Allen Jacques knows a thing or two about the world of life sciences and the various nuances that characterize the medical and pharmaceutical supply chains. Today, he serves as a Thought Leader at Kinaxis, a cloud-powered supply chain insight platform that combines human intelligence with AI and concurrent planning to help companies plan for the future, monitor risks and opportunities, and keep up with the speed of change.

In this episode, sponsored by Microsoft, Allen sits down with hosts Scott Luton and Kevin L. Jackson to offer his take on a range of trends, issues, opportunities, and challenges relating to supply chains, drawing on his experience from the biopharma world.

Listen in and learn more about the complexities of the pharmaceutical industry- including manufacturing challenges, regulatory constraints, and how these contribute to lengthy lead times- and how technology is helping supply chain professionals within the sector. Allen highlights the evolution of various digital and AI-powered solutions in improving supply chain transparency and efficiency, and the value of data-driven decision-making, and also offers some sage advice for those seeking to advance their careers and develop leadership credentials.

Want to hear what else Allen has to say? Tune into the full discussion now!

Intro/Outro (00:03):

Welcome to Supply Chain Now, the voice of global supply chain. Supply Chain Now focuses on the best in the business for our worldwide audience, the people, the technologies, the best practices, and today’s critical issues, the challenges and opportunities. Stay tuned to hear from those making global business happen right here on Supply Chain Now.

Scott Luton (00:32):

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone, wherever you are, Scott Luton and Kevin L. Jackson with you here on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today’s show. Kevin, how you doing today?

Kevin L. Jackson (00:41):

Hey, I’m going great. It’s happy Friday Eve.

Scott Luton (00:46):

Happy Friday Eve. Happy month of February, wherever all of our listeners are. And most importantly, folks, we got a great show teed up today, right? There’s a reason why Kevin’s over there smiling and is giddy. We’ve got a great show. We’re going to be diving into a critical component of the global economy and worldwide industry, but it’s one part of global business that I bet a lot of folks don’t know much about. We’re going to be diving into the pharmaceutical industry and we’re going to be doing so with a guest that spent years in global leadership roles in that industry making it happen. So stay tuned for an informative and entertaining conversation here. Kevin, should be a great show.

Kevin L. Jackson (01:25):

Pharmaceuticals have been sort of top of all list for a lot of reasons. Don’t go there.

Scott Luton (01:34):

You’ve got a list. We all have a list to help us keep moving forward.

Kevin L. Jackson (01:38):

Yeah, caffeine is my pharmaceutical of choice.

Scott Luton (01:41):

Ah, we’re getting the goods, Kevin. But, folks, today’s episode is presented in partnership with our friends at Microsoft who’s doing some pretty cool things out in industry, helping to move us all forward successfully. More on that to come. But with that said, I want to introduce our featured guest today, a dear friend, frankly. We really enjoyed his previous appearances with us here on Supply Chain Now. Our guest has a long successful track record when it comes to planning, operations, leadership, and more. He has served in senior leadership positions with companies such as LEO Pharma, Pfizer, FusionOps, Baxter, and Wyeth to name a few. In fact, he holds a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from the University of Maryland. Go Terps. He also has conducted grad studies and biochemistry at Johns Hopkins. Man, we’re pleased to welcome repeat guest and friend, Allen Jacques, industry thought leader with Kinaxis. Allen, how you doing?

Allen Jacques (02:32):

I’m doing great, Scott. Great to be with you and Kevin again.

Scott Luton (02:35):

Oh, it’s so great to have you. Now, Kevin, I knew Allen was highfalutin already, but I didn’t know about these academic pursuits. Goodness gracious, Allen, I didn’t think you’d get any smarter. And you go, surprising me here, huh?

Allen Jacques (02:48):

Yeah, well, what I knew back in those days has long disappeared.

Scott Luton (02:52):

I don’t believe that.

Allen Jacques (02:52):

I’m not as smart as I was when I was doing my degrees.

Scott Luton (02:56):

Oh, I don’t believe it for a minute, but —

Kevin L. Jackson (02:58):

I used to be a pilot, but I forgot it. I wouldn’t be near any airplane controls today.

Scott Luton (03:06):

All right, but here’s the deal. Here’s the upfront contract. I’m asking Allen and Kevin. I’m the slow non-technical one, so you are going to have to bring the conversation down to the right altitude and help me keep along with y’all two gurus, okay?

Kevin L. Jackson (03:19):

Absolutely.

Scott Luton (03:20):

Before we dive into all things pharmaceutical, Allen and Kevin, I want to get to know Allen just a little bit better. I got a couple questions here. So, Allen, you grew up on a farm with a hundred cows. So, I want to ask you, what’s one life lesson from that upbringing that sticks with you here today?

Allen Jacques (03:37):

Well, the thing you learned at a very young age is when you’re walking around, always be looking down. When you ever wonder why a farmer’s looking down, it’s because they’re trying to avoid stepping on something.

