[00:00:00] Scott W. Luton: Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be, folks. Scott Luton here with you on Supply Chain. Now we have another special episode ready to go today as I captured a few interesting conversations, intriguing conversations from my visit to a private leadership conference held by my good friend Tony Sciarrotta in the Reverse Logistics Association.

[00:00:20] Scott W. Luton: Hey, on this episode, we feature a conversation with Troy Campbell, Director of Reverse Logistics with The Home Depot. Troy offers up a few valuable aspects of his experiences and journey as well as he really focuses on the importance of taking care of your people. Hey, no matter what sector you’re in, I also spend some time with Dr.

[00:00:42] Scott W. Luton: Glenn Richey from Auburn University. Now, not only is Auburn cranking out lots and lots of supply chain talent each year, but Dr. Richey has been researching the reverse industry space for almost 30 years. Stay tuned for some good stuff as we learn a lot more from Troy and Glenn. And here we go.

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[00:01:06] Voiceover: The number one voice of supply chain. Join us as we share critical news, key insights, and real supply chain leadership from across the globe, one conversation at a

[00:01:17] Scott W. Luton: time. So folks, I’m continuing my interviews here at the Reverse Logistics Association Leadership Summit, so lots of syllables. Here in Dallas, Fort Worth, beautiful Dallas-Fort Worth, and this week at least, it’s the center of all things.

[00:01:31] Scott W. Luton: It’s the center of the universe for all things reverse. And I’m here in this conversation with Troy Campbell, director of Reverse Logistics with The Home Depot. Troy, how you doing? I’m doing great. Great to meet you.

[00:01:43] Troy Campbell: Same,

[00:01:44] Scott W. Luton: uh, I’d say ya. Folks can hear the buzz in the background. You got a bunch of leaders in the space right now.

[00:01:50] Scott W. Luton: There’s an energy and uh, it’s good to be here in Dallas. So is your one of, one of your first summits?

[00:01:55] Troy Campbell: No, I’ve been a few of these now. So you’ve been part of the first, the ROA prior ROA for about five, six years. So I’ve been through P summits and folks can learn a lot. I think my opinion ton of physics.

[00:02:08] Troy Campbell: Yeah, I think it’s not only learning a lot about reverse, but the networking pieces even. Bigger it’s, that’s right. The best place for

[00:02:14] Scott W. Luton: Well, and we’re gonna touch on that in here in just a second, but I wanna start with this. I’m known for my flood and warmup question, and we could talk about yours I think for quite a few hours.

[00:02:25] Scott W. Luton: So you’re a big time New England Patriots fan. Absolutely. Long time fan. Long time. And y’all have had it really good in the last 12 years, would you say? 15? 15 years probably, yeah. 15. At least six Super Bowls. Yep. Oh my gosh. Including a crushing one against my Atlanta Falcons. Oh my gosh. That’s

[00:02:45] Troy Campbell: rewatch that one frequently, honestly.

[00:02:47] Scott W. Luton: Oh man. Okay. I know, I know who I’m dealing with now. But let me ask you this, what we were just talking about, bill Belichick for Ray in the college football, which is gonna be cool to watch, but if you think back on all those teams and all those moments, it’s not a fair question to ask you, but what’s one of your favorite moments or favorite players?

[00:03:07] Scott W. Luton: You know what really. You have to pinch yourself, man. I’m a Patriots fan. Top of the mountain.

[00:03:11] Troy Campbell: Yeah. I think it’s the Edelman of the teams. It’s the, the guise of the team that were really nobodies through college and had to fight and scratch their way through their career. I think I like that just because, just in life in general, you see those folks, whether in business or in sports, they have to fight and claw their way through.

[00:03:27] Troy Campbell: They never expected to be even much and they had a, you know, nothing was handed to ’em on a Silverstone, and I just kind of really appreciate those kind of. Moments in the games and those individuals make ’em, I hate to bring that game back, but the catch, like, that’s just crazy, right? Just the things he’s did throughout his career.

[00:03:41] Troy Campbell: I just think, you know, he was somebody that wasn’t really meant to be. Was he a quarterback? Was he running back? What was he gonna be? And he ends up being like, one of them one players. Troy, I’m with you. And you

[00:03:49] Scott W. Luton: know, he, he was like a Swiss army. Right. There’s so many different situations and roles and game situations he could deliver and he did deliver.

[00:04:00] Scott W. Luton: And to your point, it seems like someone like an Edelman and others that come to mind, they earn everything they get. And to your point, that’s not just a great sports story, but I love seeing that in the business world too. All right. I really wish you’d share one of those six Super Bowl trophies, but I’m probably not getting that.

[00:04:17] Scott W. Luton: Damn. Okay. Alright. So as I mentioned to you pre show, we’ve really enjoyed sitting down with a variety of leaders from The Home Depot. Had some great conversations. I really appreciate The Home Depot’s support of the RLA and the conversations going here because it really helps further industry. And we got.

[00:04:35] Scott W. Luton: We’ve come a long way in the reverse side of things, but we still got a long way to go. Right. But let’s talk about your role, director of Reverse logistics. Tell us about what you do at Home Depot.

[00:04:43] Troy Campbell: Yeah, so in the Director of Reverse Logistics, I support the four reverse logistics facilities. The count that we have in the country, there’s, we have in Phoenix, Arizona, Pennsylvania, McDonough, Georgia, and Indianapolis, Indiana.

[00:04:56] Troy Campbell: So there’s four sites. They range from 400,000 square feet to about a million, and each site has about three to four Oh associates in there. Really the blood of our work, right? They’re the ones doing every single bit of that returns ugly freight, handling it and managing how to get it to look out. You know, we look at it as it comes in the building, right?

