[00:00:00] Will Mansard: What’s the cost of doing nothing? Why would you do a project? And once we better understand an app, we start talking about what’s step one? Let’s, let’s talk about the solutions we have to solve the problems. You’re like, these warehouse, you know, retrofits and upgrades are no different than your car, right?

[00:00:15] Will Mansard: Like to make that analogy is like, drive your car enough, you need to go. Oil changes, you’re gonna have to take in the shop, things are gonna break. You’re gonna be dealing with it at some point. It’s gonna be a big enough of an inconvenience where you need to do something about.

[00:00:28] Voiceover: Welcome to Supply Chain Now, the number one voice of supply chain.

[00:00:32] Voiceover: Join us as we share critical news, key insights, and real supply chain leadership from across the globe. One conversation at a time.

[00:00:40] Scott W. Luton: Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luden and Deborah Dole right here with you on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today’s live stream, Deborah.

[00:00:48] Scott W. Luton: You’re back by demand. How you doing?

[00:00:51] Deborah Dull: Fantastic, Scott. Happy to return. How are you today?

[00:00:54] Scott W. Luton: Wonderful. I’ll tell you, I loved our show last week, uh, which offered a great transformation story, but this topic here today, this show here today is gonna be tremendous, and we’re gonna be talking about topics that really don’t get enough.

[00:01:06] Scott W. Luton: Don’t get enough airplane, don’t get enough action. So I. Timeless show teed up here today, folks, we’re gonna be dialing the conversation in on uncovering breakthrough opportunities without having to break ground on new sites and facilities. Hey, did you know some studies show that up to 40% of warehouse space in brownfield sites is underutilized, especially due to outdated layouts, flows, or equipment.

[00:01:27] Scott W. Luton: We’re gonna be offering up proven expertise and advice from optimizing your approach to retrofitting your facility. To find these big potential improvements that’s gonna help you delight your customers, knock their socks off. We’re, we’re gonna be sharing how to minimize disruption while maximizing gains.

[00:01:43] Scott W. Luton: We’re gonna be exploring some of the innovative orchestration. I love that word of technologies that play out in the market and folks out in the market today. Not, not conceptual stuff. And we’re gonna be sharing some helpful real world stories as to how organizations have been able to significantly upgrade current facilities and infrastructure and all that’s gonna give you some actionable ideas.

[00:02:03] Scott W. Luton: No doubt. All this a lot more. Deborah should be a great show, huh?

[00:02:06] Deborah Dull: I’m looking forward to it. This is the topic near and dear to my heart.

[00:02:10] Scott W. Luton: It sure is, and I can’t wait. Given all of your contributions and your big track record out in the industry as a supply chain leadership, rock and roll star, I can’t wait to hear your perspective on today’s show.

[00:02:20] Scott W. Luton: So folks, are we ready? Let’s see here, Deborah. We’re gonna bring in an esteemed one-two punch here today, starting with Will. Captain Mansard, director with Bastian Solutions and his colleague Ahmed Arif, vice President of Engineering with Bastian. Right. Ahmed, how you doing? Doing great. Great to see you. I almost gave you the lieutenant title, but uh, we’re, we’re still figuring out that, but great to have you here and Will welcome back.

[00:02:47] Scott W. Luton: How you doing? Thank you. It’s good to be back. Appreciate you having us. You bet. Uh, I know you’re out there doing big things, moving mountains. Uh, and Deborah, we had a, we had a bunch of fun in the pre-show, didn’t we?

[00:02:58] Deborah Dull: We did, we did. We were handing out titles. Maybe a few promotions.

[00:03:02] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. So folks, now we get into the good stuff, but I wanna start with a fun warmup question.

[00:03:07] Scott W. Luton: So, Ahmed, one of the things we picked up in the pre-show and, and some of our pre-show conversations is, one of your passions in life is coaching soccer. And we, man, I love that we need so many good coaches ’cause it impacts so many kids’ lives. So I gotta ask you as a supply chain nerd that I am any golden supply chain or leadership lesson learned that you’ve uncovered while coaching.

[00:03:29] Ahmed Arif: Well, I didn’t originally seek out to be a coach, but you know, you as a parent, you get the call, Hey, we need coaches. So I said, let’s give it a try. And the big thing that I took away from coaching is it’s leadership in its purest form. These kids, they don’t care about your title. They don’t know what you do outside of the immediate.

[00:03:47] Ahmed Arif: And you know, it forces you to be, you know, take things and make ’em simple, you know, show investment in their development. So just a lot of fun.

[00:03:56] Scott W. Luton: I love that. Lesson learned Ahmed Home Run. Are there, um, when you get three goals in hockey, it, it’s called something. It’s escaping me right now. Uh, hat trick. Hat trick, right?

[00:04:08] Scott W. Luton: You just offered up a hat. Trick, lesson learned from your coaching. I appreciate what you do. Alright, so Will little different for you. Because much like Deborah, y’all both travel a ton. I bet. I meant travel’s a good bit too. But Will, in past discussions, we, we’ve uncovered your love for travel and a big memorable trip you made to Costa Rica.

[00:04:26] Scott W. Luton: Yes. Give us a highlight from that family trip Will.

[00:04:29] Will Mansard: Yeah, so I, I do like to travel, especially when we’re seeing different cultures. So Costa Rica was a lot of fun. I’ll say two takeaways. For anybody that’s curious about Costa Rica or interested in visiting, two things you should most certainly do. Yeah.

