.
It happened to also coincidewith him attending a big concert
in Vegas and maybe even beingable to drop in on a big
sporting event that he was there.
Tom, you want to comment onyour travels and welcome back.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
It's great to be back , ted.
Thanks so much, and theaudience and you.
You're going to have to be alittle patient with me, right?
It's been a couple of monthssince I've been on a podcast.
It might take me a little whileto warm up.
But yeah, I was in Vegas lastmonth for the Reverse Logistics
Association event.
I've been talking about some ofthe returns research I've been
doing consumer returns and thatwas a good place to be.
In fact, one of our gueststoday was up on stage at RLA, so
(01:29):
I had a chance to visit withhim, but also up on stage was
Bono Edge and Adam Clayton of U2.
So I got a chance to take in U2at the spear, which was
tremendous.
And that sporting event I can'trecall.
I think Taylor's boyfriend wasplaying football or something.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Taylor's boyfriend and Travis's brother.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's right.
That's right.
So it was a very, very hectictime.
Fun time to be in Vegas, but Idid get some good insights there
, including from one of ourguests.
Dr Zach Rogers of ColoradoState University was on hand.
Heck, I got a chance to see theother guest, father of Zach,
dale Rogers, by happenstance.
(02:09):
Back around Christmas Ihappened to be in LA and I was
going through a parking garageand I saw a very distinctive car
with a very distinctive vanityplate L-O-G-P-R-O-F out of
Arizona.
I said Dale Rogers is on thescene.
So we got together and hadbreakfast.
So we're looking forward tohaving the brothers Rogers.
(02:31):
As I refer to them, not to beconfused, they are our father
son academic duo.
But yeah, it's great to be backon the podcast.
Great to have you back, tom.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You know, I feel like one of my favorite sports talk
shows is part of theinterruption, and Michael Wilbon
, one of the guys on part of theinterruption, is traveling all
over to different sportingevents, and the other cranky old
guy, tony Kornheiser, doesn'teven go to the studio anymore,
he does it from his attic.
And that's me, I'm the crankyguy in my attic, and you guys
are traveling all over the worldand Kornheiser also never
(03:02):
watches any sporting events thatend after 10 pm at night.
That's another trait of mine.
Like Tom has always tried toget me to go to basketball games
that start at 9 pm, I'm like no, I got to be in bed by 10
o'clock, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So there's some some synchronicity here with Tony and
the other guys, tony and Mark,it's true.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, we got some really good stuff going on today
.
What we usually do is a quickrundown of some current events
that are happening.
I feel like we're in this kindof redundant groundhog day loop
that the numbers that keepcoming out are really similar to
the way they've been for manytimes in the past.
We'll look at some of theeconomic data.
We'll look at some of theconsumer data.
Then we'll look at some of theindustry indices and bring Dale
(03:42):
and Zach in to talk aboutspecifically their index, the
logistics managers index.
You want to do a little rundownof some of the economics.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, sure, Like you said, it is a bit of a broken
record groundhog day sort ofthing.
You know we do look at thosemonthly job reports.
There'll be a new report outtomorrow.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
And actually a job report came out this morning,
tom.
Oh, it did Tell me Two hundredand seventy five thousand jobs.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh, my goodness Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Economists were expecting about 200,000.
Came in at two seventy five.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well, I guess that that is a bit of a broken record
, because it seems like jobsreports keep coming in more
robust than the analysts expect.
And then they were explaininggranted, there will be an after
the fact adjustment we'll hearabout in about three weeks to
say it's maybe not quiet asrobust, or maybe it was more
government versus private sector, what have you.
But that's encouraging, that's,that's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And again like that broken record, really good on
the jobs report above whateconomists expected, but
unemployment did jump to 3.9%.
So not everything is perfectlyrosy right.
We always have theseconflicting signals and that's
what we've had for for severalmonths now.
The good news about that is itstrengthens the Fed's hand in
(04:52):
being able to potentially lowerthose interest rates that all
the markets, of course, arelooking at and capital markets
for investment, and obviouslythat's big in the supply chain
world Right.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, if there's some suggestion that we're getting
inflation a little bit more incheck, you're right, some
growing impatience out thereamong certainly investors, but
also among businesses and alsothose folks looking to get a
cheaper mortgage too.
So that would be verybeneficial if we could see the
Fed say all right, we're readyto get back into action here,
(05:23):
bring it back down.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Consumer sentiment numbers came in down a little
bit from January.
There were 79 in January.
They came in at 76.9, but stillup quite a bit from a year ago.
You know, consumers still kindof see the negative side of the
economy even though the economyis pretty robust.
We saw those GDP growth ratenumbers from fourth quarter.
There's a lot of good news outthere.
(05:45):
Very interesting to see wherewe are in the political schedule
, with what seems to be theprimary season already laid to
rest, oh yeah, and a pretty goodunderstanding of who the
presidential nominees are.
And with the State of the Unionaddress last night, which I
know you're going to make somecomments on, it'll be
interesting to see if thoseconsumer sentiment numbers tick
(06:06):
up from there as the Democraticside starts kind of pushing
their story a bit more than theyhave in them.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, I did tune into that State of the Union last
night and we were exchangingsome notes.
Beforehand.
I told you I had an over underon the number of times that
supply chain would be utteredand I said the over under was
six.
I don't know what the Vegasline was on it.
I came in at six and as far asI may have missed it, but I
think it came in at zilch.
(06:32):
I think it came in at zerotimes the term supply chain.
That said, virtually everytalking point in one way or
another involved supply chain,as we're talking about US jobs
and manufacturing andinternational trade,
international relations, red Sea, houthi attacks, you know this
sort of stuff certainly in mymind has supply chain all over.
(06:55):
But in terms of raw utterancesI think I think zero.
But then again, the term supplychange did not come up at all
either.
That's an inside joke.
You track on such things.
But now no supply chain orsupply change being uttered last
night.
But again, for those who are soinclined, you can.
You can find supply chain inanything.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Something we've commented on before is that for
the first time in myrecollection, the federal
government really has its eyesset on almost like a
quasi-industrial policy aroundsupply chain improvements.
So obviously one of the bignews from the political side of
things will be what's going tohappen between now and November
domestically here in the US Someother things going on, tom.
I think one of the big news isthat the Fed chair spoke to
(07:40):
Congress yesterday, on ThursdayMarch what's today the eighth
that would have been March 7thand said that interest rate cuts
can and will begin this yearand I think, again, the numbers
that came out today from Bureauof Labor Statistics kind of
supports that position.
So I think the markets are kindof baking in a June cut, which
(08:01):
means that for all those supplychain managers out there that
are holding back some of theirrequests for investment funding
for different initiatives bymid-summer might be able to put
that in because interest ratesmight be coming down and freeing
up the capital markets.
On the negative side, there'ssome dark clouds around
commercial real estate and banksthat are holding a lot of
(08:21):
collateral and loans oncommercial real estate.
That's something to keep oureye on.
I don't think people reallyknow where it's going now.
I've read that it's going to bea coming calamity and I've also
read that it's kind ofoverthought about.
It's not that big of a deal butsomething we'll think about
coming up.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
For sure, and I think we'll hear maybe a little bit
something about that, as itinvolves maybe logistics,
infrastructure and wherecapacity is, and moving and
storing the stuff, if we talkabout the Logistics Manager
Index a little bit later.
Hey, one thing I did want toalso drop in there is it
involves federal government.
We'd been waiting to see wherethe Securities and Exchange
Commission was going to comedown on environmental rolling,
(08:59):
on carbon recording.
There was widely believed thatthey were going to require scope
one, two and three recordingfrom publicly traded companies.
They came down shy of thatscope three which, by the way,
that's the toughest stuff tomeasure because that's all the
indirect in your supply chainbut the scope one and two.
It looks like those rulesvariable could go into effect
(09:22):
later this year.
Companies are starting to rallyand figure out how they're
going to measure and accuratelyreport that information.
So that was a big piece of newsthat came down yesterday.
Do you have any sort ofreaction to that, ted?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, I think that's big.
I think that's big forcompanies because, quite frankly
, every company I've talked tohad no clue about how they were
really going to measure that.
Some are also saying that ifyou can accurately measure scope
one and two and get that end toend across the supply chain,
then you're capturing it allanyway.
So, again, the flip side ofthat, though, is that that's a
(09:55):
US national policy.
California is not abiding bythat necessarily.
They have more stringentrequirements, and Europe has
more stringent requirements, soany companies operating in
either California or in Europeare probably going to have to
still play by those morestringent reporting requirements
.
Again, we'll see how this allworks out.
Some other things going on thatI would track on.
(10:16):
Is international trade stillsomewhat down?
A lot of big global brokeragecompanies like DHL and Kunin
Nagel released earnings reportsand are showing the weakness in
international trade.
Expect that to continue throughmuch of this year.