[00:05:15] Troy Campbell: That’s. The old analogy with the who return stuff we do in, you know, home Depot or Walmart bags, and here’s my fray. We make it look pretty on the outbound side. We package it, we get it going and send it off back to our vendors or our liquidators. So we manage those folks, you know, and then there’s, you know, that’s, I say it’s a, it’s an easy way to look at it, but there’s a lot of inner workings between.

[00:05:34] Troy Campbell: Conversations with store leadership team about stuff coming back. Yeah. We work real closely with our recycled sustainability partners. Also work real closely with our salvage liquidated partners. So there’s more than just really the four centers. There’s a lot of, you know, partnerships that you need to work with in that role to really make everything flow smoothly out.

[00:05:53] Troy Campbell: And then you look at the merchants, how they make policies for product. And also, you know, there’s a lot of folks that don’t, I don’t think understand that the different things that’ll impact the reverse channel. Throughout its life cycle, especially in a larger corporation.

[00:06:05] Scott W. Luton: I think that is well said and especially so succinctly and, and you know, as I heard you talking about all those different shareholders, stakeholders, whatever you wanna call ’em, participants, a very unique ecosystem on the reverse side.

[00:06:18] Scott W. Luton: And one that y’all have really, I think a lot, a lot of organizations can learn from what y’all have been able to do at The Home Depot. Lemme ask you, there’s four centers. When I toured the McDonna’s Center forever ago, I think you only had three. Where’s the newest

[00:06:30] Troy Campbell: list? So you do, this one is Pix in Pennsylvania.

[00:06:31] Troy Campbell: That’s a million, I think it’s 1.1 million square feet. We like to say it’s, I, I hate to say fully automated so it’s more automated. You probably remember the McDonough facility, very basic. In automation it says a little bit more automation, something I talk about a lot. You know, automation is tricky in reverse ’cause the box is not a box when it’s returned.

[00:06:47] Troy Campbell: So we’re, we’ve learned a lot in that. And if we were to do it again, probably a lot of things we do differently. Only, you know, it’s hard to get that to work with that type of freight. It is.

[00:06:56] Scott W. Luton: Yeah, that’s a great call out. ’cause as tricky as automation can be on the forward side, it can be to your point, trick your own in the reverse side in the return space.

[00:07:05] Scott W. Luton: But I loved your emphasis a moment ago of the people, the associates, the team members. Absolutely. That phrase that I, that I love hearing. ’cause it always conjuress up my, you know, times of my journey of going down to the plant floor or the warehouse floor. And interacting with the expert, the people that do it every

[00:07:22] Troy Campbell: day, they’re the ones that, yeah, they, they know what’s going on.

[00:07:24] Troy Campbell: They’re doing it every day. They’re lifting the boxes and putting it back together. Yeah. They do all the work for us.

[00:07:28] Scott W. Luton: So true. And bringing it to also to that McDonna facility, one of the four you mentioned. It was amazing to have the opportunity to walk through there and you’re describing the ecosystem.

[00:07:40] Scott W. Luton: It makes perfect sense. As I was, I was viewing the different, you know, kind of the flow of the facility. Yep, yep. Right. From product coming back until the product being kind of figuring out what they’re gonna do with it. Mm-hmm. Remanufactured going back to shelf or what have you, and the people and the, and the job they’ve

[00:07:55] Troy Campbell: got to do as you’re complicated.

[00:07:56] Troy Campbell: It is complicated. Very complicated, and especially in our business. You know, reverse is nothing that any company really puts in their forefront. It’s always something that’s an afterthought. Oh crap, what are we gonna do with reverse? And so you don’t get the, the state-of-the-art systems, warehouse management systems or any of that stuff.

[00:08:11] Troy Campbell: So we have to kind of, it’s clunky. We have to figure it out. And what happens in reverse? You, you, you, your associates, which I said as a. Blood, sweat, and tears of our business, they have to figure it out. Right? And there’s a lot of that dispositioning work we have to do. Some of it. We have to think it’s, the system’s not gonna tell us how to disposition.

[00:08:25] Troy Campbell: Some of it does, some of it doesn’t. Sometimes we have to think, oh, hey, what would you do with this product? Is this a liquidated product? Is this not a liquidated product? So it makes it a little tricky. It does. But I’m

[00:08:33] Scott W. Luton: glad that we’ve got. I almost said thought leaders, but it’s more than thought leaders.

[00:08:37] Scott W. Luton: It’s, it’s folks that are doing it that are really unlocking innovation for the whole industry. And I really appreciate you being here and being able to contribute to the conversations that are take place here. Yeah. But help the industry move forward. Alright, so let’s do this. There is, our audience won’t be new.

[00:08:53] Scott W. Luton: It’s Supply Chain Now to the reverse space and the returns management space that Tony Sciarrotta has referred to as the dark side for a long time. And unfortunately, a lot of folks in the industry and outside the industry are still kind of became more aware of that. But beyond that, as a reverse logistics professional and practitioner, there’s so many trends going on, so many topics, so many.

[00:09:14] Scott W. Luton: Developments, what’s one that you’ve really got your eye on here, say this year in this space?

[00:09:19] Troy Campbell: So I think in this space this year, and we look at, you know, this may be just particular to our business, but I think anyone can really look at this. And it’s the nature of how things are sent back to the centers, right?

[00:09:29] Troy Campbell: So one of my main responsibilities is just, you know, is efficiency. How quickly can we flow through the lowest cost? And so we’re looking at how can we get things back into our network? In a more efficient manner so that the associates I spoke about earlier don’t have to have as much blood, sweat, and tears moving that product.