[00:04:43] Will Mansard: Number one. The coffee is fantastic. You know, one of the best places in the world grow coffee down there. So they’ve got all kinds of coffee tours, chocolate tours, you get to learn about coffee, how to, how it’s made, do lots of tasting. So definitely check that out. And then zip lining would be the second thing.

[00:04:59] Will Mansard: Wow. So the zip lining down there is absolutely incredible. It’s nothing like zip lining here. Your hundreds of feet, you know, over the rainforest, 60 miles an hour, thousands of, you know, feet in between platforms and it’s. It’s an incredible experience, but it’s close to skydiving so you can get, so really don’t skip.

[00:05:16] Scott W. Luton: Well, you had me at coffee. Uh, you didn’t have me so much on sky lining. I, I’ll take your like that. But hey, really quick, Deborah, before I get your comments here. By the way, folks, we have been using Captain in our, our conversation and we’ll probably sprinkle it throughout because Will served as a captain in the United States Air Force.

[00:05:32] Scott W. Luton: I appreciate his service to our country. So, Deborah, question for you, uh, whether it’s coaching, soccer, or whether it is traveling the world, what would you rather spend a weekend doing?

[00:05:44] Deborah Dull: Uh, as we talked about this in the free show, I’m such a big traveler. Travel has to take the cake on this one, but I will say, look, uh, if you’ve ever tried to get a group of adults to do something you think that’s hard, try to get.

[00:05:55] Deborah Dull: A group of children to do something. So hats off to any youth, sports coaches out there. Uh, it’s hard work that teaches you just as being heard from Ahmed, the simplicity of why we’re headed toward the direction that we’re headed. Uh, I have been to Costa Rica. I have had the coffee and chocolate. And the subliming.

[00:06:12] Deborah Dull: Uh, and I’ve gotta say it’s a great way to spend a weekend. It’s closer than people think. Uh, so go check it out and be curious about where your food comes from. The coffee bean and the cocoa bean are actually pretty similar. Uh, the process of making cocoa is fascinating and something I think you should all go and learn about.

[00:06:29] Scott W. Luton: Deborah, that is a great call out. I love the supply chain stories behind all the products that we use every day that we don’t stop to think about. So good stuff. And folks, if you want compare and contrast travel stories, reach out to Will Deborah, and I bet I’m at too. I bet they stay on the road as they are driving, driving performance gains across industry.

[00:06:48] Scott W. Luton: So let’s do this. Let’s get into a big topic here today, and I wanna start with some level setting because we don’t get enough context in this ever fast moving world we live in so we’ll. Really enjoyed our past conversations. Great to have you back here on this topic. We’re gonna get to it in a second, but if you would briefly share a little bit more about yourself and Bastian Solutions.

[00:07:07] Will Mansard: Absolutely. Yeah. So I have been with Bastian for about nine years now. We like to save it in the, the fact food industry that’s like dog years. So that’s nine times what, seventh or 53 years though. A lot has happened in the past nine years. It’s been a lot of fun. We move really quickly and do lots of fun things, but my current role is as I lead the system sales team.

[00:07:28] Will Mansard: So simply that’s to make sure that we’re delivering high quality needful presentations and proposals to our clients. And Bastian Solutions is an, uh, independent integrator in the market. So we, what we do is we put together. Best of breed automation solutions for our clients, pulling together all sorts of different automation into one system and orchestrating all that with the software.

[00:07:51] Will Mansard: Love

[00:07:51] Scott W. Luton: that, solving problems and lots of customized problems, I’m sure. Alright, uh, same question for you Ahmed. Uh, now that we know a little more about Will and more about what Bastian does, tell us about your professional journey a little bit, Ahmed.

[00:08:04] Ahmed Arif: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been with Ashton for 17 years. I’m hooked on the industry.

[00:08:08] Ahmed Arif: I’m not going anywhere. It’s too dynamic. Uh, I don’t, I think I’m ruined. Um, but I’ve served in a lot of different capacities. I’ve been in sales, engineering, project management. I basically can’t hold a steady job apparently. Uh, and I’ve been in leadership for the past 10 years, and right now my primary responsibility is supporting our project engineering team and our controls team.

[00:08:29] Scott W. Luton: I love that. And have you read all those books behind your left shoulder? Oned?

[00:08:33] Ahmed Arif: Uh, anybody who knows me knows that I’m a big reader, so yes.

[00:08:36] Scott W. Luton: Okay. Alright. So Deborah, as we’ve learned in our earlier conversations, we got quite the one-two punch here between Captain Mansard and Ahmed, huh?

[00:08:46] Deborah Dull: We sure do. I am really excited.

[00:08:47] Deborah Dull: 10 years plus, 17 years. We’ve got a lot of experience in this field and I can’t wait because the, uh, industry is really dynamic and the technology’s. Are pretty outstanding and they can be a challenge, and that’s what I’m excited about for today’s show is getting really practical so that those listening can take away some learnings and some best practices on how to take advantage so that your teams have a better day.

[00:09:13] Deborah Dull: But some of the watch outs and look around the corner.

[00:09:16] Scott W. Luton: Love that. Love that. Completely agree. And hey, experience matters. And you’re gonna see folks, if this isn’t a practical conversation, an actionable conversation, you let me know. ’cause I, I, I’ll challenge you. I think we’re gonna hear really good stuff from Will and Ahmed and Deborah.

[00:09:29] Scott W. Luton: So let’s get into it. Let’s start with clarifying a little bit. As y’all see the title, we use the word Brownfield. Now we’ve got the smartest audience in all of global supply chain, but. For some of our newer audience members that may be more familiar with Greenfield site, Will, let’s, let’s just level set for a second.