Again, really interesting tosee how our guests feel about
that with the logisticsmanager's index Shipping attacks
(10:37):
.
In fact, after the US and theUK announced several raids
against the Houthi rebels,things seemed to calm down for a
few days, but in the lastcouple of days, those attacks
have increased, including withthe first fatalities on a ship
that happened just in the lastcouple of days.
So, again, broken record.
We've been tracking what's beenhappening in the Suez Canal,
(10:57):
what's been happening in thePanama Canal.
That still is there and we justgot to keep an eye on it.
Most shipping going from Asiato Europe is going around the
Horn of Africa and just dealingwith that extended shipping time
and cost of fuel.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
So yeah, it's also happened to bring more ships
into the fleet, given thatthey're out to sea for longer,
and that then allows them toraise rates.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, in fact, a lot of companies that are in
negotiations for contracts withtheir shipping providers are
actually holding off onfinalizing those contracts with
the hope that there'll be someresolution of this Red Sea deal
and therefore they won't have topay those higher shipping rates
that the carriers are charging.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Well, we also pay attention to some indices out
there, right.
So again, just quickly.
I know you had pulled up ISMservice sector index came up shy
of expectations, still north of50.
But meanwhile the ISMManufacturing Index went further
south of 50 from 49.1 to 47.8.
And again that was belowgeneral expectations and in that
(12:01):
particular index showed 16consecutive periods of decline
of manufacturing activity.
So yeah pretty alarming there,and US factory orders also fell
3.6% in January.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And that coincides with the JOBS Report, tom.
The JOBS Report showed that theonly sector of the higher-end
environment that decreased inFebruary was in manufacturing.
So again, some softness inmanufacturing.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
But speaking of indices, maybe the nearest and
dearest to our heart is theLogistics Manager Index, or LMI,
which has a growing followingnot only within our field but
more widely around in business.
And we're very fortunate tohave the proprietors of the LMI
(12:46):
on hand.
Mention Dr Rogers and Dr Rogers, dr Zach Rogers.
I'm going to say it, I know wegot tenure associate professor
of supply chain management atColorado State University.
Congratulations on thatpromotion, zach.
Great to see that.
Of course, it was anything buta question.
We all knew it was going to godown.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Dr Dale Rogers.
I have to admit I'm a littlebit nervous on this podcast
because we got two Hall ofFamers and I'm not one of them.
Dr Dale Rogers is also in thesupply chain Hall of Fame, along
with our own, dr Ted Stank.
But I've known Dale since we'vegot common heritage.
At Michigan State University hegot his PhD, as well as his
(13:25):
previous degrees, out of thatfine institution, went on to
have a great career, start theprogram at the University of
Nevada, by the way, he taught me, it's not Nevada, it's Nevada
University.
Nevada then went on to RutgersUniversity over on the East
Coast, only to settle down inthe desert Tempe, arizona,
arizona State University.
Dr Rogers.
Dr Rogers, great to have youboth with us.
(13:47):
I think we want to lead offwith a little bit of background
about the LMI what was theimpetus for bringing forward the
LMI?
And then we'll get into somecurrent reads on it.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Well, thanks, tom.
I guess the old guy will tellyou the background you know.
The truth is that Zachary doesmost of the work on it, but we
need a pretty face to put upfront.
So the original idea is reallyold.
You know I love the PurchasingManagers Index.
I don't know if when you wereat MSU as a student you had Dr
(14:20):
Hoglund.
And Hoglund and Dr Fearon, whostarted the ASU supply chain
program here a long, long timeago, came out here in 1961.
It wasn't called supply chainthen, but they started the
Purchasing Managers Index whichhas become such an important
economic indicator.
And Dr Hoglund used to keep meafter class in 1981 and talk to
(14:42):
me about stuff and I alwaysthought there's a huge hole in
the PMI.
You know it sort of reflectedwhen the US was a big
manufacturing hub but it didn'treally contain the logistics
components.
I didn't think.
And so before something goesinto GDP it has to go on a truck
(15:05):
, it has to be in a warehouseand it's an inventory and we
should really be looking at thatbecause if you do then you can
sort of tell the future.
And so I've been talking aboutit around the dinner table and
wherever for probably prettymuch Zachary's whole life.
And when he graduated from theArizona State University PhD
(15:26):
program and he actually precedesme at ASU, you know I was 3,000
miles away in New Jersey atRutgers.
I came to visit him and theyoffered me a job and I just
stayed there so he thought I was3,000 miles away.
All of a sudden I'm in thehallway and it was a touch
traumatic, I think.
But when he graduated he saidhey, dad, I'll do that with you.
(15:47):
And so we got some other youngerguys than me Shin Yen Yurt to
now an associate dean at Rutgersthat I hired at Nevada, and
then he was at Rutgers with meand Stephen Carnivale, who is
the editor-in-chief of theJournal of Purchasing and Supply
Management, who was a PhDstudent of mine, and Ron Limke,
who I hired 30 years ago, Iguess this year at Nevada, and
(16:11):
they sort of help us, but themain person driving it really is
Zach.
And so that's the genesis of itand, truthfully, the cool thing
about it, at least from us,because I thought is this a good
idea?
Will it really tell us what?
I think it will, and the truthis, is it really has had the
ability to tell the future?
There was one turn in theeconomy we didn't see coming,
(16:35):
and that was the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Well, Dale and Zach, I'd love to hear you guys take
this forward.
Look, in the end we're talkingabout you know these conflicting
things.
The Fed says, yeah, they'regoing to lower interest rates.
President Biden's talking abouttouting the return of the
economy.
So, given the accuracy ofprediction of LMI, where do you
see us going?
Speaker 5 (16:54):
We've had pretty good predictive forecasting of where
everything's going, like whatwas just said, In December 2021,
we actually we had a call outthat said, hey, inventories went
up, that's not supposed tohappen in December.
We think we're having thebullwhip effect.
And then, sure enough, two,three months later, everything
sort of catches up.
We also saw at the end of Julythis year hey, all this capacity
(17:18):
exit of the market.
It looks like maybe we'restarting to have a little bit of
rebalancing.
And sure enough, I guess it wasthe January report.
So five months later we startto see some upticks in
transportation prices.
Now we're not seeing anywhereclose to where they were in 2021
, but we've definitely hit thefloor and we're bouncing back.
One of the things, Ted, that Ithink is germane to what you
(17:38):
guys are talking about with theFed is every month we take a
measure of our three priceindexes, Basically, so we have
inventory, transportation andwarehousing costs, and so we
aggregate all those together andmake an aggregate logistics
price, and it's that was in ourreport this month.
So basically what this is andjust in case people aren't
(17:59):
familiar with the how it changeindex works any number over 50
is growth further over 50, thefaster rate of growth.
Any number under 50 iscontraction.
The further under 50, thegreater rate of contraction.
And we and we come up withthese numbers by going and
asking a whole bunch of folkswho are director level above who
would have a 20,000 foot viewof of the supply chain hey, are
things slower, faster than lastmonth?
And our aggregate price numberthis month was down a bit from
(18:25):
where it was last month, andhere's why that's important.
Last month we saw a little bitof concern because inflation was
a little hotter in January thanI think people wanted it to be
and we had had, from December toJanuary, our aggregate cost
index, our price index, had goneup about 22 points from a 164
(18:45):
and 150, since we just add thethree together, 150 is a break
even from a 164 in December to a186 in January, and I think
that kind of made some folksnervous.
And really what we've come tounderstand, especially from 2022
on, is that inflation isincredibly complex in terms of
(19:06):
of what the sources of inflationare.
It's nuanced.
I think it's easy, especiallyif you're the Fed.
It seemed like what everybody'sfocusing on is people are
spending too much money.
We got to bring unemployment upand what they missed was the
biggest contributor to inflationin 2022 with supply-based
inflation.
We had a shortage.
We had a big shortage wheninflation really kicked off
(19:28):
Russian-Veigukrain suddenly,one-eighth of all the diesel
fuel in the world has just gone.
Two of the five biggestproducers of wheat gone, and
then we have not enoughlivestock.
Feed gas is more expensive, soeverything gets more expensive
to ship.
That ran into a chickenshortage, which somehow,
surprisingly to everyone else,was an egg shortage.
Six months later, I feel likewe could have saw that coming if
(19:50):
we had a chicken shortage Well,probably egg shortage coming.
But so we had all theseshortages and that was really
the contributor to inflation.
Friend of ours, Adam Shapiro,does a breakdown of inflation
contributors for the SanFrancisco Federal Reserve and
all through 2022, it was allabout supply inflation and if
you look at our aggregatenumbers back then, like two
(20:10):
years ago, so I said, okay, thismonth we're 184, we're down a
bit.
Two years ago, March 2022, wheninflation was getting crazy, it
was 271.
Okay, that would be theequivalent of one of our regular
numbers being a 90 out of 100.