Scott Luton (03:51):

Right. And I’ll tell you, that’s a great business leadership lesson. We got to be careful what we step into and pick and choose our battle, so to speak. Kevin, you were about to add something.

Kevin L. Jackson (04:00):

Yeah, I thought people looking at their smartphones.

Scott Luton (04:05):

Oh, no, we’re looking down and avoiding what we step into as Allen put it. Here’s a second thing that I picked up earlier. So, Allen, I didn’t realize you had a big dream growing up of playing professional basketball. So I want to ask you, what was one of your role models back in the day that you grew up idolizing that really nurtured that dream of yours?

Allen Jacques (04:25):

Yeah, there’s so many, Scott, and I’m old enough to remember a lot of players that you may never have heard of.

Scott Luton (04:32):

Okay.

Allen Jacques (04:33):

But the one I always loved to watch was Tim Duncan. I loved the Bank Shot. I loved kissing the glass, and I loved his demeanor. I mean, he never got excited about anything. He just went out there and played and he was a fantastic player.

Scott Luton (04:51):

Oh, yeah, definitely, Hall of Famer and a great, great athlete to watch. So, well said. So, Kevin, why don’t you talk about Tim Duncan before I let out one of your cool secrets?

Kevin L. Jackson (05:01):

Well, actually what popped into my mind wasn’t Tim Duncan, but when you said John Hopkins, the first thing that popped in my mind was my very first professional basketball game. And I saw Wes Unseld play for the Baltimore Bullets.

Allen Jacques (05:23):

I remember him. I remember him very well, rebounder, outlet pass.

Scott Luton (05:28):

He went on to coach, and I think he had a decent or a coaching career as well. So about that. Well, speaking of name dropping, Allen, I shared this with you pre-show, but Kevin played pickup games with an NBA Hall of Famer, David, the Admiral, Robinson. Kevin, is that right?

Kevin L. Jackson (05:44):

Yes, absolutely. Actually, we were both at the Naval Academy during the same time. He was junior to me, but not on the basketball court. When he came there — I mean, of course, he was a star at Naval Academy, but the big question was, would he get so tall that he wouldn’t be able to go into the Navy? He wanted to fly, and we always wondered if he even become a pro basketball player or not. But I tell you, he’s not only an excellent player, but he’s an awesome person and I really enjoyed working, playing with him and calling him a friend. And in fact, years later I went down to San Antonio for a business trip and got to see him again. So, he’s one that I really look up to in many ways.

Scott Luton (06:38):

So, Allen, I’ll give you a chance. You and I both were kind of nodding as Kevin was describing all of that and rubbing elbows with the Hall of Famer, your thoughts on David Robinson, Allen.

Allen Jacques (06:46):

Well, I envy you, Kevin, having met him and even played with him. I think if I were playing one-on-one with David Robinson, I would just hand him the ball.

Scott Luton (06:56):

Same. Same. All right, well, as much as I’d love to dive more into all things basketball and farms and getting to know you even better, Allen, but again, great to have you back. We really enjoyed your previous appearances. For context, as we got to get into the conversation, we’re all here and talk about a really important industry. For context, I want to make sure folks connect the dots and understand what you and the Kinaxis team do. Let’s start there. Level set with us a little bit, Allen.

Allen Jacques (07:20):

Sure. So Kinaxis is an end-to-end supply chain planning, supply chain management solution that starts from forecasting demand runs through distribution requirements planning, gets very deeply into manufacturing capacity and capacity balancing, all the way to what we would call MRP or procurement. The beauty of it is it’s all in one platform. So that means that you can do very fast what if simulations. If there’s an issue, you can identify the root cause quickly and then you can collaborate across a vast network to resolve the issue. So collaboration is key, especially in a large company across many geographies. And we’re in all the verticals, automotive, high tech, CPG, my vertical life sciences, that’s where we’re the strongest, and it’s all the same platform for all those companies, all those industries.

Scott Luton (08:16):

Love it.

Kevin L. Jackson (08:17):

Impressive.

Scott Luton (08:18):

Previously, we’ve enjoyed talking about the symphony, the supply chain symphony that you and the team are conducting over at Kinaxis. I had a lot of fun.

Allen Jacques (08:26):

Orchestrating.

Scott Luton (08:27):

Yes, orchestrating. That’s the word I was looking for. Kevin, when you hear that and that orchestration across global supply chain that Allen, the Kinaxis team are doing, of course Microsoft plays a role in a lot of that as well, what comes to your brain? Do you picture that conductor with the baton leading that supply chain orchestra, Kevin?

Kevin L. Jackson (08:44):

Well, actually when I think about that and the fact that they’re in so many different industries, it’s the thing that pops through my mind is the learning, the shortcuts or the best practices that you can take maybe from automotive and put it into life science or from distribution and then put it into life science or automotive, when you are sort of at the top looking at all these different business models and seeing the maybe shortcomings and failings in one, and you can basically get the answer from another. And I think that’s powerful. That’s extremely powerful, and I think that’s what Kinaxis actually brings to their customers and clients.