[00:09:45] Scott W. Luton: When we say Brownfield site, what are we talking about?

[00:09:48] Will Mansard: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you gave me the easy question, but Yeah. Greenfield and Brownfield, you know, Greenfield, you think about that, it’s like, it starts with a greenfield, it’s an open pasture or, uh, some open lot of land. You’re gonna build a building from scratch, right?

[00:10:01] Will Mansard: Less constraints. And we’re talking about Brownfield. I don’t know where the, I don’t know where the brown came from. It’s, for me, it’s usually like grape field. A lot of concrete, less stuff in the way. Right, but there we’re talking about retrofit or an expansion of an existing system. These are the harder projects.

[00:10:15] Will Mansard: These are ones where you gotta really think through it, the Cutovers and all those kinds of things. A lot more constraints. Naturally, those are the more difficult projects.

[00:10:22] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. And the good news here that we’re gonna really talk through over the next hour or so is there’s tons of opportunities in their current, uh, infrastructure and brownfield sites.

[00:10:32] Scott W. Luton: Lots of innovation in space too, that’s unlocking newer and newer ways of looking at the improvement. So, we’ll, actually really quick, Deborah, I, there’s something you’re very passionate about before we get in a little further, maximizing the incredible gains rather than ripping what, what, what used the phrase in show rip and

[00:10:48] Deborah Dull: replace.

[00:10:49] Scott W. Luton: Yeah, we, I mean there’s such, there’s tremendous opportunities here, huh?

[00:10:52] Deborah Dull: There are. The idea that we have to always start from scratch and build everything from notes. Can be a barrier, uh, to taking advantage again of some of the latest and greatest. And I think there’s more access capacity around that.

[00:11:05] Deborah Dull: People, uh, don’t really realize. I think we’re gonna get into some of that, but when we think about the best way to drive utilization and utilization, I’m not sure we, we measure enough in our supply chains often the way, the best way to do it is to add something, sometimes subtract something, move something around.

[00:11:20] Deborah Dull: And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. So when we want to have, uh, a new. Whizbang technology solution, we might need to put in something just in one port of our warehouse, so greenfield, purple field, pink field, whatever we wanna call it. I actually think these are more fun. I think sometimes greenfield, we have too many choices and that can lead to analysis paralysis, and it takes us years and years to complete it.

[00:11:43] Deborah Dull: But sometimes when there’s. No possible way this can get done and it’s impossible. There’s so many constraints. That’s where we thrive as an industry and I think that’s why people like Ahmed stick around so long and you’re hooked ’cause you’re constantly problem solving.

[00:11:58] Scott W. Luton: And I bet, uh, excellent perspective.

[00:12:00] Scott W. Luton: Deborah, I couldn’t agree with you more and I bet Ahmed through 17 years, if I got the number right, could write a book. I bet he’s had some interesting, interesting anecdotes. But, uh, anyway, let’s do this, let’s start this conversation now that we’ve level set. And everyone’s got, got some context with us.

[00:12:16] Scott W. Luton: Let’s talk about the North Star, and that’s the customer, right? In particular, their mindset and some of the challenges that they see. So Will a question for you. How do you address cost concerns from customers that are hesitant to invest in upgrades?

[00:12:30] Will Mansard: Yeah. Yeah. Well, first I, let me say I don’t N VR clients, they’re usually these operators in warehouses that run around their hair on fire.

[00:12:39] Will Mansard: Every day is, you know, some form of organized chaos trying to get orders out the door. And really the last thing on their mind is pausing and planning some kind of a project. Right? To them, it’s an inconvenience. They’re trying to do their day job. And, um, we take on these big projects, they’re, they’re time consuming.

[00:12:56] Will Mansard: They can be complex. It’s usually an additional duty. It’s something they have to manage alongside their day job. So I fully appreciate their mindset when it comes to approaching these kinds of projects and the cost associated and really just the time associated. I think it’s, it’s a lot of times to retrofit, it’s more the time than the cost and being able to really thoughtfully plan these things out.

[00:13:18] Will Mansard: And that’s what we like to do is to. To help ’em make it simple. They were mentioned that they, uh, these projects are complex. They, they can take a long time. You get into this analysis paralysis, what do we do? And so what we’re really thrive in in here at Bastian is, is trying to make it simple. Yeah. Right.

[00:13:34] Will Mansard: And cost becomes just a necessity to solve the problem. So we want to, you know, from the very beginning, understand what problem we’re trying to solve, what’s the cost of doing nothing? Why would you do a project? And once we better understand that. We start talking about what’s step one? Let’s, let’s talk about the solutions we have to solve the problems like these warehouse, you know, retrofits and upgrades are no different than your car, right?

[00:13:57] Will Mansard: I like to make that analogy is like drive your car enough. You need to get oil changes. You’re gonna have to take in the shop, things are gonna break, you’re gonna be dealing with it. At some point, it’s gonna be a big enough of an inconvenience where you need to do something about.

[00:14:08] Scott W. Luton: That’s right, especially if you’ve got a 16-year-old driving a 20-year-old Honda Accord that’s gonna stay in the shop.

[00:14:15] Scott W. Luton: I’m not speak, I, I may or may not be speaking from personal experience. Deborah, really quick, I wanna pick up on one thing Will said before we get Ahed to talk more about, uh, a approving approach. They take time is money. Time is money and I love Will’s comments about what the current state and the tyranny of the urgent always brings to the equation out in operations.

[00:14:34] Scott W. Luton: And if you can save your team members time, save suppliers time, save time as an operation, and bring in the experts so that it gets done quicker and right. Your thoughts, Deborah Thomas Van.