So that was really the crazyinflation and so, yeah, we
popped up a little bit lastmonth, but now we've come down
(20:31):
two points from January and itseems unlikely, and this is what
gives me some confidence inwhat the Fed said yesterday yes,
there will be some cuts is yeah, inflation is still in the
threes and that's not the 2%that someone made up in 1940,
which is where it needs to be.
Maybe the economy has changedin 1940, I don't know but if
it's not around three, maybe wegot to change it.
(20:52):
And so I think what we'reseeing now is logistics are
aggregate costs were down to 184.
So down a little bit from lastmonth and that's actually still
below the all time average.
And so, in terms of the supplyside now the demand side I don't
think is what's going to pushus back towards craziness In
terms of the supply side, whichwe're tracking, it seems like
(21:14):
inflation is really moderatedand it seems unlikely we're
going to see another big spikeunless something happens.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
I think, understanding the mechanics,
inflation I won't do the wholegeeky thing here, but inflation
back in the 70s, and you knowthat inflation was primarily
demand driven inflation.
So it was a real hot consumereconomy.
As Zach said, this reallystarted out with lack of supply
coming out of the pandemic.
(21:41):
It wasn't because PresidentBiden was putting too much money
into the economy, that wasn'tit at all.
There was a sugar high becauseof that money, but it only
lasted one month.
And then what happens isthere's like an inertia piece.
So the supply driven inflationfeeds raising of prices and then
(22:02):
people realize we can raiseprices and so there's kind of an
inertia thing and it keepsgoing.
And so that's really been whatwe've seen.
And as those faucets got turnedback on and in 2021 and 2022, it
was kind of like the time afterWorld War II was very similar
(22:23):
where you had all of thosefactories were producing stuff
for the war effort and now allof a sudden they're making cars
and washing machines and stuffand it took a while to turn the
faucet back on and the change indemand from the pandemic to
what we're seeing now is thesame sort of thing and a lot of
those supply chains were broken.
We're seeing a lot ofdiversification of supply chains
(22:46):
, as you think.
Well, maybe having threesuppliers in Wuhan China maybe
that wasn't such a good idea.
Actually, someone actually saidthat to me because you know,
dale, we thought we werediversified, but three suppliers
in Wuhan China didn't seem likeit was that diversified.
We really can see kind of anend to that, and I think there's
a little bit of a boomeranghere that we're seeing as well
(23:09):
right now.
We started, as part of the LMI,looking at upstream and
downstream and see if there'sdifferences between those.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
You know what I love about this, you guys.
You know all the policy folksin DC and all the financial
market folks in New York.
They see things at a real macrolevel and particularly all
these statistics that Tom and Iwere talking about are all lag
statistics.
What you guys are tapping intoare leading statistics and
leading things happening at theoperating level that really
(23:42):
contribute to understandingwhat's happening in the economy.
You know it makes me think ofWarren Buffett saying he's never
going to buy a company, that hecan't understand the operating
model.
And here we are, a bunch ofloggies right Saying we know
what trucks are moving thingsand how much is moving and where
it's moving to.
Zach, love what you said.
You know, if there's a shortageof chickens, can't we predict
(24:02):
that six months later there'sgoing to be a shortage of eggs?
And if you're looking at a realhigh level, you miss all that.
And what the LMI does is reallybring that richness of what is
really happening out inoperations and how that's going
to impact the economy.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Well, and partly the Fed doesn't have that many tools
.
You know, to some extent theemperor has no clothes, because
the Fed can raise rates, theycan change the money supply, and
they can't heal supply chains,they can't make supply work
better.
At least we don't seem like wehave that tool now, and so it
(24:36):
was quite predictable and youcould really see it in the LMI
leading into all these things.
Now we're in that sort ofinertia phase and I think the
Fed knows that this inflation isprobably it's either going to
be the new normal or it's notgoing to go crazy and get
dangerous levels.
Now that's in the US and Idon't know how many listeners
(24:57):
you have outside the US.
But I was whining aboutinflation and interest rates and
so on and have a project inGhana and last month their
inflation rate was 42%.
And it was primarily due tosupply problems, a lot because
of Ukraine, and so, while wehave had inflation, it's much
(25:17):
milder, because partly I mean.
The real story, ted and Tom, isthat US supply chain managers
have done an incredible job inmoving supply to meet demand
very quickly and it's a bettermachine here than it really is
any place in the world, andthat's why our inflation and our
(25:39):
employment numbers and so onand our economy is healthier,
and it is something that a lotof the pundits and economists
miss that it's really we're ableto match supply and demand,
which is the folks probablylistening to the podcast.
That's what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Hey, dale, you touched on something I want you
to bring out, because this isanother theme that you push on
quite a bit.
Not a big surprise, just likeZach's kind of chicken and egg
was not a big surprise.
So we do do a great job ofmatching supply to demand, but
that is infinitely harder.
You talked about post World WarTwo, right, and how quickly US
manufacturing changed to makewar materials and then how it
(26:16):
changed back to making consumermaterials.
We have somewhat lost thatbecause of our decisions over
the last 35 years of putting ourthree suppliers in Wuhan, china
, and I know that this wholeglobal network redesign is
another topic area that you'vespent a lot of time looking at
and thinking about.
Can you guys go into that alittle bit?
What are your thoughts on wherewe're going with global
(26:38):
redesign and how that mightaffect this whole picture?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Down, particularly semiconductors and Dale.
I know you've done some workthat's making some head waves in
industry, but also with ourfederal government.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
Yeah, actually, semiconductor supply.
Making sure that that workswell and we have the latest
technology is really not just tomake businesses work well, but
it truthfully has something todo with our long term survival
as a civilization, because theway that wars are fought I mean,
how come Ukraine, this littlecountry, has been able, at least
(27:11):
a little bit, to hold Russia atbay is because Ukraine has
higher tech weapons that aredriven by US semiconductors.
And are there any really goodRussian semiconductors that you
guys can think of?
There are not.
However, it is a very longsupply chain and the folks that
make the best machines tomanufacture semiconductors are
(27:34):
in the Netherlands, and TSMC,which is based in Taiwan, makes
the most advancedmicroprocessors, and so we're
seeing a kind of a scramblingaround.
I think the US government hasbeen late to this party,
realizing that man, wait aminute, we can't even do
(27:55):
anything without semiconductorsnow, and so we're seeing a lot
of movement to try to bring someof it back.
Actually, I'm part of a brandnew project, the thirteen
million dollar project comingout of the state department, and
we're Trying to look atassembly, test and packaging in
five countries outside the US.
(28:16):
None of them named China, soMexico and Malaysia and Costa
Rica and so on, and because werealize that bringing some of
the manufacturing back, but alsoDiversifying from China, where
a lot of the packaging happensnow, is something that we have
(28:37):
to do, not just for business butprobably for the long term
survival of civilization.
So it's it's a reallyinteresting time and we're
seeing senior supply chainexecutives and if you're a
senior supply chain executive inyour listening to this and
you're not doing this, then youmight not be a very good senior
supply chain executives butwe're seeing the senior guys
(28:57):
really think about newdiversified sourcing patterns.
It's not enough to have two orthree suppliers, but you need to
have geographically diversesuppliers, not just minority on
businesses and big businesses,and you need to also have
geographical diversity.
(29:18):
And so it's an interesting timein the supply chain world is
people are moving quickly, withincredible speed, to sort of
diversify.
That's a long answer.
It's one of those things thatyou know I could easily give a
three hour lecture about of allthe pieces that are moving
around right now, becausethere's more hot spots, there's
more economic turmoil.
(29:39):
You know we're we're seeingevents happen much faster than
when you were a young man and Iwas not quite as young a man as
you.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
But you need to keep things tied together because we
can't go it alone, and I thinkthat's been a revelation.
You know, I think thegovernment thought, okay, we'll
put fifty two billion dollarsInto building up semiconductors
and education and will be fine.
And then okay, of course itturns out one fab cost about
twenty billion.
So that fifty two is not goingto go as far as you think and
it's not going to go as far inthe US as it will another places
(30:11):
.
And I think One of the termsthat you might start to see is
something called friend shoring.
You know we have reshoring, wehave near shoring.
About friend shoring come Mexicois our friend Costa Rica, that
would be nice.
And so I think, especially ifyou're gonna say, okay, we're
putting taxpayer money and we'regonna build a factory in Costa
Rica, you gotta have a goodreason for that and a good
(30:32):
excuse.
And so I think the idea thatthere is pieces of this,
especially for semiconductors,but it's true for anything It'll
never make sense to do thepackaging in the United States.
It's too low margin, it's it'sreally labor intensive, it's not
gonna happen, and so you needto be able to spread it out a
little bit and I think, muchlike being late to the party,
like we need semiconductors,there's also a little bit of
(30:54):
lateness on how do we actuallyput these together and how
fragile and how complex thesupply chains for these things
are.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
That's the great appreciation, right, of the
complexity of end-to-end supplychains and, as you indicated,
fabrication, where the productactually comes together, is part
of the puzzle.