[00:09:45] Troy Campbell: It’s a little more efficient for ’em. So we’re really looking heavily on that and that’s really where a lot of that cost cutting of can go towards. ’cause we can reduce transportation costs, reduce touches within our buildings, and then get it back to our vendors and liquidators in much faster periods. So we’re looking at.

[00:09:58] Troy Campbell: You know, the, the freight doesn’t come back directly to us. Sometimes it handle goes through multiple different free PL partners. So we’re trying to work with them and how can we get that freight to flow smoother? We’re still fairly new with this. You’d think that why wouldn’t we do this at the gate, outta the gate?

[00:10:11] Troy Campbell: ’cause we didn’t, right? We stood up these buildings to go and then we started figuring out all these problems and this is, has this problem, has a long tail to it. We’ve been working on this one little by little each year and, and this year, well two years ago now, we merged with our supply chain partners within Home Depot.

[00:10:25] Troy Campbell: And that’s really gotten everyone at the right seat of the table. So that’s helped us out a lot to drive this process a lot further. So that’s kind of, I think, the biggest home we’re trying to take care of this year.

[00:10:34] Scott W. Luton: I love it. And my favorite part out of all that you just shared there, as cool as all that is, is kind of what I hear in your one of your North Stars, is how can we give our associates easier, more successful days?

[00:10:46] Scott W. Luton: Right. We keep answering that question. I think that that’s the solution for so many of the challenges we’re faced with here today. Huh?

[00:10:53] Troy Campbell: Well, if you know Home Depot’s logo back from the founders, right? Yes. Take care of your people and everything else and take care of itself. So it’s really the same thing we’re trying to follow and that’s really, they, they have the pain of the work is trying to figure that product out and if we can make it easier for them, it’s gonna be easier for the rest of the business.

[00:11:09] Troy Campbell: I’m with

[00:11:10] Scott W. Luton: you. I am with you. Okay. So I think I may know the answer to your this question, your answer to this question, but I’m gonna ask you anyway. Sure. Because there’s so many different, I’ve heard so many different reasons folks come take time outta their schedule, come to, uh, an RLA leadership summit and what they’re looking to get out of it.

[00:11:27] Scott W. Luton: And what, when you think of a short list of things, what’s one thing you’re looking forward to going home? Back to Georgia? Yeah. With after your experience here.

[00:11:36] Troy Campbell: So there’s a couple things. I think there’s two things I wanna also give. I just don’t want to get takeaway. I wanna also, I want us to provide any insight I can provide to any other leaders that are maybe new to the reverse business and why should they stumble out of the gate if we have what we’ve been doing now for, I’ve been doing it for 15 years, so why not offer some of those tidbits of insight.

[00:11:55] Troy Campbell: You know, don’t do this. Try this first. And the other thing I like to get out of it is just what are the other retailers doing? So I know this is gonna be manufacturers, retailers, so I like to at least partner with a retailer to just, same thing. What are you doing? Like, what are your challenges? What have you’ve struggled with that maybe, maybe I have too, is we can share the stories that we can say, you know, we, me learn something from them.

[00:12:16] Troy Campbell: It’s really just add to your, I’ll say Rolodex, that’s an old term, but I’ll add to that. Right. Just to say, Hey, maybe I’ll need to pick up the phone and reach out to that person. ’cause I remember having that conversation with ’em. And also we have vendors sometimes that will run into us and it’s a good time for us to hit with vendors that we service on a liquidation market.

[00:12:31] Troy Campbell: Yep. And they’ll ask us questions about stuff we’ve even provided them for maybe months. And it’s a simple, like, I didn’t know I was doing that to you. We can tweak the bus, we can tweak the way we do that. And, and that happens more often than not. ’cause we don’t realize that some of our product that we ship back to our vendors doesn’t go back to the main brand vendor.

[00:12:49] Troy Campbell: Right. There’s third parties that handle that for them. And so those small mom and pop, you know, warehouse folks. Are trying to, you know, handle that freight. And so sometimes they have the simple little question like, why is the big Home Depot doing this to me? Right? I’m like, I didn’t realize I was doing that and they didn’t know I was.

[00:13:04] Troy Campbell: So, it’s a little bit of a, I can help improve my operation by getting feedback from them and I can help them with their operation by just making little tweaks. So that’s always good too.

[00:13:11] Scott W. Luton: Troy, I love that. Pull out a couple things in your last response. First of all, yes, Rolodex is an old reference and I should know ’cause my wife likes to call me the king of old references, right.

[00:13:21] Scott W. Luton: I’m going to school sometime, Troy and I’ll, I, I do to talk supply chain 1 0 1 with usually like fifth graders. We did a lot of these back in the day and sometimes if there wasn’t a bunch of energy, I’m like, okay, kids, do y’all have your Wheaties today? ’cause we got a full day of training. They’re like, what are Weedies?

[00:13:40] Scott W. Luton: So roll a, you’re talking about language. I love this other thing. You mentioned a couple things there. If you don’t know about it. You can’t do anything about it. So the eureka moments, whether you have ’em here at an RA event, or you or you or in your own supplier supply chain ecosystem, you’re going out and meetings sitting down with your suppliers having get off the metrics for a second.

[00:14:00] Scott W. Luton: Yeah. Talk business talk environment. ’cause that’s, to your point, that’s where some really powerful eureka moments, you know, can take place. Then better yet, action and outcomes can come out of them, huh?

[00:14:14] Troy Campbell: Yeah. I’ll tell you a funny story. So one of these events, I think it was one of the biggest events, you know, obviously we are these badges to tell us who we are, right?