[00:14:48] Deborah Dull: It is, and I appreciate what Will said on focusing on the problem that we’re trying to solve, because I had a really interesting conversation with, uh, a team that runs a warehouse for a very large organization and we were talking about automation and uh, how something could go faster.

[00:15:02] Deborah Dull: And somebody said, luck. It doesn’t always have to go faster. It doesn’t even have to be faster than a human. I just don’t want my team to be doing it. And then we can sequence that work in to work around human beings. And I thought that was a refreshing point because we often get in faster, cheaper mindsets, but we don’t always have to.

[00:15:19] Deborah Dull: So that idea of what problem we’re we trying to solve an anchoring into it is such good guidance for folks who are trying to figure out how might this actually work in our roadmap.

[00:15:28] Scott W. Luton: That is right and we gotta, you put it much more eloquently than I did, but we do gotta focus on the right problems and make sure they’re worthwhile of solving and investing our very finite resources.

[00:15:39] Scott W. Luton: Ahmed, I wanna talk with you about the approach, right? What’s the best way that you’ve found in all of your experience to approach retrofits? Without interrupting, we can’t interrupt. We got plenty of disruption out there outside of projects, but approaching retrofits successfully that limit the interruption of a long running.

[00:15:57] Scott W. Luton: Legacy system. Ahmed, tell us more.

[00:15:59] Ahmed Arif: Yeah, well, whenever I hear retrofits, the, the, the word that comes to my mind is logistical. It’s a logistical project, first and foremost. So we have to make sure that we think about retrofits in that, in that light. And so first and foremost, before you start cutting into open heart surgery with an existing system, you gotta understand what is the existing system, how does it work, what’s the flow?

[00:16:21] Ahmed Arif: You know, what’s the logic? And if it doesn’t exist, the documentation. You gotta reverse engineer it and figure out how does this thing work so that when we start cutting into it, we don’t create more damage. Secondly, you gotta have a mechanical phased plan. If you’re gonna do anything, you gotta break down the work into chunks and show that visually so it’s more manageable and you can kind of see what you’re getting into electrical the next step in the sequence.

[00:16:46] Ahmed Arif: You know, make sure that anything you’re doing is like quick connect and preassembled and just make it so that it’s, you know, painless when you’re in the field. Yes. Um, and then, you know, the heart of any system is really the controls and software, and you gotta make sure that if you’re gonna be cutting into it, you understand how that that logic is gonna connect with the old system.

[00:17:05] Ahmed Arif: So a lot of companies are now moving into emulation, so they wanna test, make sure that it actually works. And then lastly, make sure you have your contingency plan. Rule number one, make sure orders go out the door. Rule number two, make sure orders go out the door.

[00:17:22] Scott W. Luton: That’s, I like that. Oh, man. And I had to, I had to, I was taking fast and furious notes.

[00:17:28] Scott W. Luton: You’re wearing out my right hand. Uh, ah, man, that is really good stuff. And I gotta, Deborah, I’m gonna come to you in just a second. I’m get Will to speak on this, on, on constructive dissatisfaction in just a second. But first. The Hippocratic Oath where kind of Ahmed started do no harm. That isn’t just relegated to the medical field.

[00:17:44] Scott W. Luton: It is certainly relegated to continuous improvement in global supply chain too. But Will, let’s sharpen the point a bit more. How are companies are, how are customers that you’re talking with and working with, approaching their dissatisfaction within their operations right now?

[00:18:00] Will Mansard: Yeah. I think that we are easy to, we wanna be easy for our customers to, to get ahold of, right?

[00:18:05] Will Mansard: We want it to be easy to do business with. So I see it coming two ways, right? It’s, if it’s, again, going back to why we’re doing these solutions, why customers are contacting us in the first place, everything we do, there’s gotta be a business case. Yep. Right? There’s, there’s a need to do it. And so once we understand the problem, I think it’s, it’s one of a few different things.

[00:18:23] Will Mansard: It’s either they wanna do a project because they’ve been putting up with this, you know, some kind of routine maintenance for so long that it’s, it’s getting to a point where it’s gonna risk, it’s risking uptime to their business and getting orders out the door, like I may have said, is the most important thing.

[00:18:36] Will Mansard: So if they feel like there is some risk of downtime, they’re not gonna go get orders out the door. That’s gonna be a very immediate need. They’re gonna contact us. Likely through our support organization, we gotta do something right now. It’s gonna be very urgent. And then the second way is it could be an opportunity to do a project to, to cut costs, to grow revenue.

[00:18:56] Will Mansard: They may have new business moving in from another warehouse. Those are usually more thoughtful. We’ve got a little bit more time to think through that. It’s a proactive outreach from us so we can really set up that engagement and talk through all the the right, you know, alternative to consider.

[00:19:10] Scott W. Luton: Deborah, between the approach and the best way to act constructively with your operational dissatisfaction.

[00:19:18] Scott W. Luton: We’re good stuff there from Will and Ahmed. Your thoughts, Deborah?

[00:19:21] Deborah Dull: Couple takeaways that I’ll take into other projects is this idea of open heart surgery. We know on the one hand we often try to calm our teams down during launch to say like, this isn’t rocket science. No one’s gonna die.

[00:19:33] Scott W. Luton: Right?

[00:19:34] Deborah Dull: Don’t, to be too stressed out, but do a good job.

[00:19:36] Deborah Dull: But this idea of open heart surgery is really valid when we think about we’re opening up a system that’s that’s functioning today more or less. And maybe it’s held up by duct tape in humans, but it’s functioning. And so I like that idea. And then if we keep that going, then this idea of hypercare and setting somebody in an ICU maybe.