But again, you've only got somuch supply of those raw
ingredients in the earth, and sofiguring out where we can
source that at infraternitylocations.
And, yeah, we've beenundertaking some work in what we
(31:23):
call X-shoring, of whichfriend-shoring is certainly in
that portfolio of options.
You know, as I think about it,we're getting close to the end
of our time with you twogentlemen today, and we could
talk about any number of topics,right?
I mean, dale is the brand inreverse logistics.
He literally wrote the book andthen famously gave it away for
(31:44):
free, which proved to be a greatmarketing decision to make it
got in far more hands than,frankly, any of my books that
charge ridiculous prices.
And then Zach has followed suit.
You know you're doing a lot ofwork, and consumer returns In
fact that's what you're up onthe stage talking about at RLA
was consumer returns, and sowe've got a lot to talk about
there.
(32:04):
I'd love to direct people to theresearch you did on the
effectiveness, or maybe bettersaid, the ineffectiveness, of
the tariffs that we've imposed.
You both have research recentlypublished on that topic.
That's just fascinating.
But, dale, you did mention thework you're doing in Africa.
I'm wondering if we might bringyou back in on that.
Talk about this Pan-Africaproject, kyruska, I believe is
what that's called.
(32:25):
What are you doing in Africa?
I recall sending you a birthdaygreeting back late last year.
I think you were about to diginto some tiramisu with a
birthday candle.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
I was in Ethiopia that day.
Actually, it was a reallylovely visit on my birthday.
They were so nice to me overthere.
One of the things we're reallyseeing is we're sort of pivoting
away from China.
Where could the future of sortof manufacturing be?
And Jag Schaeth who you guysprobably know, jag, and I think
(32:54):
he's in his 80s now, but he cameto Rutgers when I was there and
he said you know, the 19thcentury was the British century,
20th century the Americancentury, the 21st century, the
first half is the Chinesecentury and then the second half
could very well be the Africancentury, and I don't know if
that is right or not.
Certainly the 19th and 20thpart was right.
(33:16):
But there are still havingbabies over there in Africa.
So the families are growing.
The human resources over there Imean, they're really smart,
they're really sharp folks overthere the structure and how they
deal with things and so on, youknow, needs some help, and so
(33:38):
ASU and the Kwame NakrumahUniversity of Science and
Technology, which is in Kumasi,ghana, which is our partner, we
got a $15 million grant back in2020.
It's a five-year project, butthe center, I think, will last
for a long time, and so we'vebeen working on developing a
center for supply chainmanagement.
(34:00):
I mean, we use the Universityof Tennessee supply chain forum
as sort of an example of wherewe want to get to over there and
it's been a really fun thing todo.
And actually I think asacademics we need to do more
research because supply chainmanagement works differently
over there.
A lot of the principles areexactly the same, but I've
(34:23):
learned some really interestinglessons, and that's a whole
other thing.
And you know I know, tom, whenyou ask me a question, you're
always hoping I'll be brief.
This is about as brief as I canbe, but this summer we'll have
a big research summit.
Last year we had 700 peoplefrom all over the world, a lot
of Americans.
You guys are welcome to come.
(34:43):
It'll be beginning of June inKigali, rwanda.
I believe it's exciting timesover there, a lot of good stuff
happening and I'm quite bullishon Africa.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
And you know it's really cool to see the impact
that you're having.
Not only something that you'revery much regarded for along
with Dr Ted Stank is the impactyou have on industry.
It's really cool to see youhave that impact also in federal
government, as it is nowglobally and really helping to
advance that future.
Lmi helps us to get a view ofwhat that future might look like
(35:16):
and meanwhile, stepping in andbeing very effective.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
There's a Ghana LMI actually, and your listeners can
Google that and they can see it.
They're doing it quarterlybecause you've got to get the
data differently, you've got toactually go visit the companies
to get it and we've got studentsdoing that.
But it's interesting.
It follows our LMI, the US LMI,exactly.
It's just more extreme both onthe lows and the highs, which is
(35:40):
kind of what you would expect.
It's been really a fascinatingthing.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
You know, speaking of that, I got to give you guys
one more note before we go out.
You know I love to start astory in class with two minutes
left and I'm going to do thathere too.
So one of the things we seewith the LMI that I think is
really important.
And, ted, this gets back tosomething you were talking about
earlier.
With imports being down andthings like that, we split our
respondents into upstream anddownstream, downstream being
retailers, upstream being a lotof manufacturers, a lot of
(36:06):
wholesalers, people who are morelikely to be importers than the
downstream folks, and so forthe last year we have had
negative inventory growthupstream and downstream has kind
of been OK.
It was up for Christmas, it wasdown, it was up Now for the
first time.
In January this is the firsttime, I believe, in like 18
(36:27):
months we saw a significantincrease upstream.
So it went from a 47, which iscontraction in January to a 60
in February.
And when we look forward, hey,where's this going the next 12
months?
They say it's going to be a 63for the rest of the year, and so
we are seeing some momentum.
Now it's not just manufacturing,it's a few different things,
(36:49):
but we are seeing momentumupstream and we haven't seen
that in a year.
Downstream, meanwhile, thereare 55 right now and they
predict 55 for the rest of theyear, which tells me JIT, Nature
has healed itself and we'regetting back to the normal way
that retail is supposed to be.
So, looking forward over thenext 12 months, where are we
going?
Retail is back to normal, Ithink, as long as Taiwan doesn't
(37:13):
get invaded or whatever.
But back to normal JIT, whichmeans we're using trucks, means
we're using warehouses, andupstream, the part of the supply
chain that has been really slowis finally coming back to life
and I think we're going to see asort of balance across the
supply chain that really wehaven't had since pre-COVID, and
we're going to get back toseasonality being a thing again
(37:36):
and some of the things that werein the textbooks, that were
wrong for the last three years,I think, are going to start to
be right again.
So that'll be nice.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
So maybe my books will start selling again.
Jit is not dead.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
Exactly, you've come back to correct them through the
other side.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
That's it.
We're usually right about a lotof things.
The timing is where we reallystruggle.
So, gentlemen, thank you verymuch for your time today and
also the timing that you helpedto lend to a supply chain
analysis, both the domestic andabroad.
It's just been really great tohave you.
And, speaking of hosting Zach,I think you're going to be
hosting a good number of usacademics out your way in the
(38:12):
Rocky Mountains in about amonth's time, with the logistics
.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
Doctoral symposium yeah, the doctoral symposium,
April 11th, 12th, 13th.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Looking forward to that.
You still going to have somegood skiing for us if we can
find some free time.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
I mean, it's snowing right now.
So, yeah, I think you're goingto be more than fine, especially
if you get over about 8,000feet.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
All right, fantastic, go ahead, ted, you want to take
us out today?
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Sure, hey guys, it has been so great to have you on
.
I can talk to you guys all daylong and in fact, one of these
days we're just going to have tofigure out what watering hall
to go to and spend an afternoon.
One of the things that reallyreally excites me about what
y'all are doing is what Ibrought up before.
You're down in the details ofwhere business really happens
(38:54):
and you're showing howunderstanding those details of
what's going on in rolling stockand warehouses really dictates
the economy, and that's reallyexciting to me and I think more
people need to wake up to thefact that we are the those of us
in the supply chain really haveour feet on the ground of
what's happening.
So thanks again, guys, forcoming to share with us.
(39:16):
I am always in awe of the kindof things you're doing, dale.
The scope of the work that youdo is amazing For our listeners.
Again, if you have any thoughtson topics or speakers, gsci at
utkedu, if you want to send usany thoughts, notes, questions,
and we will see you again fromour spring supply chain forum
(39:37):
with a couple of seniorexecutives Peter Anderson from
Westrock and Jeff DeLulo fromPhillips talking about those two
companies' initiatives insustainability.
So stay tuned for our Aprilpodcast.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Thanks for tuning in to Tennessee on Supply Chain
Management.
If you enjoyed the episode,subscribe today on your favorite
listening platform to get allof our episodes as soon as they
drop, and don't forget to take amoment to leave us a rating.
Have any questions, thoughts orfeedback?
We'd love to hear from ourlisteners.
Email us at gsci at utkedu.
Join us next time as wecontinue pulling back the
(40:12):
curtain on the world of supplychain, educating and
entertaining you along the way.
Until then, listeners.
Welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain
Management podcast.
Listen in as co-hosts Ted Stankand Tom Goldsby set sail into
the world of end to end supplychain management, diving deep
into today's most relevantbusiness topics.
They'll share insights andpressing industry issues and
tackle the challenges keepingsupply chain professionals up at
night.
If you're enjoying the ride,download and subscribe to
(00:22):
Tennessee on supply chainmanagement on your favorite
podcast platform now.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hey everybody, this is Ted Stank, one of your
co-hosts for our Tennessee onsupply chain management podcast.