[00:14:22] Troy Campbell: And I had this gentleman come out to me. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I’m like, now what can I do for you? Like, you know, and, and the super nice guy, and he was one of these mom and pops ran a warehouse. He serviced probably five or six different vendors that we service. And my thought all along running these four centers is that, well, I’m sending park directly to the main vendor, and he’s like, Hey, you need to do me a favor.

[00:14:41] Troy Campbell: I’m like, well, what can I do for you? He is like, you’re sending me a load every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Can you send it to me on one of those? I don’t care what day to send. I’m like, why would I do that? I don’t do that. I, I don’t, I’m like, I don’t do that. And I swore up and down, I don’t do it.

[00:14:52] Troy Campbell: And he’s like, he went through again. I’m like, what do you do? Like, what is your role? He’s like, well, I serve, he named off the five vendors. I’m like, oh, I know exactly what I’m doing to you because I pick by vendor, not by address. Oh, okay. And so just a simple conversation like that, so we could easily say for you for that.

[00:15:07] Troy Campbell: I can switch that to pick by address. And you’ll get to one load a week instead of one pallet, a a day for five days. And it’s, so those are the things that just come out of these events that, again, we’re not talking metrics, we’re just having conversations. What can I do for you? What can you do for me?

[00:15:21] Troy Campbell: Type of things. I love that example. And I tell you

[00:15:23] Scott W. Luton: the power of dialogue. Yeah. Yeah. And folks, some folks listening to me say that may roll their eyes and, but really, you know, what’s old is new again. And as powerful dialogue, communication, having different conversations. And I love this takeaway from me, from what you’re sharing here.

[00:15:39] Scott W. Luton: So Troy Campbell, I’m looking forward to the rest of the programming here. Some more conversations we’ve got teed up. How can folks connect with you? And first off, appreciate you. Serving the RA Yeah. And being a part of these conversations, but how can folks track you down if in case they’re like the gentleman out there and, and make so, yeah.

[00:15:57] Scott W. Luton: So look

[00:15:58] Troy Campbell: at, I, I say link, you know, everyone says LinkedIn. LinkedIn I’ll, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m not, I log on link and I have 35 messages that are, some of ’em are three months old, right? So just email me. My contact information is within the r. Uh, so you log onto, now it’s nr my information’s all in there.

[00:16:14] Troy Campbell: Yep. And it’ll have my email. It’s the easiest way to do it, right? Because the LinkedIn, it’s gonna be a delayed response. And if I’m not the person that’s gonna help you, but I can send that information off to, it may be a sustainability question, it may be a liquidation, salvage question. Maybe a merchant, you know, policy driven question who I can help you at least get that to the right person.

[00:16:33] Troy Campbell: So folks. The power of

[00:16:35] Scott W. Luton: being a member of the RA. All right, my information’s all over their, their website. So folks, uh, check out RL a.org and of course, uh, check out some of the cool things that the NRF organization is doing as well, the National Retail Federation. Big thanks to Troy Campbell, director of Reverse Logistics with The Home Depot.

[00:16:54] Scott W. Luton: Troy, I’m gonna have to, I look forward to getting out at one of your next tours. Get you to pit some. Yes, let’s go to Pennsylvania. It sounds like a fascinating facility. They would be awesome. Well, Troy, appreciate you being here. And, uh, folks, uh, stick around for as we continue our coverage here of the RLA Leadership Summit 2025, here in beautiful Dallas-Fort Worth, the metroplex stick around.

[00:17:17] Scott W. Luton: Alright, thanks Scott. Folks, I’m conducting interviews here. Continue some great conversations at the Reverse Logistics Association Leadership Summit 2025. That is a mouthful, but it’s here in beautiful Dallas-Fort Worth, the Metro Plex. It’s the center. Of the universe for all things reversed, at least this week.

[00:17:36] Scott W. Luton: And, and I’m joined for this conversation with Glenn Richey Harbert eminent scholar with esteemed Auburn University. And Glenn is editor of the Journal of Business Logistics amongst many other things. Glenn, how you doing?

[00:17:49] Glenn Richey: Hey, I’m doing great. Thank you for having me here today.

[00:17:52] Scott W. Luton: Great to see you. I’ve, uh, you know, you’ve interviewed. On Supply Chain Now years ago with Karin Bursa rights, who’s done big things in supply chain, and she’s an Auburn alum. She’s a

[00:18:01] Glenn Richey: huge Auburn alumnus and

[00:18:02] Scott W. Luton: fan. And yeah, yeah, that’s a great supporter. Small world. So some of our audience may remember that interview that was probably right after the pandemic, right around that.

[00:18:14] Scott W. Luton: But of course, for our newer audience, we’re gonna get to know you a little better. And I wanna start with a little fun warmup question. You’re only heels of a big trip. You just went to Australia three days ago or something, right?

[00:18:25] Glenn Richey: Yeah, yeah. So, um, doing a bunch of research down there with a number of the faculty at the University of Melbourne.

[00:18:31] Glenn Richey: And so we scored a grant that took me down there for four weeks and so. I’m four days back and trying to realize what time zone I’m there, but I

[00:18:39] Scott W. Luton: bet four weeks in Melbourne.

[00:18:41] Glenn Richey: Were you able to take family with you or was it So, yeah, my wife was able to come down for a couple of weeks, so, so that was nice.

[00:18:47] Glenn Richey: But yeah, definitely the other side of the world, but obviously the very important place when it comes to returns, logistics, sustainability, all of those things are hot on their minds. When you’re that far away from everything else, a lot of supply chains running to that country

[00:19:02] Scott W. Luton: that we could probably learn a lot from what’s going on in Australia

[00:19:05] Glenn Richey: I think.