Scott Luton (09:35):

Excellent point. Regularly, almost without fail, Allen and Kevin, as we go out and meet between the shows, between the conversations with supply chain leaders in every kind of industry, we regularly hear the value of bringing in a group of leaders from all sorts of sectors, all sorts of functional areas, and that cross-functional cross-industry, cross-sector information sharing is so powerful and it can really move mountains, Kevin. Allen, I see you nodding your head. You tend to agree, huh?

Allen Jacques (10:05):

Oh, absolutely. I even have a good example, Kevin. We develop functionality around expiry, expiration dating shelf life for the pharmaceutical industry, and now we have a high-tech semiconductor company who wants to use that functionality. So, it is really cross-fertilization.

Kevin L. Jackson (10:24):

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Scott Luton (10:25):

Love it. Talk about a good industry to be in, the man at semiconductor industry. Goodness gracious, there’s some explosive growth there. So, let’s talk about the pharmaceutical industry though. And I think what’s important for this conversation, especially our listeners all around the globe out there, is I want to go back in time because, Allen, you’ve spent significant time doing big things in industry and as we were trying to put a show together to help our audience understand things, you’re one of the first names that popped in my brain. So, as we try to understand, to better understand your leadership experience in a pharmaceutical world, including major pharma players like Baxter and Wyeth and Pfizer and I mentioned some of those in the front end and the different functional areas you’ve played a role from supply chain manufacturing, tech ops, and more, from what you’ve seen and done, Allen, what are a couple of really unique elements to the global pharmaceutical industry? What are some things that might surprise some of our audience members.

Allen Jacques (11:17):

In the pharmaceutical industry, I’ve grown up believing that the complexity is almost all on the manufacturing side, the complexity, the cost, and the lead times. It’s a very highly regulated industry. It’s not just the FDA; there are FDAs all around the world. And so, you have a lot of regulatory constraints and so you can’t just change a product to improve the yield or the quality or whatever. When you want to make a change, you have to get approval all around the world to make that change. And of course, the timing is different everywhere. So that becomes a complexity that you have to live with and you have to manage it, especially in supply chain planning. The other thing I would say is lead times are long, and it’s not the manufacturing lead times, it’s really the quality lead times. So, I’ll give you an example.

Allen Jacques (12:10):

If you make an active ingredient, a biologic that we call drug substance, one of the quality tests takes 28 days before it’s done. So that means that you cannot release that drug substance for 28 days. Now, of course, things don’t happen perfectly. So the typical lead time is probably a couple of months. And then you put product into a syringe or a vial, then you have a sterility tested to minimum of 14 days. And so, average lead times are more like 30 to 45 days. So, really lead times are long. Lead time variability is high and that’s where you have to live with. So I’ve always felt that if you want to run a good pharma supply chain, focus on lead times and getting them down as close to those 28 days and 14 days as you can.

Scott Luton (13:00):

Man, Kevin, I’ve got a follow-up question. I’ll give you a chance to respond to that, to what the picture Allen’s already painted there. Your thoughts, Kevin.

Kevin L. Jackson (13:07):

Yeah, I guess when you’re talking about lead times, that means you have a strong dependence on your partners across your ecosystem as well because they probably have similar lead times and it takes a lot of communication so that you can manage that. So, the thing that comes to mind to me is communication across that ecosystem. How do you manage this lead time through communicating with your partners?

Allen Jacques (13:41):

Well, some of the lead time you see in the industry is because of communication. So, as you can imagine, especially in the older days, there were a lot of Excel spreadsheets, a lot of email, phone calls, things like that. So, sometimes I had a boss once that described it like a dinosaur. You step on its tail and three months later it says out. And sometimes when you look at — something happens in your supply chain, and just the communication lead time to get that message everywhere where it needed to be would take quite a long time and there’d be a lot of latency. So, yeah, that just adds to the physical lead times that I was describing.

Kevin L. Jackson (14:22):

What you’re saying, that’s your information in data supply chain, which is always critical that many people don’t think about. When they think about supply chain, it seems to be focused on the physical thing, but I really like the way you brought up that information. Supply chain can also cause lead times.

Scott Luton (14:44):

Yes. That’s a great point. And it reminds me, and I cannot remember the name of the company, it’s a food company, this leader, the CEO, that really helped it grow to being a dominant player it is today, had a regular mantra that kind of touches on what y’all both talking about. And he would say, “Give me good news fast, but give me bad news faster.” So, you’re not like that dinosaur who waits three weeks after someone steps on the tail. Okay. One quick question, I want to get it more into, I mean, you’ve already laid kind of a basis for why it takes so long for new drugs to be launched and come to market. We’re going to touch more on that in just a second. But I want to go back to now as, Allen, you’ve been involved in what y’all do in a variety of different industries, do you almost feel like you are liberated when you come out of pharmaceutical within that tight regulatory environment no matter where you’re in the world and you go to a different sector, you have a lot less regulation and you’re much freer to drive change and try new ideas? Is that kind of liberating for folks that come out of pharmaceutical into other industries?