This is our third podcastcoming to you from 2024.
And we're really, reallyexcited to have a couple of
great guests with us here.
We'll introduce them in aminute.
I'm also happy to have myco-host, tom Goldsby, back with
me.
Tom's been going all over thecountry the last couple of
(00:48):
months.
He missed our February podcastbecause he was out at an
industry conference in Las Vegas.
It happened to also coincidewith him attending a big concert
in Vegas and maybe even beingable to drop in on a big
sporting event that he was there.
Tom, you want to comment onyour travels and welcome back.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
It's great to be back , ted.
Thanks so much, and theaudience and you.
You're going to have to be alittle patient with me, right?
It's been a couple of monthssince I've been on a podcast.
It might take me a little whileto warm up.
But yeah, I was in Vegas lastmonth for the Reverse Logistics
Association event.
I've been talking about some ofthe returns research I've been
doing consumer returns and thatwas a good place to be.
In fact, one of our gueststoday was up on stage at RLA, so
(01:29):
I had a chance to visit withhim, but also up on stage was
Bono Edge and Adam Clayton of U2.
So I got a chance to take in U2at the spear, which was
tremendous.
And that sporting event I can'trecall.
I think Taylor's boyfriend wasplaying football or something.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Taylor's boyfriend and Travis's brother.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's right.
That's right.
So it was a very, very hectictime.
Fun time to be in Vegas, but Idid get some good insights there
, including from one of ourguests.
Dr Zach Rogers of ColoradoState University was on hand.
Heck, I got a chance to see theother guest, father of Zach,
dale Rogers, by happenstance.
(02:09):
Back around Christmas Ihappened to be in LA and I was
going through a parking garageand I saw a very distinctive car
with a very distinctive vanityplate L-O-G-P-R-O-F out of
Arizona.
I said Dale Rogers is on thescene.
So we got together and hadbreakfast.
So we're looking forward tohaving the brothers Rogers.
(02:31):
As I refer to them, not to beconfused, they are our father
son academic duo.
But yeah, it's great to be backon the podcast.
Great to have you back, tom.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You know, I feel like one of my favorite sports talk
shows is part of theinterruption, and Michael Wilbon
, one of the guys on part of theinterruption, is traveling all
over to different sportingevents, and the other cranky old
guy, tony Kornheiser, doesn'teven go to the studio anymore,
he does it from his attic.
And that's me, I'm the crankyguy in my attic, and you guys
are traveling all over the worldand Kornheiser also never
(03:02):
watches any sporting events thatend after 10 pm at night.
That's another trait of mine.
Like Tom has always tried toget me to go to basketball games
that start at 9 pm, I'm like no, I got to be in bed by 10
o'clock, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So there's some some synchronicity here with Tony and
the other guys, tony and Mark,it's true.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, we got some really good stuff going on today
.
What we usually do is a quickrundown of some current events
that are happening.
I feel like we're in this kindof redundant groundhog day loop
that the numbers that keepcoming out are really similar to
the way they've been for manytimes in the past.
We'll look at some of theeconomic data.
We'll look at some of theconsumer data.
Then we'll look at some of theindustry indices and bring Dale
(03:42):
and Zach in to talk aboutspecifically their index, the
logistics managers index.
You want to do a little rundownof some of the economics.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, sure, Like you said, it is a bit of a broken
record groundhog day sort ofthing.
You know we do look at thosemonthly job reports.
There'll be a new report outtomorrow.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
And actually a job report came out this morning,
tom.
Oh, it did Tell me Two hundredand seventy five thousand jobs.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh, my goodness Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Economists were expecting about 200,000.
Came in at two seventy five.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well, I guess that that is a bit of a broken record
, because it seems like jobsreports keep coming in more
robust than the analysts expect.
And then they were explaininggranted, there will be an after
the fact adjustment we'll hearabout in about three weeks to
say it's maybe not quiet asrobust, or maybe it was more
government versus private sector, what have you.
But that's encouraging, that's,that's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And again like that broken record, really good on
the jobs report above whateconomists expected, but
unemployment did jump to 3.9%.
So not everything is perfectlyrosy right.
We always have theseconflicting signals and that's
what we've had for for severalmonths now.
The good news about that is itstrengthens the Fed's hand in
(04:52):
being able to potentially lowerthose interest rates that all
the markets, of course, arelooking at and capital markets
for investment, and obviouslythat's big in the supply chain
world Right.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, if there's some suggestion that we're getting
inflation a little bit more incheck, you're right, some
growing impatience out thereamong certainly investors, but
also among businesses and alsothose folks looking to get a
cheaper mortgage too.
So that would be verybeneficial if we could see the
Fed say all right, we're readyto get back into action here,
(05:23):
bring it back down.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Consumer sentiment numbers came in down a little
bit from January.
There were 79 in January.
They came in at 76.9, but stillup quite a bit from a year ago.
You know, consumers still kindof see the negative side of the
economy even though the economyis pretty robust.
We saw those GDP growth ratenumbers from fourth quarter.
There's a lot of good news outthere.
(05:45):
Very interesting to see wherewe are in the political schedule
, with what seems to be theprimary season already laid to
rest, oh yeah, and a pretty goodunderstanding of who the
presidential nominees are.
And with the State of the Unionaddress last night, which I
know you're going to make somecomments on, it'll be
interesting to see if thoseconsumer sentiment numbers tick
(06:06):
up from there as the Democraticside starts kind of pushing
their story a bit more than theyhave in them.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, I did tune into that State of the Union last
night and we were exchangingsome notes.
Beforehand.
I told you I had an over underon the number of times that
supply chain would be utteredand I said the over under was
six.
I don't know what the Vegasline was on it.
I came in at six and as far asI may have missed it, but I
think it came in at zilch.
(06:32):
I think it came in at zerotimes the term supply chain.
That said, virtually everytalking point in one way or
another involved supply chain,as we're talking about US jobs
and manufacturing andinternational trade,
international relations, red Sea, houthi attacks, you know this
sort of stuff certainly in mymind has supply chain all over.
(06:55):
But in terms of raw utterancesI think I think zero.
But then again, the term supplychange did not come up at all
either.
That's an inside joke.
You track on such things.
But now no supply chain orsupply change being uttered last
night.
But again, for those who are soinclined, you can.
You can find supply chain inanything.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Something we've commented on before is that for
the first time in myrecollection, the federal
government really has its eyesset on almost like a
quasi-industrial policy aroundsupply chain improvements.
So obviously one of the bignews from the political side of
things will be what's going tohappen between now and November
domestically here in the US Someother things going on, tom.
I think one of the big news isthat the Fed chair spoke to
(07:40):
Congress yesterday, on ThursdayMarch what's today the eighth
that would have been March 7thand said that interest rate cuts
can and will begin this yearand I think, again, the numbers
that came out today from Bureauof Labor Statistics kind of
supports that position.
So I think the markets are kindof baking in a June cut, which
(08:01):
means that for all those supplychain managers out there that
are holding back some of theirrequests for investment funding
for different initiatives bymid-summer might be able to put
that in because interest ratesmight be coming down and freeing
up the capital markets.
On the negative side, there'ssome dark clouds around
commercial real estate and banksthat are holding a lot of
(08:21):
collateral and loans oncommercial real estate.
That's something to keep oureye on.
I don't think people reallyknow where it's going now.
I've read that it's going to bea coming calamity and I've also
read that it's kind ofoverthought about.
It's not that big of a deal butsomething we'll think about
coming up.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
For sure, and I think we'll hear maybe a little bit
something about that, as itinvolves maybe logistics,
infrastructure and wherecapacity is, and moving and
storing the stuff, if we talkabout the Logistics Manager
Index a little bit later.
Hey, one thing I did want toalso drop in there is it
involves federal government.
We'd been waiting to see wherethe Securities and Exchange
Commission was going to comedown on environmental rolling,
(08:59):
on carbon recording.
There was widely believed thatthey were going to require scope
one, two and three recordingfrom publicly traded companies.
They came down shy of thatscope three which, by the way,
that's the toughest stuff tomeasure because that's all the
indirect in your supply chainbut the scope one and two.
It looks like those rulesvariable could go into effect
(09:22):
later this year.
Companies are starting to rallyand figure out how they're
going to measure and accuratelyreport that information.
So that was a big piece of newsthat came down yesterday.
Do you have any sort ofreaction to that, ted?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, I think that's big.
I think that's big forcompanies because, quite frankly
, every company I've talked tohad no clue about how they were
really going to measure that.
Some are also saying that ifyou can accurately measure scope
one and two and get that end toend across the supply chain,
then you're capturing it allanyway.
So, again, the flip side ofthat, though, is that that's a
(09:55):
US national policy.
California is not abiding bythat necessarily.