[00:19:05] Glenn Richey: So they do some things really well and, uh, hopefully we were bringing some things down there that we do well that we can exchange, so.

[00:19:11] Scott W. Luton: Awesome. Alright, one last, I, I got so many questions about your trip. We’re gonna have to have you back, but how long your flight, what, what’d that your flight look like?

[00:19:19] Glenn Richey: Yeah, I mean the, it’s come faster over the years. LA to Sydney, it’s about 13, 14, can be 16 hours depending on the winds, but it’s a good time to do some reading, that’s for sure. Right. So you catch up on things. All right, so a

[00:19:31] Scott W. Luton: lot of our listeners may be familiar with your great work at Auburn University.

[00:19:35] Scott W. Luton: A lot of the great supply chain prowess comes out of there. But tell us, for folks that may be new to the Glenn Richey, what do you do within the program

[00:19:44] Glenn Richey: there at Auburn? Yeah, I’ve been at Auburn now for 11 years. Getting close to getting close to 12. And was, was brought there initially to help build out the program and also build out the research side.

[00:19:54] Glenn Richey: So since I’ve been there, we’ve become our own program. So standalone, you know, department with 14 faculty and a, a good number of additional support people around us that make things hum. So I work, obviously teach in the master’s programs there, but, but I’m also doing a good nu bit of research and.

[00:20:11] Glenn Richey: Support our PhD students, one of which is also here at the event doing some, presenting some of his research as well. So

[00:20:17] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. And what was his name? I think I met him a minute ago. What’s his name? Drew Hildebrand. This is Ru Hildebrand. Drew, shout out. Look forward to your presentation later. And he’s gonna be a PhD.

[00:20:27] Glenn Richey: Yes, yes. Very soon. So,

[00:20:29] Scott W. Luton: outstanding.

[00:20:29] Glenn Richey: Fingers

[00:20:30] Scott W. Luton: crossed, right? So, um, okay, I gotta ask you this. Whenever I think of Auburn, I think of Bo Jackson and Frank Thomas and Karin Bursa. But there’s gotta be an awesome supply chain analogy for Bo Jackson. The guy could do it all right and do it so well. Yeah. Yeah. He would wear lots of hats.

[00:20:46] Scott W. Luton: He was pretty good at making the delivery right, or getting the home ride. So, hey Bo and Bo knows, but if he knows supply chain. Okay. Now you’ve mentioned research a number of times and that’s, there’s a good reason for that. You’ve been conducting research in this space in the reverse and returns management space since 1999.

[00:21:05] Scott W. Luton: That is outstanding. So what I wanna ask you. It’s here in 2025. When you examine what’s going on in this really innovative space, it’s come so far since 1999. What’s a couple of elements taking place right now that you’re really intrigued with?

[00:21:21] Glenn Richey: Scott? I think the biggest change that we’ve seen from 1999 to now is that originally we were trying to reduce returns, right?

[00:21:28] Glenn Richey: And so we were doing all kinds of things with quality and incentives and that type of thing to try to reduce the cost side of that. Over time, we’ve pushed that towards the really big opportunities for innovation and to try to bring value back to the customer and to the companies involved. And now we don’t talk about it that way.

[00:21:45] Glenn Richey: Now we’re talking about maximizing your returns, right? So we used to think of kind of a linear process. It’s coming back, we don’t necessarily want it. The packaging’s gonna be strange. Hopefully it wasn’t damaged. Can we resell it? Remanufacture it. And now we’re thinking about, well, this is moving towards a circular economy.

[00:22:03] Glenn Richey: And when that type of thing happens, then you’ve gotta encourage returns and over to participate in the circular economy. So, um, it’s a little bit different world where you’d have to go to your CEO or CIO or Chief Operating Officer and say, Hey, we need to encourage this product to come back to our business.

[00:22:20] Glenn Richey: That’s not the normal way of thinking back in 1999. So it’s. A different mindset completely. So

[00:22:26] Scott W. Luton: there’s revenue. One of the big primary drivers there is you got re revenue generation operat activities, right? That’s right. And the better you can plan and optimize for that, the better you can realize and have less dropout like.

[00:22:39] Scott W. Luton: And I’m probably oversimplifying, you know, a lot better than I do, but um, that makes perfect sense to me. And I think one other factor there that’s probably fueling this, I hate to say paradigm shift because I feel like I need to be a PhD to say that Glenn, but. With the REE economy blowing on, I, there’s lots of new revenue generation opportunities, right?

[00:22:59] Scott W. Luton: Yeah.

[00:22:59] Glenn Richey: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s really interesting. The parts supply and, and those types of things that are going on and being able to strip out components from technology has become a massive business for a number of the companies that are here. It has a state sustainability side. It has a rare earth mineral side.

[00:23:17] Glenn Richey: It’s a great place to be. So

[00:23:18] Scott W. Luton: man, I love it and I’m, I’m glad we got programs that continue to expand like at Auburn and lots of more actionable research being delivered. Yeah, I like great work you’re doing so. Alright, we’re covered. One thing I think you’re intrigued with, I think the other thing that we were talking about pre-show.

[00:23:34] Scott W. Luton: Was the continued application, especially of, there’s lots of AI at work, right? It’s fascinating, but in particular, generative

[00:23:42] Glenn Richey: ai. Right. Tell us more about what you’re tracking there. So let’s, why don’t you start with, when we talk about Ms. Bursa and kind of what we talked about was we were coming out of this period of extreme optimization when we hit the COVID disruption, and what we really found was we’d really pulled the thread very tight around optimization and costs.