[00:19:55] Deborah Dull: Uh, we don’t finish surgery and send them home that day. Often. There’s some, there’s some hypercare after that. And I like Will’s description of what that can look like. So good for people to think about. The layers often went through, um, thinking about all the different considerations, and I think that applies to any project that we go off and do at supply chain.

[00:20:11] Scott W. Luton: Good stuff, especially that aftercare comment of yours. Alright, Deborah, Will and Ahmed, let’s keep driving here. We’re gonna talk about one of my favorite words that always brings a symphony to my mind. So Ahmed, how valuable is the right orchestration, the right orchestration of technologies, and how is that playing in today’s automation strategies?

[00:20:32] Ahmed Arif: Yeah, orchestration is the secret sauce of automation. Uh, we use integration a lot in, in our daily conversations, but you know, that is really what determines whether or not automation projects can be successful or if it fails. And, you know, integration, orchestration, it’s all about the equipment, it’s about the software, it’s about the controls, and does it seamlessly work together for the client’s business?

[00:20:54] Ahmed Arif: And if it doesn’t, that’s where automation gets a bad rap. You know, you get hiccups and those hiccups come in the form of like. Errors and faults and unintended bottlenecks, excessive exception handling where, why did this case come down here? I don’t even know why. Those are the things that give automation a bad rap, and.

[00:21:12] Ahmed Arif: You know, to get the orchestration or integration right, is really an art. You have to make sure everything kind of comes together and Will, and I see this all the time, first time buyers of automation, even if it’s a retrofit, someone new in the role, they don’t know what they don’t know. And so sometimes they wanna speed right through and get the tech in there and hope it works.

[00:21:31] Ahmed Arif: But we always see this veteran buyers are notorious for saying, we’re not skipping the details. Let’s get it right. I have gray hair, I don’t wanna do this again.

[00:21:42] Scott W. Luton: Deborah really quick. I love, uh, that contrast between new buyers that maybe are going through their first couple of projects and savvy grizzled veterans.

[00:21:51] Scott W. Luton: Your quick comments there, Deborah?

[00:21:53] Deborah Dull: It’s nice to have both though, isn’t it? It’s nice to have both. Sometimes we get in our own way and we say, this is never gonna work. I’ve been to this before. I’m too tired. So that’s why we like to have a diverse team. The teams that that’s right can say, that’s all right.

[00:22:06] Deborah Dull: I’m ready to go spend my nights and weekends being stressed out, and they can earn their chops. But it’s so true, uh, and that’s what having a partner is for. So if you are a new buyer or you’re an old buyer and you’re too tired to go through all the change management yourself, that’s why we rely on partners so that somebody else can come in and help prop us up and get us through that journey.

[00:22:25] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. And to add to that and kind of what Ahmed was saying, and, and I know this will, having spoken with Will and the Bastian team time and time again, it’s as important having a, the right partner telling you what not to do and what. To to watch out for. As it is, Hey, this is how it’s gonna solve your problem.

[00:22:44] Scott W. Luton: So you gotta have both. You gotta have both. If it’s all unicorns and candy canes, hey, you better ask another question. So let’s do this. Let’s see. Let’s talk about retrofits a little bit more in detail and a few. Really important key strategic considerations there. And Will, I’ll come back to you. Well, captain Manhart, how would you walk a customer?

[00:23:05] Scott W. Luton: How do you walk a customer rather through starting a retrofit?

[00:23:09] Will Mansard: Yeah. Lemme break it down into four things. Number one, we gotta focus on understanding the problem, right? So we’ll call that discovery. That’s really assessing the current state, walking around the operation, really understanding what they’re doing, what the constraints are.

[00:23:22] Will Mansard: Collecting a lot of data, having lots of conversations. Making sure that we find that North Star, like you said, Scott. Yep. We gotta, we gotta keep perspective on why we’re doing this in the first place. Number two, define the objectives. We wanna make sure we understand what success looks like for our customer.

[00:23:39] Will Mansard: Be very clear about the desired instinct in any constraints that there are. I wanna make sure that we know why we’re doing it and at the end, they’re gonna have a happy customer. Yes. Uh, the third thing is the solutioning. We’ve got a lot of engineers at Bastian. I’m an engineer. Uh, Ahmed is an engineer.

[00:23:54] Will Mansard: A lot of engineers get excited about the solutioning. That’s what we’re really in business for, is to, to see a problem and, and develop a solution for it. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about. All the different ways of solving the problem, different types of technology, automate, you know, very automated solutions versus not very automated solutions.

[00:24:12] Will Mansard: It’s not, automation isn’t the solve for every single problem, right? It’s, it’s gotta be and it’s gotta add value. And then lastly, for Retrofit, specifically, it’s that implementation plan that. It requires probably the most thought and the most time to really think through how we’re gonna keep the operation live.

[00:24:29] Will Mansard: We’re not gonna disrupt the customer. They’re gonna be able to ship orders. And I think that also just in that step is also making sure that we’re being realistic about the project with the customer. It can be a first time customer that’s never done a project like this, you know? It’s, it requires some give and take and they’re not, it’s not always rainbows and unicorns and there are, there is adversity we’re gonna have to work through.

[00:24:53] Will Mansard: If things not gonna go exactly according to plan, there’s gonna be some disruption, but we gotta make sure we understand what we absolutely must do and we deliver on that.

[00:25:03] Scott W. Luton: Will, I love that. Four pronged framework you shared, Deborah, your thoughts first, which of those four. Or your favorites that really stood out to you?