They have more stringentrequirements, and Europe has
more stringent requirements, soany companies operating in
either California or in Europeare probably going to have to
still play by those morestringent reporting requirements
.
Again, we'll see how this allworks out.
Some other things going on thatI would track on.
(10:16):
Is international trade stillsomewhat down?
A lot of big global brokeragecompanies like DHL and Kunin
Nagel released earnings reportsand are showing the weakness in
international trade.
Expect that to continue throughmuch of this year.
Again, really interesting tosee how our guests feel about
that with the logisticsmanager's index Shipping attacks
(10:37):
.
In fact, after the US and theUK announced several raids
against the Houthi rebels,things seemed to calm down for a
few days, but in the lastcouple of days, those attacks
have increased, including withthe first fatalities on a ship
that happened just in the lastcouple of days.
So, again, broken record.
We've been tracking what's beenhappening in the Suez Canal,
(10:57):
what's been happening in thePanama Canal.
That still is there and we justgot to keep an eye on it.
Most shipping going from Asiato Europe is going around the
Horn of Africa and just dealingwith that extended shipping time
and cost of fuel.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
So yeah, it's also happened to bring more ships
into the fleet, given thatthey're out to sea for longer,
and that then allows them toraise rates.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, in fact, a lot of companies that are in
negotiations for contracts withtheir shipping providers are
actually holding off onfinalizing those contracts with
the hope that there'll be someresolution of this Red Sea deal
and therefore they won't have topay those higher shipping rates
that the carriers are charging.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Well, we also pay attention to some indices out
there, right.
So again, just quickly.
I know you had pulled up ISMservice sector index came up shy
of expectations, still north of50.
But meanwhile the ISMManufacturing Index went further
south of 50 from 49.1 to 47.8.
And again that was belowgeneral expectations and in that
(12:01):
particular index showed 16consecutive periods of decline
of manufacturing activity.
So yeah pretty alarming there,and US factory orders also fell
3.6% in January.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And that coincides with the JOBS Report, tom.
The JOBS Report showed that theonly sector of the higher-end
environment that decreased inFebruary was in manufacturing.
So again, some softness inmanufacturing.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
But speaking of indices, maybe the nearest and
dearest to our heart is theLogistics Manager Index, or LMI,
which has a growing followingnot only within our field but
more widely around in business.
And we're very fortunate tohave the proprietors of the LMI
(12:46):
on hand.
Mention Dr Rogers and Dr Rogers, dr Zach Rogers.
I'm going to say it, I know wegot tenure associate professor
of supply chain management atColorado State University.
Congratulations on thatpromotion, zach.
Great to see that.
Of course, it was anything buta question.
We all knew it was going to godown.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Dr Dale Rogers.
I have to admit I'm a littlebit nervous on this podcast
because we got two Hall ofFamers and I'm not one of them.
Dr Dale Rogers is also in thesupply chain Hall of Fame, along
with our own, dr Ted Stank.
But I've known Dale since we'vegot common heritage.
At Michigan State University hegot his PhD, as well as his
(13:25):
previous degrees, out of thatfine institution, went on to
have a great career, start theprogram at the University of
Nevada, by the way, he taught me, it's not Nevada, it's Nevada
University.
Nevada then went on to RutgersUniversity over on the East
Coast, only to settle down inthe desert Tempe, arizona,
arizona State University.
Dr Rogers.
Dr Rogers, great to have youboth with us.
(13:47):
I think we want to lead offwith a little bit of background
about the LMI what was theimpetus for bringing forward the
LMI?
And then we'll get into somecurrent reads on it.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Well, thanks, tom.
I guess the old guy will tellyou the background you know.
The truth is that Zachary doesmost of the work on it, but we
need a pretty face to put upfront.
So the original idea is reallyold.
You know I love the PurchasingManagers Index.
I don't know if when you wereat MSU as a student you had Dr
(14:20):
Hoglund.
And Hoglund and Dr Fearon, whostarted the ASU supply chain
program here a long, long timeago, came out here in 1961.
It wasn't called supply chainthen, but they started the
Purchasing Managers Index whichhas become such an important
economic indicator.
And Dr Hoglund used to keep meafter class in 1981 and talk to
(14:42):
me about stuff and I alwaysthought there's a huge hole in
the PMI.
You know it sort of reflectedwhen the US was a big
manufacturing hub but it didn'treally contain the logistics
components.
I didn't think.
And so before something goesinto GDP it has to go on a truck
(15:05):
, it has to be in a warehouseand it's an inventory and we
should really be looking at thatbecause if you do then you can
sort of tell the future.
And so I've been talking aboutit around the dinner table and
wherever for probably prettymuch Zachary's whole life.
And when he graduated from theArizona State University PhD
(15:26):
program and he actually precedesme at ASU, you know I was 3,000
miles away in New Jersey atRutgers.
I came to visit him and theyoffered me a job and I just
stayed there so he thought I was3,000 miles away.
All of a sudden I'm in thehallway and it was a touch
traumatic, I think.
But when he graduated he saidhey, dad, I'll do that with you.
(15:47):
And so we got some other youngerguys than me Shin Yen Yurt to
now an associate dean at Rutgersthat I hired at Nevada, and
then he was at Rutgers with meand Stephen Carnivale, who is
the editor-in-chief of theJournal of Purchasing and Supply
Management, who was a PhDstudent of mine, and Ron Limke,
who I hired 30 years ago, Iguess this year at Nevada, and
(16:11):
they sort of help us, but themain person driving it really is
Zach.
And so that's the genesis of itand, truthfully, the cool thing
about it, at least from us,because I thought is this a good
idea?
Will it really tell us what?
I think it will, and the truthis, is it really has had the
ability to tell the future?
There was one turn in theeconomy we didn't see coming,
(16:35):
and that was the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Well, Dale and Zach, I'd love to hear you guys take
this forward.
Look, in the end we're talkingabout you know these conflicting
things.
The Fed says, yeah, they'regoing to lower interest rates.
President Biden's talking abouttouting the return of the
economy.
So, given the accuracy ofprediction of LMI, where do you
see us going?
Speaker 5 (16:54):
We've had pretty good predictive forecasting of where
everything's going, like whatwas just said, In December 2021,
we actually we had a call outthat said, hey, inventories went
up, that's not supposed tohappen in December.
We think we're having thebullwhip effect.
And then, sure enough, two,three months later, everything
sort of catches up.
We also saw at the end of Julythis year hey, all this capacity
(17:18):
exit of the market.
It looks like maybe we'restarting to have a little bit of
rebalancing.
And sure enough, I guess it wasthe January report.
So five months later we startto see some upticks in
transportation prices.
Now we're not seeing anywhereclose to where they were in 2021
, but we've definitely hit thefloor and we're bouncing back.
One of the things, Ted, that Ithink is germane to what you
(17:38):
guys are talking about with theFed is every month we take a
measure of our three priceindexes, Basically, so we have
inventory, transportation andwarehousing costs, and so we
aggregate all those together andmake an aggregate logistics
price, and it's that was in ourreport this month.
So basically what this is andjust in case people aren't
(17:59):
familiar with the how it changeindex works any number over 50
is growth further over 50, thefaster rate of growth.
Any number under 50 iscontraction.
The further under 50, thegreater rate of contraction.
And we and we come up withthese numbers by going and
asking a whole bunch of folkswho are director level above who
would have a 20,000 foot viewof of the supply chain hey, are
things slower, faster than lastmonth?
And our aggregate price numberthis month was down a bit from
(18:25):
where it was last month, andhere's why that's important.
Last month we saw a little bitof concern because inflation was
a little hotter in January thanI think people wanted it to be
and we had had, from December toJanuary, our aggregate cost
index, our price index, had goneup about 22 points from a 164
(18:45):
and 150, since we just add thethree together, 150 is a break
even from a 164 in December to a186 in January, and I think
that kind of made some folksnervous.
And really what we've come tounderstand, especially from 2022
on, is that inflation isincredibly complex in terms of
(19:06):
of what the sources of inflationare.
It's nuanced.
I think it's easy, especiallyif you're the Fed.
It seemed like what everybody'sfocusing on is people are
spending too much money.
We got to bring unemployment upand what they missed was the
biggest contributor to inflationin 2022 with supply-based
inflation.
We had a shortage.
We had a big shortage wheninflation really kicked off
(19:28):
Russian-Veigukrain suddenly,one-eighth of all the diesel
fuel in the world has just gone.
Two of the five biggestproducers of wheat gone, and
then we have not enoughlivestock.
Feed gas is more expensive, soeverything gets more expensive
to ship.
That ran into a chickenshortage, which somehow,
surprisingly to everyone else,was an egg shortage.
Six months later, I feel likewe could have saw that coming if
(19:50):
we had a chicken shortage Well,probably egg shortage coming.
But so we had all theseshortages and that was really
the contributor to inflation.