[00:24:01] Glenn Richey: And so a lot of the things that the customers experienced during COVID were related to that extreme optimization tightness. So continued to be pushed to try to get costs down. And so we saw a lot of companies go to zero inventory models just in time models, those types of things. And as we went through the, the COVID debacle, we had companies that kind of built that.

[00:24:23] Glenn Richey: Paradigm to use your phrase right around the Toyota model, right? A Kanban MP two, just in time. Get it there when it has to be there. And even Toyota came back and said, we can’t do this anymore. Right? The system has to have more slack. We need to be adaptable, agile, flexible. We need to have you do structures that can be adapted.

[00:24:44] Glenn Richey: We need to have policies that can be flexed across the system and we need to have processes that can be agilely adjusted. Depending on what we run into. And so we’ve been working in that area. Now, when you start thinking about disruption, if it can happen structurally, policy-wise, to the flow, to equipment, all kinds of crazy different things, trying to predict what’s gonna happen next means crunching, inordinate amount of data, right?

[00:25:10] Glenn Richey: So that’s where generative AI comes in for us, is to be able to look at the environment, look at the weather, look at demand patterns, look at. Consumer behavior, which is unbelievably difficult to predict a lot of times, and be able to put all of those things together into real-time models that managers can use from a dashboard setting.

[00:25:29] Glenn Richey: So it’s a big task. It’s a huge task, but literally working with a number of different people around the world and companies around the world to try to build out those models to hopefully make, make us more effective in big time disruptions, but also in surprise things like disaster recovery, that type of issue.

[00:25:46] Scott W. Luton: I love it, and I tell you, I’m a big fan of simplicity, but as you’re sharing that continued application and it’s offering up scenario driven inventory decisions amongst many other things, I think of the three bowls of porridge, right? Hot, really, really hot. Really, really cold. But we have more and more of opportunity to have that just right.

[00:26:08] Scott W. Luton: When it comes to inventory. You’re powered by, I mean, it’s amazing when you take. Where the craft has emerge has, you know, the human driven craft and process and thinking, and you’re marrying that with the rate of innovative technology and that continued evolution. And to your point, it is offering up more and more options for those companies that don’t want to have a really hardcore JIT approach to inventory.

[00:26:34] Scott W. Luton: Right, right, right. Right. And if I can take that one step forward, when you run really lean warehouses that are really tied closely to how we’re predicting the man, that can be a really tough thing to manage and put you really close to the, the edge of letting the customer down. Right? We’ve all learned Yeah.

[00:26:52] Scott W. Luton: Time and time again, how we can’t do that amongst any

[00:26:55] Glenn Richey: of Yep. Beyond anything. Right. And for good or bad, the customer knows what’s going on now, right? They, they, they understand the rudimentary elements of the supply chain. Uh, and the systems that are out there. And so when things break down, they wanna know why.

[00:27:09] Glenn Richey: Right. Glenn? That’s such a

[00:27:10] Scott W. Luton: great point. And, and that, um, communicating with the customer proactively. I think we’ve also learned in the last four or five years just how critical. I learned new acronym not too long ago from, uh, my friend Lori over at Easy Post WiMo. I think with a Virgin WiMo. Just where’s my stuff?

[00:27:30] Scott W. Luton: Oh, here’s my order. Is is what it is. Yeah. And as long as we’re communicating, especially proactively, we can really mitigate Right. Those hopefully few and far between opportunities where we are. Yeah.

[00:27:42] Glenn Richey: Yeah. And so the reverse system, of course, is very different, right? And so communication and information support is different than what we’re used to in the direct planned approach, especially when the product comes back in.

[00:27:52] Glenn Richey: It might be diverted to different supply chains that you never expected. And so new players get involved. That maybe we haven’t seen before.

[00:28:00] Scott W. Luton: That is an excellent call out and I was just talking with Sean for at B Stock earlier about how the cool things we can do with reverse planning these days is remarkable.

[00:28:09] Scott W. Luton: Yeah. Alright, so I wish I had a couple more hours to spend with you, Glen, but I wanna ask you this, you’re no stranger to these RA events. Yeah. You speak at a lot of them. We’re here at a leadership summit, which is a bit different than their big annual conference, which is open to the public. This is kind of more focused on their board and industry thought leaders and supporters.

[00:28:28] Scott W. Luton: But what’s a couple of things that you can’t wait to talk more about in this esteemed group of industry leaders here?

[00:28:35] Glenn Richey: Yeah. I think every year we get a little closer to the world recognizing that reverse logistics is the foundation of sustainability, right? It, it literally is the operational component that gets, gets this type of stuff done.

[00:28:46] Glenn Richey: I mean, certainly you could look at some, maybe IT markets where there isn’t a product, but really anywhere there’s product or material that flows with a service. Reverse logistics has to be involved. And so I spent a good bit of time talking to executives and researchers about the fact that we’ve talked a lot about sustainability matters.

[00:29:05] Glenn Richey: I think we’re past that right now. We need to talk about how do we get it done. We gotta move off of kind of the corporate plan and put those things in the implementation and operation. And every time I go to one of these executive meetings, these folks are on top of it, right? So for me, it’s fantastic because.

[00:29:21] Glenn Richey: It gets me outta the ivory tower and puts me in front of what the new innovative things are that are going on. So these folks are working through all kinds of different things. Conversations about how will the tariff application impact the reverse logistics supply chain, and sustainability and those types of things.