Allen Jacques (15:45):

Well, not really, because other industries have their own complexities and they’re not complexities I grew up with. So, it takes me a while to get my head around it. And some industries like aerospace are just as regulated, if not more regulated than we are in life sciences. So we always like to think in life sciences that we’re special and we have the most to deal with. But as you get exposed to other industries, you realize there are other complexities that we never dreamed of or imagined. So there might be some out there that where I would feel liberated but not many.

Scott Luton (16:21):

Allen’s keeping it real.

Kevin L. Jackson (16:23):

Yes. The thing that jumped to my mind was tracking bolts at Boeing. Right?

Allen Jacques (16:30):

Absolutely.

Scott Luton (16:31):

All right. So, let’s get into switching gears a little bit here and going back to some of the uniqueness of the pharmaceutical industry you were touching on earlier, Allen. So, according to McKinsey, over the past decade at least, it takes 12 years on average, just on average for a new drug to be officially launched. So you’ve already mentioned some of the quality testing and some of the lead times involved there and a few other aspects, but when you think of the factors that impact that long timeframe, what else have we not mentioned?

Allen Jacques (16:57):

Yeah, well, I don’t know where the clock starts ticking in that 12 years in the McKinsey study, but I would imagine it starts in drug discovery. So, obviously there’s a lot of lab work, bench work done in just identifying molecules that could treat a certain indication or a certain disease. And so, that takes a long time. That can take years and it’s quite expensive, a lot of manpower, a lot of hit or miss, a lot of guesswork and all that. I worked in a lab for quite a while, so I know what that’s like to be doing that. But once you’ve identified a candidate, once you have confidence that this molecule could work, and it could be a small molecule, it could be a monoclonal antibody, a very large molecule, and anything in between, once you’ve identified something that you believe will work, and I think we’re much better at that now than we were decades ago, then you have to get into your clinical studies.

Allen Jacques (17:53):

And the clinical studies are a big chunk of that time. And there are three phases of clinical studies. There’s phase one where you’re testing a product primarily for safety. Then there’s phase two studies where you’re looking primarily at what we call efficacy. Does the molecule work? So, you’re testing it in humans to make sure that you get the effect that you expect. And then, you have phase three, which we call our pivotal studies, and that’s where you have a larger population and you actually — you know the dose, you know the population, you have placebo, you have active, you might be comparing it to another drug. But that’s when you have a full-fledged clinical trial across many geographies, many ethnicities, just to generate the data that you’ll need to get that product approved. Now, depending on the product, so you can imagine an oncology product, that phase three study may spend several years. Maybe for other products it could be six months to a year.

Allen Jacques (18:52):

But that phase three is your key study and your most expensive study as far as what you’re investing in. And you can imagine that if something doesn’t make it through phase one, you want to kill it right away. And same thing with phase two. So if you look at what goes into clinical studies and what comes out as an approved product, the hit rate is less than 10%. And the typical product, when you look at the full cost, it’s the best part of a billion dollars. It may even be higher than that now. So, you’re spending a lot of money with a very low hit ratio. But once you get a product approved, then obviously that’s the best news you could ever get in the pharma industry.

Kevin L. Jackson (19:40):

I wanted to pull the string a little bit on the first phase, that research phase. Today, artificial intelligence is on the tip of everyone’s tongue and wondering how that’s going to affect my industry. And recently, you’re hearing about how artificial intelligence is helping your researchers to test different molecules and how they react to other molecules and to simulate enzymes and antibodies before they even go out of the lab. All this is done in a computer somewhere. My question is, is that really, I guess, accelerating drugs or is it just making it more dangerous because we’re trusting artificial intelligence instead of human intelligence?

Allen Jacques (20:35):

Yeah, I definitely don’t think it’s dangerous. I think the impact of that will be — because you’re looking at molecular structures, you’re looking at parts of the cell or body that they’re going to interact with, and you’re able to project, I think, better what that interaction will be like. So, I have to believe that that’s going to increase this hit ratio. So before you go into a clinical study, you have a higher level of confidence of what will make it. Now, I’m not in R&D, but I definitely believe it will help us in the science of putting a drug in test discovery into clinical.

Kevin L. Jackson (21:14):

Oh, that’s great.

Scott Luton (21:14):

It’s fascinating taking a peek into the pharmaceutical industry and just the phases and the lead time, all development, all of that work you described that high-end research-driven, data-driven — I was going to say doctoral-activity driven, that’s not the phrase I’m looking for — highfalutin activity-driven, I’ll say. And then about 10% of the time, you’re able to come up with a drug that’s safe, it’s effective, it works, and then we launch it to the market. So, Allen, I’m assuming you want to fail and fail really fast.

Allen Jacques (21:43):

Yes, absolutely. And a lot of times unfortunately, that doesn’t happen until you’re in your phase three study. That’s a study that’s big enough to really tell you with confidence what your drug is going to do.