Friend of ours, Adam Shapiro,does a breakdown of inflation
contributors for the SanFrancisco Federal Reserve and
all through 2022, it was allabout supply inflation and if
you look at our aggregatenumbers back then, like two
(20:10):
years ago, so I said, okay, thismonth we're 184, we're down a
bit.
Two years ago, March 2022, wheninflation was getting crazy, it
was 271.
Okay, that would be theequivalent of one of our regular
numbers being a 90 out of 100.
So that was really the crazyinflation and so, yeah, we
popped up a little bit lastmonth, but now we've come down
(20:31):
two points from January and itseems unlikely, and this is what
gives me some confidence inwhat the Fed said yesterday yes,
there will be some cuts is yeah, inflation is still in the
threes and that's not the 2%that someone made up in 1940,
which is where it needs to be.
Maybe the economy has changedin 1940, I don't know but if
it's not around three, maybe wegot to change it.
(20:52):
And so I think what we'reseeing now is logistics are
aggregate costs were down to 184.
So down a little bit from lastmonth and that's actually still
below the all time average.
And so, in terms of the supplyside now the demand side I don't
think is what's going to pushus back towards craziness In
terms of the supply side, whichwe're tracking, it seems like
(21:14):
inflation is really moderatedand it seems unlikely we're
going to see another big spikeunless something happens.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
I think, understanding the mechanics,
inflation I won't do the wholegeeky thing here, but inflation
back in the 70s, and you knowthat inflation was primarily
demand driven inflation.
So it was a real hot consumereconomy.
As Zach said, this reallystarted out with lack of supply
coming out of the pandemic.
(21:41):
It wasn't because PresidentBiden was putting too much money
into the economy, that wasn'tit at all.
There was a sugar high becauseof that money, but it only
lasted one month.
And then what happens isthere's like an inertia piece.
So the supply driven inflationfeeds raising of prices and then
(22:02):
people realize we can raiseprices and so there's kind of an
inertia thing and it keepsgoing.
And so that's really been whatwe've seen.
And as those faucets got turnedback on and in 2021 and 2022, it
was kind of like the time afterWorld War II was very similar
(22:23):
where you had all of thosefactories were producing stuff
for the war effort and now allof a sudden they're making cars
and washing machines and stuffand it took a while to turn the
faucet back on and the change indemand from the pandemic to
what we're seeing now is thesame sort of thing and a lot of
those supply chains were broken.
We're seeing a lot ofdiversification of supply chains
(22:46):
, as you think.
Well, maybe having threesuppliers in Wuhan China maybe
that wasn't such a good idea.
Actually, someone actually saidthat to me because you know,
dale, we thought we werediversified, but three suppliers
in Wuhan China didn't seem likeit was that diversified.
We really can see kind of anend to that, and I think there's
a little bit of a boomeranghere that we're seeing as well
(23:09):
right now.
We started, as part of the LMI,looking at upstream and
downstream and see if there'sdifferences between those.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
You know what I love about this, you guys.
You know all the policy folksin DC and all the financial
market folks in New York.
They see things at a real macrolevel and particularly all
these statistics that Tom and Iwere talking about are all lag
statistics.
What you guys are tapping intoare leading statistics and
leading things happening at theoperating level that really
(23:42):
contribute to understandingwhat's happening in the economy.
You know it makes me think ofWarren Buffett saying he's never
going to buy a company, that hecan't understand the operating
model.
And here we are, a bunch ofloggies right Saying we know
what trucks are moving thingsand how much is moving and where
it's moving to.
Zach, love what you said.
You know, if there's a shortageof chickens, can't we predict
(24:02):
that six months later there'sgoing to be a shortage of eggs?
And if you're looking at a realhigh level, you miss all that.
And what the LMI does is reallybring that richness of what is
really happening out inoperations and how that's going
to impact the economy.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Well, and partly the Fed doesn't have that many tools
.
You know, to some extent theemperor has no clothes, because
the Fed can raise rates, theycan change the money supply, and
they can't heal supply chains,they can't make supply work
better.
At least we don't seem like wehave that tool now, and so it
(24:36):
was quite predictable and youcould really see it in the LMI
leading into all these things.
Now we're in that sort ofinertia phase and I think the
Fed knows that this inflation isprobably it's either going to
be the new normal or it's notgoing to go crazy and get
dangerous levels.
Now that's in the US and Idon't know how many listeners
(24:57):
you have outside the US.
But I was whining aboutinflation and interest rates and
so on and have a project inGhana and last month their
inflation rate was 42%.
And it was primarily due tosupply problems, a lot because
of Ukraine, and so, while wehave had inflation, it's much
(25:17):
milder, because partly I mean.
The real story, ted and Tom, isthat US supply chain managers
have done an incredible job inmoving supply to meet demand
very quickly and it's a bettermachine here than it really is
any place in the world, andthat's why our inflation and our
(25:39):
employment numbers and so onand our economy is healthier,
and it is something that a lotof the pundits and economists
miss that it's really we're ableto match supply and demand,
which is the folks probablylistening to the podcast.
That's what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Hey, dale, you touched on something I want you
to bring out, because this isanother theme that you push on
quite a bit.
Not a big surprise, just likeZach's kind of chicken and egg
was not a big surprise.
So we do do a great job ofmatching supply to demand, but
that is infinitely harder.
You talked about post World WarTwo, right, and how quickly US
manufacturing changed to makewar materials and then how it
(26:16):
changed back to making consumermaterials.
We have somewhat lost thatbecause of our decisions over
the last 35 years of putting ourthree suppliers in Wuhan, china
, and I know that this wholeglobal network redesign is
another topic area that you'vespent a lot of time looking at
and thinking about.
Can you guys go into that alittle bit?
What are your thoughts on wherewe're going with global
(26:38):
redesign and how that mightaffect this whole picture?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Down, particularly semiconductors and Dale.
I know you've done some workthat's making some head waves in
industry, but also with ourfederal government.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
Yeah, actually, semiconductor supply.
Making sure that that workswell and we have the latest
technology is really not just tomake businesses work well, but
it truthfully has something todo with our long term survival
as a civilization, because theway that wars are fought I mean,
how come Ukraine, this littlecountry, has been able, at least
(27:11):
a little bit, to hold Russia atbay is because Ukraine has
higher tech weapons that aredriven by US semiconductors.
And are there any really goodRussian semiconductors that you
guys can think of?
There are not.
However, it is a very longsupply chain and the folks that
make the best machines tomanufacture semiconductors are
(27:34):
in the Netherlands, and TSMC,which is based in Taiwan, makes
the most advancedmicroprocessors, and so we're
seeing a kind of a scramblingaround.
I think the US government hasbeen late to this party,
realizing that man, wait aminute, we can't even do
(27:55):
anything without semiconductorsnow, and so we're seeing a lot
of movement to try to bring someof it back.
Actually, I'm part of a brandnew project, the thirteen
million dollar project comingout of the state department, and
we're Trying to look atassembly, test and packaging in
five countries outside the US.
(28:16):
None of them named China, soMexico and Malaysia and Costa
Rica and so on, and because werealize that bringing some of
the manufacturing back, but alsoDiversifying from China, where
a lot of the packaging happensnow, is something that we have
(28:37):
to do, not just for business butprobably for the long term
survival of civilization.
So it's it's a reallyinteresting time and we're
seeing senior supply chainexecutives and if you're a
senior supply chain executive inyour listening to this and
you're not doing this, then youmight not be a very good senior
supply chain executives butwe're seeing the senior guys
(28:57):
really think about newdiversified sourcing patterns.
It's not enough to have two orthree suppliers, but you need to
have geographically diversesuppliers, not just minority on
businesses and big businesses,and you need to also have
geographical diversity.
(29:18):
And so it's an interesting timein the supply chain world is
people are moving quickly, withincredible speed, to sort of
diversify.
That's a long answer.
It's one of those things thatyou know I could easily give a
three hour lecture about of allthe pieces that are moving
around right now, becausethere's more hot spots, there's
more economic turmoil.
(29:39):
You know we're we're seeingevents happen much faster than
when you were a young man and Iwas not quite as young a man as
you.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
But you need to keep things tied together because we
can't go it alone, and I thinkthat's been a revelation.
You know, I think thegovernment thought, okay, we'll
put fifty two billion dollarsInto building up semiconductors
and education and will be fine.
And then okay, of course itturns out one fab cost about
twenty billion.
So that fifty two is not goingto go as far as you think and
it's not going to go as far inthe US as it will another places
(30:11):
.
And I think One of the termsthat you might start to see is
something called friend shoring.
You know we have reshoring, wehave near shoring.
About friend shoring come Mexicois our friend Costa Rica, that
would be nice.
And so I think, especially ifyou're gonna say, okay, we're
putting taxpayer money and we'regonna build a factory in Costa
Rica, you gotta have a goodreason for that and a good
(30:32):
excuse.