[00:29:37] Glenn Richey: Could be a positive, could be a negative. So it’s really interesting to hear some of those. I mean, I think these events that are the big event, don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic. Right. Really the inner conference you’re talking about. Yeah. With a lot of lot of folks, and of course NRF has events that tie in as well that I definitely encourage people to get involved in, but these events are maybe a little bit quieter.

[00:29:56] Glenn Richey: Maybe you can say some things to colleagues that maybe you wouldn’t say on a stage somewhere, and especially a good opportunity to talk about innovative ideas and share those ideas without giving away your competitive advantage. Right?

[00:30:08] Scott W. Luton: So I gotta ask you a billion dollar question. Given all of your industry research going on.

[00:30:14] Scott W. Luton: I’m gonna show you my South Carolina math here. Let’s see, since 1999, so it’ll be about 26 years. That’s a lot of research. What do you think is the, lemme ask you one, ’cause they’re probably number, for those companies out there that are really good at taking proven, vetted research and pulling into their organization and acting on it and driving returns with it, what’s one thing you see leading companies do to make that happen?

[00:30:38] Glenn Richey: Yeah, I mean, I think consumer insight, and that’s something that we were talking about today, trying to understand. You know, what encourages the consumers to do the things that they do? You know, we’ve had a, a big boom for a while there where buy online return in store was, was so huge. I mean. During COVID, we outsourced.

[00:30:55] Glenn Richey: You know, we used to have customers come pick up and handle that part of the delivery. Now we’re doing it for the customer. But yeah, I, I think the application honestly, of generative AI and being able to get a little bit deeper into the consumer behavior aspects of what we do will help all of these different companies.

[00:31:09] Glenn Richey: I also know that there are lots of conversations about when it’s reverse logistics gonna have the right. Next codes for the different companies that are held in the different areas. That’s something that we’re on the verge of now, and so very hopeful that we can get that through and and made important across the country, and that’ll allow us to do all kinds of different research that’s really not split out from traditional supply chain management.

[00:31:31] Scott W. Luton: Really quick, Glenn, for folks out there that aren’t familiar with the code standardization effort, that’s underway in a very small nutshell. What will that do and why is that important?

[00:31:41] Glenn Richey: Yeah, I mean, it’s just when you think about all of that secondary data that’s out there, whether we’re using it for research or whether companies are using it for market research, supply chain research, those types of things, it’s just not split out of the databases that are out there today.

[00:31:53] Glenn Richey: So what you have to do is some type of surrogate, we think this is 4%, but it’s not accurate, right? So depending on the industry, I mean, you could have industries that have. 50% return. You could think about automotive where some products have a hundred percent or near a hundred percent return. All of those industries would be different.

[00:32:11] Glenn Richey: So if we can get those separations, we can do some really interesting stuff.

[00:32:15] Scott W. Luton: So kind of codes by sector.

[00:32:16] Glenn Richey: Yes. Gotcha. Exactly. I also think you’re gonna see, and we’re doing work, Auburn University and our colleagues are doing work with trauma University in Sweden on how the AI application to reverse logistics and logistics itself is gonna change the skills that employees need to hand.

[00:32:33] Glenn Richey: So, you know, you turn on the media today and you see a lot of where are these people gonna work? What are they gonna do? Are they gonna lose their jobs? And those are serious concerns. Sure. But one of the things we have to get ahead of is what types of skills do these people need to have now? So, you know, maybe it’s not moving things down the conveyor belt like it used to be, right?

[00:32:50] Glenn Richey: Maybe those things are being handled by robotics and ai. It’s being able to look at the data that’s connected with that and manage those different things. If you talk to the trucking companies today, they’ll say, well, we have drivers in the vehicles today. 10 years from now, we’re probably gonna have one driver looking at 10 vehicles at one time.

[00:33:07] Glenn Richey: So they go from driver to coordinator. And so those are things that we need to get ahead of. And one of the things I’ve been talking about is a recent study that came out that looked at young men that drive around in the US and have their GPS on all the time in the car. Yeah, and we found that they lose spatial reasoning, right?

[00:33:22] Glenn Richey: So that, that thing that we grew up with, where you look at the map and you make those connections, well you don’t have to do that anymore. So you kind of turn your, and I’ll be honest, you know, I go to the grocery store and look down and the GPS is on automatically. So we don’t wanna lose those skills as we start to automate some of the decision making.

[00:33:38] Glenn Richey: And we especially don’t want use this if they lose those skills, if the decision making goes down.

[00:33:43] Scott W. Luton: Excellent point. Excellent point. Oh gosh, we could, we could spend hours just on the skill trends. Yeah. And the talent preferences. And it goes without saying, if we can’t find a way in certain specific functions to win the talent battle, we’re gonna have to get more done with more technology and less

[00:34:03] Glenn Richey: people.

[00:34:03] Glenn Richey: Right. And those skills will build up into what the new jobs are that That’s right. We don’t know what the jobs are yet. Right, right. So despite

[00:34:10] Scott W. Luton: some folks claim they’ve got crystal balls. I, I haven’t found a hundred percent accuracy there that Alright. So this is a great segue. Well, first off, I’ll go back.

[00:34:21] Scott W. Luton: If you heard Glenn talking earlier, and one of the big common themes there was what’s old is new again, the customer mm-hmm. Is still king and queen. Absolutely. And their insights still power a lot of the best innovation across industry in the reverse space too. And now fast forward, we’re just talking talent and bringing people in.

[00:34:38] Scott W. Luton: And I’m joined by Mark and Nady from the esteemed TCU program. Yes. Out here today. You’ve got an enviable job though because you get to connect with these bright minds. Some of ’em are already in industry earning advanced degrees. Some of ’em are, you know, getting that first degree. What do they think in general terms about the reverse and returns management space?