Scott Luton (21:56):

Got you. All right. And now back to Kevin. Kevin, you’re talking about AI. It’s a great segue. I had to get that one more question in before we went into digital transformation and talk more about pharmaceutical supply chain, which is really where I think — Allen, if I’ve got it right, in supply chain manufacturing, the operational side, that’s where the bulk of your pharmaceutical industry experience was in, is that right?

Allen Jacques (22:16):

Correct.

Scott Luton (22:17):

So when you think about digital transformation in the pharmaceutical supply chain, what’s some of your observations there? And if you would think about it kind of twofold, how the industry is already leveraging different aspects of digital transformation, because it’s everywhere, it’s been everywhere for years now, and then maybe some of the art of the possible of maybe what you would expect to see in the months and years ahead. Your thoughts there, Allen?

Allen Jacques (22:39):

So, I have to go back a little bit in the history. So, I’ve been around for several decades in the industry. Early in my career, we would kill for data just to know what the inventory of a product was in the country or what was happening in the manufacturing facility. We just did not have the connectivity. I remember a big milestone is when we went from monthly data from our marketing affiliates around the world to weekly data, that was a big deal. And so, we were starving for data and there was some cool stuff, even back in the late ’90s. We had statistical forecasting; we had optimizers; we had the first advanced planning solutions. They were all really cool technology, but we just couldn’t get the data to feed the beast. So, a lot of those efforts kind of fell apart because of that. And so every conference I went to until about five years ago, there was always a track with at least six talks that talked about end-to-end visibility. How do you achieve end-to-end visibility just within your own company?

Allen Jacques (23:47):

So obviously we’ve come a long way over the years with ERP systems, with Industry 4.0, I mean, the amount of data we’re getting out of a facility to optimize manufacturing operations and processes. I think the average U.S. manufacturing site generates, I think, it’s 1.3 petabytes of data every day.

Scott Luton (24:07):

Wow.

Kevin L. Jackson (24:07):

Wow.

Allen Jacques (24:08):

I think that’s the number. So, it’s incredible. And then obviously, with a digital twin of your supply chain, end-to-end visibility should now be a given. So, we shouldn’t be able to achieve a digital twin of variable enterprise and then obviously put the planning functionality, the transparency so that whenever an issue happens in a supply chain, you immediately see the impact everywhere. Early in my career in Pfizer, when I took over this — so I had the global planning group for Pfizer, we had an active ingredient, which we call an API, and we had shipped like 10 drums of it from Puerto Rico to China. And when they opened the drums, there was an issue with the API that we call caking. It’s like a white powder, but somehow moisture or something had gotten into the drums, and so it had solidified or came, and so we had to discard that full shipment. Issue was that API was for a product that in China alone was a $1 billion product.

Kevin L. Jackson (25:13):

Wow.

Scott Luton (25:14):

Goodness gracious.

Allen Jacques (25:15):

I could tell you the name of the product. I’m not sure I should do that. So, you can imagine the email traffic that exploded after that, and my team had to determine what are we going to do about it. It took us a week to figure that out. It took us a week to get inventories from all around the world, put that together, look at what we could do at the manufacturing site and all that. And at the end of that week, we discovered we had inventory in Japan, we could ship to China. Everything was good. No stockouts, no issues, no loss of revenue. But the meetings, the phone calls, the email traffic and all of that that happened during that week was unbelievable. Today, with a digital supply chain, I could have gotten that answer in minutes. So, that’s for me the power of a digital twin and the power of the technology we have today.

Scott Luton (26:08):

Oh, I got a thousand questions, Allen. I love that example and your experiences there. But, Kevin, what a great comparison and contrasting of how business was done then for big successful companies. They were probably leveraging a lot of the modern technologies of that time to what we can do today, arguably, right in the palm of our hand with our phone. Right? Kevin, your thoughts.

Kevin L. Jackson (26:30):

Well, the first thing that popped of my mind was why didn’t you have a sensor in that barrel so that you can measure the moisture? Today, you could do that. So, you probably know there’s too much moisture coming into the barrel before the ship left port. You wouldn’t have to wait until it got to dock in China. So, the visibility is more than just what you can see in the port. It’s about the entire script that you can do, and you can monitor that on your smartphone. And that’s what you really need to think about when you are transforming your supply chain. It’s not just the normal points of presence, so to speak, that you can check your product; you can check it every day, all day, every second.

Scott Luton (27:25):

So true. Also, one of the things that came to my mind, and I loved how you said that back then, Allen, you would kill for data and how it was a big thing to move from, I think you put it, from monthly to weekly data cadences and cycles. Kevin, there is no — if there’s anything as Allen pointed out with the 1.3 petabytes, there is no shortage of data, but it’s what is the organization’s capability and ability to execute and really leverage all of this data that they have. That’s one of the questions of our time, isn’t that right, Kevin?

Kevin L. Jackson (27:58):

Yeah. How do you get insights from that data? It’s great that you have all this data, but what does it mean? And that’s the challenge today. How does that data affect the activities that you have to conduct as part of your business workflow?