[00:25:11] Deborah Dull: Oh, it’s impossible. It’s like choosing a child. It’s difficult, uh, because all are important when we do problem solving. But look, this solutioning piece, I was thinking, uh, as Will was talking about that how stuff is made show or like in Mr. Rogers when they took us to the factories and I think those of who love that ended up in supply chain and it’s always so cool to say, how did they come up with this?

[00:25:31] Deborah Dull: When you go to a factory floor and say, who came up with this solution? And now we know how. But I will always, always, always fit in to define the problem. As I think overlooked often, and as a diehard six Sigma person, understanding and defining a very, very, very solid problem statement saves us so much time later on and gets that alignment to what we need.

[00:25:52] Scott W. Luton: Excellent point. And that business case that Will mentioned that problem statement, that’s usually at the, the top is usually the toughest. To come up with and define, but once you, as the old saying goes, I can’t remember who said it, but once you really successfully define that problem, everything else may not be easy, but it’s a lot easier.

[00:26:10] Scott W. Luton: You talk about new world buyer, but you also gotta counter the line of thinking about if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s a great call out because if we lean into that, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We’re gonna be missing lots and lots of opportunities. Uh, you know, none of us knew my iPhone’s just outta reach.

[00:26:26] Scott W. Luton: None of us knew we needed that. Back in the day. Right. No one knew, but man, how it’s changed the world. Right. Okay. Ahmed, I wanna go back to, um, your first, your, your two rules, which takes me back to a great moment from the Annie Griffith show that I might have to use later. But you’re talking two rules, get orders out the door, number one and number two, get orders out the door.

[00:26:47] Scott W. Luton: So how do you minimize disruption when integrating new tech into old systems? Well, I’m glad you

[00:26:52] Ahmed Arif: said minimize disruption. One of the things that we oftentimes see is that, you know, the operations team is surprised that there’s gonna be any disruption at all, so it’s super key to get alignment on what the disruption looks like.

[00:27:05] Ahmed Arif: I think if everyone kind of knows the game plan upfront, it’s not really a disruption at that point. It’s kind of the plan. So really setting expectations, making sure everyone knows, Hey, we’re gonna be working weekends. We might be working nights or off shift to, to, you know, enable the testing or, or get orders out the door.

[00:27:21] Ahmed Arif: But just making sure it’s not a surprise is really key. But then on the project side, you know, for the customer, whoever’s in charge of the project and then the integrator or supplier, you know, just making sure you’re testing, you know, you wanna make sure that whenever you do turn the switch on, on any, you know, minor changes you put in, it actually works ’cause all the equipment’s there.

[00:27:41] Ahmed Arif: But when you flip the switch and things aren’t communicating. That’s a disaster you wanna avoid. And that all begins by having a really good phase plan, which we kind of talked about before.

[00:27:50] Scott W. Luton: Alright, I love that. I gotta go back to your first part of your response. And Deborah, this is really important and you’re hearing this in truckloads from Will and Ahmed.

[00:27:58] Scott W. Luton: Keeping it real, keeping it realistic, that’s who you wanna work with, right? Uh, we don’t wanna work with the, uh, what, the unicorns and rainbows, is that how you put it? Captain Mansard Real. Uh, Deborah, tell us about the importance of keeping things real and realistic.

[00:28:13] Deborah Dull: Absolutely. Look, the reason probably Will Lockman can tell us that they start conversations is ’cause there’s a cool, I’ll use it again.

[00:28:21] Deborah Dull: Whizzbang technology. There’s a robot, there’s some automation. Hey, I saw this robot that picks up my shelf and moves it around. Can I get that? Or they might say, look, my team’s just dying. There has to be another way to do this. But usually it’s this. I know there’s a solution out there. So there’s a vision piece and there’s a North Star piece.

[00:28:39] Deborah Dull: But then very practically, we quickly get into what exactly are you asking? Who to do differently and how exactly is that gonna happen? And having the confidence and the structure and saying, look, we’ve done this so many times and these are the steps and this is where we’re probably gonna feel some friction and we probably will feel a little disruption.

[00:28:58] Deborah Dull: And this is what we’ll do about it. That gets confidence to people who don’t do retrofits every single day. You know, they might only have 20 warehouses and they retrofit one every five years, for example. Um, and again, that’s why we go to partners ’cause they do this all day long, every day.

[00:29:12] Scott W. Luton: Deborah, it’s so true.

[00:29:13] Scott W. Luton: And to add another point to yours about how, talking about contingencies and, and, and, uh, disruption, right? While we’re trying to minimize it, we, we talk about that. ’cause it only adds confidence. It helps with preparation, it helps mitigating, uh, the typical friction that comes with any change. And there’s lots of different ways we define that friction.

[00:29:33] Scott W. Luton: So that’s good stuff there. Alright, I wanna follow back up to Ahmed here. Uh, I wanna go back to North Star. That’s the customer. Why, and this, this, this is gonna be a, um, one of those questions that, that may be very obvious, but I want you to speak to it with a really fine, fine tooth comb. Why is it important to speak to customer’s language when planning a solution and what’s the best way there?

[00:29:54] Ahmed Arif: Yeah, well, we talked about getting alignment and minimizing disruption. What are the best ways to do that Is to speak the same language. You know, you can’t build trust and confidence with a client if you don’t really understand their world and how they operate. But when you start doing that, you really prove that you get their business.