[00:35:00] Glenn Richey: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s an under-studied space. Unfortunately, typ typically a major program will have. Maybe a couple of weeks of reverse logistics in their program. There are some other programs out there. We will have a full class, but we don’t really have like a track or a set of courses that fall into that area, which is something we should, right.

[00:35:19] Glenn Richey: We really, at the very least, should have, you know, a four or six course kind of section that’s defined out, and I think you’ll see that. I think RLA has been a champion organization and Rich Bulger and his folks getting that done and moving that along. Academia moves a little slower than industry sometimes, right?

[00:35:37] Glenn Richey: You gotta give things through the administration and agreed by on for a, still like us, by the government. But you can see it coming, especially with relation to sustainability. It’s gotta be there. We could do a better job. I think you’d see most of the, uh, the major programs around the country say they’re thinking about it and they’re trying to find ways to do it.

[00:35:55] Scott W. Luton: I agree. That’s, that’s what we see. Mm-hmm. And I think, uh, we’re trying here at SU chain now to play the role of getting the word out. And you know, look, these students these days are so much brighter than when I was going through school. They’re so much more aware and connected of the, they’re able to make the connections like system wide upstream and downstream.

[00:36:15] Scott W. Luton: But to your point, we still have a swath of industry. There’s a reason why Tony calls it the dark side, right? Because it’s still unfortunately a bit of an afterthought and we’ve gotta educate and make more folks aware so we can bring people in and fuel more course and. Education industry development,

[00:36:35] Glenn Richey: right?

[00:36:35] Glenn Richey: Yeah. I think that the nickname is Shadow Organizations, right? They’re, you know, you know who the major players are, you can see them on the DAAs and that type of thing, but maybe you don’t know the people that are converting product or reselling it on the market or moving it to retailers and that type of thing.

[00:36:49] Glenn Richey: So I remember 1999, my father asked me, what was I doing in this PhD program? I said, well, one of the things I’m doing is I’m looking at information support for reverse logistics. And he said, what? What is that? I explained what it was, and he said, so you’re. Getting a PhD and being Fred Sanford. And I said, you know, that’s not exactly what I’m doing.

[00:37:08] Glenn Richey: But I will say that, that I think at that time period there was a lot of that type of activity and now it’s a major professional career. Yeah. Maybe it wasn’t just buying lots and trying to resell them back in the day.

[00:37:20] Scott W. Luton: I like that analogy though. Yeah. Luck got an analogy. Yeah. Especially it comes with a soundtrack.

[00:37:25] Scott W. Luton: Okay. So I got just two final questions for you. Uh, number one, when students do, when they’re aware of the reverse and return space and wrap their head around it, do you generally see a lot of intrigue?

[00:37:37] Glenn Richey: Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s a lot of interest. And you know, these, these young people obviously are interested in green business, green business practices.

[00:37:45] Glenn Richey: Supporting the environment and sus supporting social causes. Right. And this is obviously a space that makes a lot of sense. Along those lines, undoubtedly.

[00:37:52] Scott W. Luton: Okay. Alright. So Glenn Richey with Auburn University, also editor of the Journal of Business Logistics. I really appreciate what you do for industry in this book, in this space.

[00:38:04] Scott W. Luton: In the broader sense, how can folks tune in on you between your research and your written content, your keynotes? Your academic work, how can folks connect with you and be a part of your universe?

[00:38:16] Glenn Richey: Well, I’m obviously, I’m out there on, on LinkedIn, social media. It’s easy enough to find me and, and my work just by typing in Glenn Richey and Google, that should pop up.

[00:38:26] Glenn Richey: There are not too many of us out there. There’s a dentist somewhere in the former, uh, mayor of Daytona Beach. Okay. But I’m the other one, so, so yeah, I’m pretty easy to find that way. Uh, the Journal of Business Logistics also has a LinkedIn page where we. Uh, from time to time exchange new information that we’ve discovered and, and put up there.

[00:38:43] Glenn Richey: So you’ll actually see that, uh, university of Arkansas is gonna be taking over that part of the, the journal, so you’re gonna see that grow. So we’d love to have people connect that way. But look me up. It’s easy. Send me an email, gimme a call. Love to be involved. Love to connect with people. And Scott, I’ve got some Australia trivia for you.

[00:38:59] Glenn Richey: Okay, I’m ready. There are only three states in the country that you can own a kangaroo without a license. And one of ’em is South Carolina. Okay.

[00:39:09] Scott W. Luton: Oh, that’s a great piece of trivia. Lemme write that

[00:39:12] Glenn Richey: down real quick. Um, alright. What are the other two? I, it’s Wisconsin and I can’t remember the third was, uh, I think a small New England state.

[00:39:19] Glenn Richey: I can’t remember the third one. Regardless. South Carolina’s. Yes it is. I don’t know why, but, uh, you know, maybe it goes back to the mini bottles.

[00:39:26] Scott W. Luton: Maybe. So that’s a whole man, I tell you, that’s an interesting discussion too. Well, Glenn Richey with Auburn University in the Journal of Business Logistics. A pleasure to have you folks connect with Glenn, find him on LinkedIn.

[00:39:37] Scott W. Luton: Of course, you can Google a lot of his great work. And Glenn, thanks for being here today. Thank you, man. Uh, folks, stick around as we continue our coverage here at the Reverse Logistics Association Leadership Summit 2025. In Dallas Fort Worth, and you can find Supply Chain Now and all. All of our interviews wherever you get your podcast from.

[00:39:55] Scott W. Luton: Stick around folks.

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