Scott Luton (28:16):

Excellent point. And now, I want to pose that back to you because we talk a lot here at Supply Chain Now and Digital Transformers all the time about visibility more and more. Is it good enough? To Kevin’s point, we’ve got to have the insights. We’ve got to have the solutions, we’ve got to have the outcomes with what we do with visibility and data and technology. Your thoughts around that, Allen.

Allen Jacques (28:36):

Yeah. So, we call that transparency. So, you’re exactly right. Visibility isn’t enough. I know my shipment got blocked in the Panama Canal or the Red Sea or whatever. So, that’s visibility. But I need to know what that means to my supply chain, what that means to my customers. So, if I lose a batch of something at a manufacturing site in one of my pharma plants, I need to be able to see immediately, well, that’s going to impact Germany, Austria, and Denmark in about six months. And then, I need to start working with them on solutions on what we could do about it. And I need to be able to do that quickly. The longer it takes me to do that, the less relevant my decision is going to. Like you said, I want to know bad news faster, and then I want to know what to do about it faster. So, I need to be able to simulate and what if until I find that solution.

Scott Luton (29:34):

Excellent point. And, Allen, we had a little fun earlier, Allen and Kevin, talking about the cow farm that Allen grew up in. Hundred cows, that’s a big cow farm, at least in my book. And we’ve had a little fun with not being able to not step in it. But you also mentioned the scenario planning and the simulations and leveraging technology to take that to all new levels so you don’t step in certain things because you’ve already kind of worked through a wide variety of scenarios. Kevin, you’re kind of laughing. It’s really important, isn’t it?

Kevin L. Jackson (30:00):

Yeah, I think data and insights from that data allow you to foresee the future, and that’s really what you want to do. You need to work in the future.

Scott Luton (30:12):

That’s right.

Kevin L. Jackson (30:13):

Are you a time traveler, Allen?

Allen Jacques (30:16):

Not yet.

Scott Luton (30:18):

Not yet. That’s right. Not yet. All right. So, Allen, I really appreciate you sharing with our audience a variety of aspects of what goes on in the pharmaceutical industry from some of the very true unique constraints because every industry will say, well, we’re different and we’re different, this, that and the other. But truly, there are some very unique elements to what goes on to producing the drugs and the sciences that really help all of us live a better life. And equally as much, I love your walkthrough kind of how supply chain was done back in the day and still a lot of the important themes and abilities, a lot of those are the same. We can just act on them so much better here today. That’s the true art of the possible. Am I right, Allen?

Allen Jacques (30:16):

Uh-huh.

Scott Luton (31:00):

But it oftentimes comes down to leadership, and that’s where I want to kind of — as we start to wrap today’s interview, that’s where I want to focus in on. So, Allen, we’re going to have you back and we’re going to get all those stories and you’ll even be able to name those drugs. We’ll get all the lawyers to have our back. Right? There’s so much — I bet there’s so many stories. You ought to write a book soon about your industry experience, but leadership. So two-part question — and Kevin, you’re not getting off the hook. I want you to answer these questions, too. I’m looking forward to your perspective here as well. So, Allen, when you think of timeless leadership, best practices that you wish more folks, more organizations, more business leaders would embrace today, what’s one of those things that comes to your mind?

Allen Jacques (31:40):

I’ve spent time in manufacturing. I’ve spent time with major CapEx projects and then most of my time in supply chain. But what I really like comes from the manufacturing world, but it can be applied anywhere. That’s what we call Gemba Walks, and I’m sure you’re familiar with that expression. I’m sure everyone listening in knows that expression. But a Gemba Walk is basically when you walk the floor. So in a manufacturing environment, it’s basically getting out there, walking the floor, not just to wave to people and say hi, but to observe operations; like an industrial engineer, observe operations, see what’s happening on the floor. I remember in one manufacturing site, I used to walk by this piece of equipment every day. It was an early robotic that we were using. And I think one time out of 50 that I walked by, it was actually working. And so, you see something like that and you go, something’s wrong here. We obviously invested quite a bit of money in this piece of equipment, and I’ve seen syringe filling lines that are down and not operating. And I remember I had a boss once, he used to go through warehouses and look at the FedEx shipments, the overnight shipments, these pallets of materials sitting in the warehouse and he’d run his finger across the top of the pallet and see how much dust had collected.

Kevin L. Jackson (33:07):

Wow.

Allen Jacques (33:07):

So, Gemba Walks are really helpful. And the way I applied that in supply chain was — so I had an organization of over 50 people, but on a regular basis, I would sit down and have my planners, each of my planners walk me through their supply chain. I do that individually with all of them. We’d have an hour. I’d want to see metrics, how the product’s performing, what the issues are, manufacturing bottlenecks. Inventory was a big one. How are we doing on inventory? Where do we have opportunities? But basically I would give them a chance to walk me through their supply chain. And then, I was the annoying one who asked a lot of questions. But that’s one way I applied that in the supply chain world, the planning world.