[00:30:11] Ahmed Arif: You understand what the critical like non-negotiables are for their business and their customers. So, you know, every operation has their flows, their processes, their quirks, and if you can get on the same page with acronyms, phrases, code, words, you know, what, what applications they use, super, super important.

[00:30:28] Ahmed Arif: And the how is all about, you know, establishing like a end to end document. That goes from inbound to outbound of whatever we’re about to tweak. If we can get on the same page from inbound to outbound on all the phrases, all the technology, the equipment, the IT side, uh, you’re gonna set yourself up for success.

[00:30:45] Ahmed Arif: And the ultimate compliment is when somebody on the customer side comes up to you after a few weeks and says, well, I thought you worked for us. I didn’t even know you didn’t work for us. That’s, that is how you know you’re doing a good job.

[00:30:58] Scott W. Luton: You’ve just been promoted from second lieutenant to first Lieutenant?

[00:31:00] Scott W. Luton: Uh uh, Ahmed. I’ll tell you, that’s golden. Been there, done that advice. And Deborah, if you could speak to one element of what he just shared there. We’ve got a big time challenge as an industry and have had forever in the not so common vernacular. We could because different parts of the world, different parts of operations, different sectors have different acronyms and we’re not always TA talking the same language.

[00:31:23] Scott W. Luton: Speak to that or something else Ahmed said.

[00:31:25] Deborah Dull: Absolutely. Uh, look, I love standards. We don’t get to talk about standards enough, but we have, and we have different standards bodies for the supply chain field. Of course, we go to the Association for Supply Chain Management and the score model, uh, it’s out there.

[00:31:39] Deborah Dull: It’s more than process, which people know already. It’s practices, it’s performance metrics and it’s people skills. So also, if you wanna go, uh, into a new part of supply chain, you can go off and check out the people skills that you need to develop. And so having this idea of like a Rosetta Stone so that when we all get together.

[00:31:53] Deborah Dull: At conferences, we use this Rosetta Stone language, a standards language, but when we’re in our own four walls, we often use our own language. And that’s the piece that augment really explained well on. To ha be mistaken as an employee is such an honor. And that I think also speaks to the joy of supply chain is jumping in and learning.

[00:32:13] Deborah Dull: Supply chain, supply chain. We all do it a little differently, but we all do it the same. And so being able to go in and learn the language around being able an exchange student and coming out being fluid is a pretty cool experience.

[00:32:26] Scott W. Luton: It is cool. Solving problems is cool, and we got lots of old, new problems to solve in global supply chain, for that matter, global business.

[00:32:33] Scott W. Luton: And Deborah, I love your mention of the Rosetta Stone as a big history nerd. That’s a great reference there, man. Let’s see here. We’re gonna get into my, one of my favorite parts with this, one of these last segments we’ll get into today. Real world examples. Some been there, done that. Advice for folks in the back with their arms crossed saying, so what, Hey, this, this bud’s for you.

[00:32:53] Scott W. Luton: So Will, can you share an example of a customer exploring a thoughtful, slow, but successful pilot for retrofit?

[00:33:01] Will Mansard: Yeah, I’ve got a couple examples. Let me start with one of our clients in the pharmaceutical space. We did a a big project for them several years ago, and I was part of that team and I remember walking in the warehouse for the first time and it was just wall to wall with.

[00:33:18] Will Mansard: Equipment nowhere, nowhere to build anything. And they had a vision. They wanted to turn that warehouse into, you know, world class leading, uh, leading in the market. They made ambitions for lowering costs per unit, shipped outta the warehouse. And it was gonna take a very thoughtful approach. It was open heart surgery, and you know, you’re gonna, you’re gonna feel it.

[00:33:39] Will Mansard: There’s gonna, there’s gonna be a scar most likely. So anyways, we, we ventured down that road with them and it ended up being a very successful project. But, you know, what we had to do collectively with them is put together a very detailed plan. But it was one of these situations where. There wasn’t any room to do anything, so step one, we had to clear out some space and so customer had to repl the warehouse.

[00:34:01] Will Mansard: They had to densify a little bit. They had to take some product and actually push it to a different warehouse for fulfillment for, you know, a couple years while we went through this project, we ended up building half of the system. Once we had half of the space cleared out, we, we built half the system.

[00:34:18] Will Mansard: We turned it on, we got everything running smoothly. And then once we did that, we, we filled up the rest of the system and cleared out the rest of the space and then we expanded it. So we had this, you know, large system in mind, but we built it in two different phases. And, you know, if you think about that, it’s gonna, it’s gonna take a little bit longer.

[00:34:37] Will Mansard: Yeah, it’s gonna cost a little bit more to do that. It’s gonna be a little bit more impactful to your business. ’cause now you have a, you have a construction project going on for, you know, more than you would if you just had a refilled operation to do it. Yep. But if they didn’t have a vision and if they wouldn’t have went through the process, they wouldn’t have ended up with the great results.

[00:34:54] Will Mansard: And now, you know, they’d had some incredible results. It’s a market leading solution. It’s lowest cost per unit warehouse in their network. Uh, breaking records on throughputs, you know, by the week. And so just. Just a really, really good story and it reminds me. That anything can be done right? Anything can be done.

[00:35:11] Will Mansard: You get a bunch of engineers together, working collectively with the customers. As one team, we can figure

[00:35:15] Scott W. Luton: it out. I love that. Alright, I gotta, I gotta interrupt for just a second before we get to the second example, Deborah. Three quick comments there on that first example. Vision is so powerful and finding customers and organizations that have it and are willing to lean into the tough things because it unlocks doors and windows of opportunity.