And so I think the idea thatthere is pieces of this,
especially for semiconductors,but it's true for anything It'll
never make sense to do thepackaging in the United States.
It's too low margin, it's it'sreally labor intensive, it's not
gonna happen, and so you needto be able to spread it out a
little bit and I think, muchlike being late to the party,
like we need semiconductors,there's also a little bit of
(30:54):
lateness on how do we actuallyput these together and how
fragile and how complex thesupply chains for these things
are.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
That's the great appreciation, right, of the
complexity of end-to-end supplychains and, as you indicated,
fabrication, where the productactually comes together, is part
of the puzzle.
But again, you've only got somuch supply of those raw
ingredients in the earth, and sofiguring out where we can
source that at infraternitylocations.
And, yeah, we've beenundertaking some work in what we
(31:23):
call X-shoring, of whichfriend-shoring is certainly in
that portfolio of options.
You know, as I think about it,we're getting close to the end
of our time with you twogentlemen today, and we could
talk about any number of topics,right?
I mean, dale is the brand inreverse logistics.
He literally wrote the book andthen famously gave it away for
(31:44):
free, which proved to be a greatmarketing decision to make it
got in far more hands than,frankly, any of my books that
charge ridiculous prices.
And then Zach has followed suit.
You know you're doing a lot ofwork, and consumer returns In
fact that's what you're up onthe stage talking about at RLA
was consumer returns, and sowe've got a lot to talk about
there.
(32:04):
I'd love to direct people to theresearch you did on the
effectiveness, or maybe bettersaid, the ineffectiveness, of
the tariffs that we've imposed.
You both have research recentlypublished on that topic.
That's just fascinating.
But, dale, you did mention thework you're doing in Africa.
I'm wondering if we might bringyou back in on that.
Talk about this Pan-Africaproject, kyruska, I believe is
what that's called.
(32:25):
What are you doing in Africa?
I recall sending you a birthdaygreeting back late last year.
I think you were about to diginto some tiramisu with a
birthday candle.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
I was in Ethiopia that day.
Actually, it was a reallylovely visit on my birthday.
They were so nice to me overthere.
One of the things we're reallyseeing is we're sort of pivoting
away from China.
Where could the future of sortof manufacturing be?
And Jag Schaeth who you guysprobably know, jag, and I think
(32:54):
he's in his 80s now, but he cameto Rutgers when I was there and
he said you know, the 19thcentury was the British century,
20th century the Americancentury, the 21st century, the
first half is the Chinesecentury and then the second half
could very well be the Africancentury, and I don't know if
that is right or not.
Certainly the 19th and 20thpart was right.
(33:16):
But there are still havingbabies over there in Africa.
So the families are growing.
The human resources over there Imean, they're really smart,
they're really sharp folks overthere the structure and how they
deal with things and so on, youknow, needs some help, and so
(33:38):
ASU and the Kwame NakrumahUniversity of Science and
Technology, which is in Kumasi,ghana, which is our partner, we
got a $15 million grant back in2020.
It's a five-year project, butthe center, I think, will last
for a long time, and so we'vebeen working on developing a
center for supply chainmanagement.
(34:00):
I mean, we use the Universityof Tennessee supply chain forum
as sort of an example of wherewe want to get to over there and
it's been a really fun thing todo.
And actually I think asacademics we need to do more
research because supply chainmanagement works differently
over there.
A lot of the principles areexactly the same, but I've
(34:23):
learned some really interestinglessons, and that's a whole
other thing.
And you know I know, tom, whenyou ask me a question, you're
always hoping I'll be brief.
This is about as brief as I canbe, but this summer we'll have
a big research summit.
Last year we had 700 peoplefrom all over the world, a lot
of Americans.
You guys are welcome to come.
(34:43):
It'll be beginning of June inKigali, rwanda.
I believe it's exciting timesover there, a lot of good stuff
happening and I'm quite bullishon Africa.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
And you know it's really cool to see the impact
that you're having.
Not only something that you'revery much regarded for along
with Dr Ted Stank is the impactyou have on industry.
It's really cool to see youhave that impact also in federal
government, as it is nowglobally and really helping to
advance that future.
Lmi helps us to get a view ofwhat that future might look like
(35:16):
and meanwhile, stepping in andbeing very effective.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
There's a Ghana LMI actually, and your listeners can
Google that and they can see it.
They're doing it quarterlybecause you've got to get the
data differently, you've got toactually go visit the companies
to get it and we've got studentsdoing that.
But it's interesting.
It follows our LMI, the US LMI,exactly.
It's just more extreme both onthe lows and the highs, which is
(35:40):
kind of what you would expect.
It's been really a fascinatingthing.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
You know, speaking of that, I got to give you guys
one more note before we go out.
You know I love to start astory in class with two minutes
left and I'm going to do thathere too.
So one of the things we seewith the LMI that I think is
really important.
And, ted, this gets back tosomething you were talking about
earlier.
With imports being down andthings like that, we split our
respondents into upstream anddownstream, downstream being
retailers, upstream being a lotof manufacturers, a lot of
(36:06):
wholesalers, people who are morelikely to be importers than the
downstream folks, and so forthe last year we have had
negative inventory growthupstream and downstream has kind
of been OK.
It was up for Christmas, it wasdown, it was up Now for the
first time.
In January this is the firsttime, I believe, in like 18
(36:27):
months we saw a significantincrease upstream.
So it went from a 47, which iscontraction in January to a 60
in February.
And when we look forward, hey,where's this going the next 12
months?
They say it's going to be a 63for the rest of the year, and so
we are seeing some momentum.
Now it's not just manufacturing,it's a few different things,
(36:49):
but we are seeing momentumupstream and we haven't seen
that in a year.
Downstream, meanwhile, thereare 55 right now and they
predict 55 for the rest of theyear, which tells me JIT, Nature
has healed itself and we'regetting back to the normal way
that retail is supposed to be.
So, looking forward over thenext 12 months, where are we
going?
Retail is back to normal, Ithink, as long as Taiwan doesn't
(37:13):
get invaded or whatever.
But back to normal JIT, whichmeans we're using trucks, means
we're using warehouses, andupstream, the part of the supply
chain that has been really slowis finally coming back to life
and I think we're going to see asort of balance across the
supply chain that really wehaven't had since pre-COVID, and
we're going to get back toseasonality being a thing again
(37:36):
and some of the things that werein the textbooks, that were
wrong for the last three years,I think, are going to start to
be right again.
So that'll be nice.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
So maybe my books will start selling again.
Jit is not dead.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
Exactly, you've come back to correct them through the
other side.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
That's it.
We're usually right about a lotof things.
The timing is where we reallystruggle.
So, gentlemen, thank you verymuch for your time today and
also the timing that you helpedto lend to a supply chain
analysis, both the domestic andabroad.
It's just been really great tohave you.
And, speaking of hosting Zach,I think you're going to be
hosting a good number of usacademics out your way in the
(38:12):
Rocky Mountains in about amonth's time, with the logistics
.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
Doctoral symposium yeah, the doctoral symposium,
April 11th, 12th, 13th.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Looking forward to that.
You still going to have somegood skiing for us if we can
find some free time.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
I mean, it's snowing right now.
So, yeah, I think you're goingto be more than fine, especially
if you get over about 8,000feet.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
All right, fantastic, go ahead, ted, you want to take
us out today?
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Sure, hey guys, it has been so great to have you on
.
I can talk to you guys all daylong and in fact, one of these
days we're just going to have tofigure out what watering hall
to go to and spend an afternoon.
One of the things that reallyreally excites me about what
y'all are doing is what Ibrought up before.
You're down in the details ofwhere business really happens
(38:54):
and you're showing howunderstanding those details of
what's going on in rolling stockand warehouses really dictates
the economy, and that's reallyexciting to me and I think more
people need to wake up to thefact that we are the those of us
in the supply chain really haveour feet on the ground of
what's happening.
So thanks again, guys, forcoming to share with us.
(39:16):
I am always in awe of the kindof things you're doing, dale.
The scope of the work that youdo is amazing For our listeners.
Again, if you have any thoughtson topics or speakers, gsci at
utkedu, if you want to send usany thoughts, notes, questions,
and we will see you again fromour spring supply chain forum
(39:37):
with a couple of seniorexecutives Peter Anderson from
Westrock and Jeff DeLulo fromPhillips talking about those two
companies' initiatives insustainability.
So stay tuned for our Aprilpodcast.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Thanks for tuning in to Tennessee on Supply Chain
Management.
If you enjoyed the episode,subscribe today on your favorite
listening platform to get allof our episodes as soon as they
drop, and don't forget to take amoment to leave us a rating.
Have any questions, thoughts orfeedback?
We'd love to hear from ourlisteners.
Email us at gsci at utkedu.
Join us next time as wecontinue pulling back the
(40:12):
curtain on the world of supplychain, educating and
entertaining you along the way.
Until then, listeners.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!