Scott Luton (33:52):

And that’s how we get better. I love that example. Kevin, if I may continue with this Gemba Walk, best practice that Allen shared before you share. I’ve been in and out of over 300 plants in my career, and it’s one of my favorite things to do is go to the Gemba, go to where the value is created and interact with those workers that are truly experts in their processes. Those are some of my favorite conversations I have. The good news here, especially to all of you audience members out there, the good news is you can apply that notion, that powerful approach, no matter what industry you’re in. I’ll tell you one recent example. I had dinner the other night with a dear family member of mine. He spent decades doing big things in the broadcast and media space. In fact, he’s a member of the Georgia Broadcasters Hall of Fame. How about that?

Kevin L. Jackson (34:33):

Wow.

Scott Luton (34:34):

And he shared — we’re enjoying a delicious meal. He shared with me that every single day, as he was the general manager of this successful media organization, he would walk every part of that studio, of the offices and talk to every single person to see how their day’s going, what they’re up to. That was a big part of his management and leadership philosophy. And that’s a version of a Gemba Walk just applied to a different industry. And it’s such a wonderful leadership arrow to put in your quiver no matter what sector you may be leading or managing or just being a part of. Kevin, weigh in on what we heard there from Allen.

Kevin L. Jackson (35:08):

Well, first of all, I mean, they call it management by walking around, MWA. I remember that when I was going school.

Scott Luton (35:15):

There you go.

Kevin L. Jackson (35:17):

But in the military – I was in the Navy – I was too young to really appreciate our chiefs in the Navy, right? I was a young officer of Naval Academy, so I know everything. But it was the chiefs in the Navy that really executed that MWA, that management by walking around, because they were always — wherever things were happening, they were there. They were watching the non-rated and the lower ranked people understanding what they were doing. But they were also interacting with the senior officers and understanding what they were doing. And just by walking around, they could see issues before they became crisis. Right? They could sort of visualize solutions before they were even asked for to do that. So, the chiefs and the Navy were experts at management by walking around.

Scott Luton (36:19):

I love that. Blessed are the chiefs. I think that was one of the beatitudes, I think. I’m mistaken. We’ll see. We’ll have to look it up.

Allen Jacques (36:24):

Were you saying that last Sunday night?

Scott Luton (36:28):

That’s a good Super Bowl reference there. I love that, Allen.

Kevin L. Jackson (36:32):

Got that one. All right. Yeah.

Scott Luton (36:33):

That’s a good one. All right. I wish we had a couple more hours with Allen and Kevin here. But Allen, just a couple more questions for you. I want to stick with leadership for a second. I think leadership is always relevant, always relevant, and I think more and more, especially now, I think of lip service leadership, right? Who’s got time for lip service leadership? No one does, right? Especially your people out there in organizations. So, for folks that are tuned in and listening to us and are watching us right now, Allen and Kevin, and they want to truly hone their leadership skills and be someone that folks respect, they get stuff done that empowers their team, takes organizations to new heights, since they’re honing their leadership skills, what’s one piece of advice that you’d offer based on all your success and your career, Allen?

Allen Jacques (37:14):

Well, as a leader, I think the most valuable thing that you could ever have is experience from the lowest levels of the corporation. Nobody understands manufacturing better than someone who’s worked on the shop floor. No one understands forecasting better than a demand planner. No one understands manufacturing scheduling better than a scheduler. So wherever you are in supply chain or maybe other parts of a company, don’t be anxious to get out of your role. The role you’re in is giving you experience that will benefit you years down the road. My advice would be that whatever you’re doing, be the best. Be the best at what you’re doing. Look for ways to innovate it incrementally or maybe more and be able to tell a story about what you’re doing, fact-based, clear, concise. And if you can do that and you can be really good at what you’re doing, you will get noticed and you’ll get a seat at the table and you will get opportunities to be promoted.

Allen Jacques (38:16):

I didn’t start my career off in supply chain saying someday I want to be the VP of planning or the VP of logistics or whatever. I’m not saying you should not be ambitious at all, but I didn’t spend my time thinking about that. I just was so fascinated by what I was doing and interested and got to do some really cool things and new things, and that got noticed. And then opportunities came along, and then basically I jumped at opportunities. But I didn’t go in saying, three years from now, I want to be in this position. So don’t spend your time thinking about the future, really focus on the present and really focus on making whatever you’re doing better so that several years down the road you’ll look back and you won’t recognize the way you used to do it.

Kevin L. Jackson (39:02):

Yeah, that’s great.

Scott Luton (39:03):

Allen, what a wonderful practical been there, done that advice to all of our listeners, no matter where they are in their journey out there. Kevin, same question to you, what would you advise folks on as they hone their leadership skills?

Kevin L. Jackson (39:14):

The best advice I ever learned as I try to become a leader was kind of simple. Listen more than you talk. Because you learn so much more when you keep your mouth shut and you can sort of understand the experience of others by listening to them relate that experience. And that in and of itself made me a better leader. So, that’s what I would tell my younger self.

Scott Luton (39:45):

I love that. Listen more than you talk. Timeless advice there, too. I would just add to what Allen and Kevin have eloquently shared, volunteer, volunteer, volunteers. That’s how you can gain some of those experiences and be a part of change, innovation and develop a wide variety of professional skills. Right? Certainly, we can’t get enough volunteers out there in industry, and that’s a great opportunity to stand out and gain what you need to advance. Okay. Allen and Kevin, man, what a great conversation. I wish we had a lot more time to dive into some of the things that you shared and get more of your stories out there, Allen.

Kevin L. Jackson (40:17):

That’s a good show.

Scott Luton (40:18):

It is. So, Allen, I know you do a lot of keynote speaking. Obviously, you’re working to help a lot of organizations out there advance and move on and tackle all kinds of things. I enjoy the content you put out as well. How can folks connect with you, Allen, and the Kinaxis team?

Allen Jacques (40:33):

Well, I’m on LinkedIn. I think I’m the only Allen Jacques, with A-L-L-E-N.

Scott Luton (40:39):

Okay.

Allen Jacques (40:40):

So yeah, feel free to contact me, or ajacques@kinaxis.com.

Scott Luton (40:44):

Wonderful. And we’ll make sure we include those notes in the show notes to make it easier for our listeners to connect with Allen and the Kinaxis team. All right. So, Kevin, before we wrap here today, we’ve got to touch on our friends at Microsoft. They’re doing some pretty cool things out in industry, including pharma and life sciences. Is that right, Kevin?

Kevin L. Jackson (41:03):

Oh, yeah, absolutely. We touched on how technology is changing pharma. Well, actually it’s changing every industry. But in pharma specifically, it’s accelerating scientific innovation by modernizing discovery and manufacturing. We actually drive advancements faster. Technology helps to create value driven tear, those measurements by rapidly modeling new product development and reducing cost. And we talked about that with respect to modeling the molecules to create new product, but it’s also important to enhance the workforce experience. We talked a bit about how communications is important. So technology helps to enhance the experience of the healthcare team. This optimizes digital operations by connecting people, data, devices and processes in order to overcome skill gaps and improve communication and digitize these workflows that increases productivity and it makes us healthier. And finally, they’re using this technology, visual technology, for instance, to provide illustrative depiction of experiences. This really helps to build operational agility. It spurs life science innovation without sacrificing compliant. It allows organizations to actually iterate faster and actually fail faster, which is good for all of us. And this in turn increases the manufacturing productivity to reduce time to market for these lifesaving drugs. So, technology is integral to the pharmaceutical industry and making our lives healthier.

Scott Luton (43:02):

That’s right. This is the way indeed; this is the way. And let me just say, Allen and Kevin, I got to say this word molecules because I haven’t said that since 9th grade biology class, so I had to get that in here at the end. All right, really quick, Kevin, how can folks connect with you, all the cool things you’re up to, including our Digital Transformer series?

Kevin L. Jackson (43:19):

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Digital Transformers, always supplychainnow.com, or wherever you get your podcast. But you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or X, @Kevin_Jackson. I’m always there.

Scott Luton (43:34):

Always, always on, always making it happen just like Allen. Big thanks to Allen Jacques with Kinaxis. Allen, always a pleasure to reconnect with you and I really appreciate the stories, perspective, expertise related to kind of global business but especially pharmaceutical industry here today, Allen.

Allen Jacques (43:50):

Thank you. I love these sessions, Scott. Thank you so much for inviting me. And next time I’ll tell you a story about a Chinese hamster and how it became the backbone of the biotech industry.

Kevin L. Jackson (44:02):

Oh, wow.

Scott Luton (44:02):

Okay, man. Okay. I’m going to hold you to that, Allen. I’m going to hold you to it. Well, always a pleasure to reconnect. We’ll get that story next time. A big thanks of course to our collab partners over at Microsoft as well, helping us to bring these incredible stories and conversations featuring leaders like this out to our global audience. Big thanks there. Kevin, always a pleasure to knock out these episodes with you.

Kevin L. Jackson (44:23):

Yeah, I learn every time. I mean, the guests bring so much vision and so much information, and I’m dying to learn more about the Chinese hamster. Did it speak Mandarin?

Scott Luton (44:39):

We’ll find out. And maybe we’ll have a pickup basketball game too. Who knows. Hey, to our listeners out there, hopefully you’ve enjoyed this fun episode as much as we have. But, hey, the onus is on you to take one thing, take one thing Allen dropped here, Kevin dropped here and put it into action, right? Deeds, not words. That’s the name of the game, right? So whatever you do though, with that said, on behalf our entire team here at Supply Chain Now, Scott Luton challenging you to do good, to give forward and to be the change. We’ll see you next time right back here at Supply Chain Now. Thanks, everybody.

Intro/Outro (45:12):

Thanks for being a part of our Supply Chain Now Community. Check out all of our programming at supplychainnow.com and make sure you subscribe to Supply Chain now, anywhere you listen to podcasts. And follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time on Supply Chain Now.