[00:35:34] Scott W. Luton: That is a beautiful thing. Secondly, that phased approach, it was a right thing to do. That’s why they did it, and it probably helped with realizing an an ROIA lot sooner and minimizing disruption. And thirdly, that two-phase approach, I think it was two-phase, reminded me of. Changing aquariums. You gotta act, acclimate the fish, right?

[00:35:54] Scott W. Luton: You can’t just dump, you know, beautiful, expensive fish into a new aquarium. We gotta, we gotta do it gradually. Deborah, your comments on that first example.

[00:36:01] Deborah Dull: You know, I have to say about a decade ago, IMAX released a movie that was something like how engineers Will Save the World or Engineers Will the World.

[00:36:10] Deborah Dull: It was meant for children. It was like a 35 minutes of film, but I absolutely went, and that’s what I thought think of in this is engineers could do everything and I’m just. Wishing that there were mini series on all of these so we could watch that progression over time of, of this chalked full building.

[00:36:25] Deborah Dull: And it was such a good story. Well, to show and paint the picture. Uh, and I think all of us are eager then to find out what about the next one.

[00:36:32] Voiceover: Yes.

[00:36:33] Deborah Dull: But you, and now we understand why have u II both been in your jobs for so long? So it’s just sounds absolutely fascinating.

[00:36:39] Scott W. Luton: So true. Will, so, uh, what’s the second example

[00:36:42] Will Mansard: you got?

[00:36:43] Will Mansard: All right. Number two client in the, uh, the semiconductor business. And they were, they were unique in their own ways. All of our, our clients have some nuance to their business, but this particular client was very new to automation. And, uh, this was a really good example of something we talk about a lot in that is making sure that we’re meeting our clients where they are not where we want them to be, right?

[00:37:05] Will Mansard: Because we do this every day and these projects for us, they seem simple. And for our clients, it’s a very big deal where it’s a, it’s a large capital expense most of the time. Risk of disruption in their business and all these things. We gotta make sure that we’re meeting ’em where they are and walking them, you know, holding their hand through the project.

[00:37:23] Will Mansard: But this particular client was wanting to adopt goods to person automation. Okay. And do Vicki. And, um, so we, you know, what they wanted to do. They were very hesitant to do that. That was very new to them. It was a new building and was gonna, they were spending lots and lots of money in this new operation.

[00:37:39] Will Mansard: They wanted to be best in class. They have any experience. And so what they did was we basically built a mini system. So we, we took the, the, uh, the product that we had, uh, settled on to use, and we built a little mini system, and it was done in parallel with the large system, but it, it gave us about an additional six months of time where we could build mini systems, set it up, test out the software, test all the interfaces, let them get a little bit of experience picking from the new system, like in a demonstration environment.

[00:38:07] Will Mansard: Yeah. And then by that time we were ready to build the big system again. Ultimately, it took more time. It cost a little bit more. It was probably more of a disruption for our operations team that was leading it. It was more time to have it, had to invest it in this project, but at the end of the day, it’s that whole crawl, walk, run approach.

[00:38:25] Will Mansard: Yes, yes. Sometimes you gotta do it, you gotta do it. And they ended up, there was a very successful project and I think they were happy that they spent the extra money and and invested the time to do the pilot

[00:38:34] Scott W. Luton: first. Undoubtedly the immense value of testing. We’re, we’re launching a big piece of technology and we are testing that thing from top to bottom, from left to right.

[00:38:44] Scott W. Luton: It’s so, so important. But before I go to Deborah and also another great call out where Will started meeting the customers where they are, it’s like the golden rule of eCommerce, right? It is been so successful meeting where customers are their problems, not how we’ve always solutioned. Ahmed comment, if you would, we’ll just share two great.

[00:39:03] Scott W. Luton: Stories and examples that I think a lot of folks here probably can relate to at least certain themes there. What do you think is one of the biggest takeaways from those two stories that folks should wrap their head around?

[00:39:14] Ahmed Arif: I mean, just collaboration and getting on the same page. Taking the, the project and not looking at it as a transaction, but more of a true partnership of we are mutually in this together.

[00:39:23] Ahmed Arif: And both of those stories, uh, showcase that

[00:39:26] Scott W. Luton: undoubtedly and, and Deborah. All right. I like both of those examples. It, I’m not sure which one I like more. Like you said, it’s like picking a favorite kid or something. What’d you hear from in that second example, Deborah

[00:39:38] Deborah Dull: building like a flight simulator. The mini system kind of felt like giving the team a chance to try on a big complex system before they go for it.

[00:39:47] Deborah Dull: It reminds me sometimes we like to go slow to go fast. That’s right. Uh, sometimes we can go fast to go fast, uh, and that works. The other one to call out for everybody listening. Uh, what Will said, gosh, it’s true in our day to days too on what we do is simple to us because we become the experts in our jobs.

[00:40:02] Deborah Dull: We’re the best in the world at what it is that we do, and nobody else knows how to do what we do. That’s why we’re doing it, and we get frustrated sometimes and explaining our perspective, and we know we’re right. But we’ve gotta meet ’em where they are and that that could be, if you’re a project manager, inventory manager, category manager, anything it is that you’re doing, you’ve gotta remember that, that you’re the expert and you need to simplify it for the folks you’re trying to tell a story to so that it can see the expertise that you have and the experience you’re bringing.

[00:40:31] Scott W. Luton: Lovely Ed is a outstanding comment there, because as humans we can oftentimes, whether you’re in supply chain or not, assume everyone knows what we know. And you know, sometimes, especially if you’re in your craft, you’re moving fast and you can easily leave someone behind. That’s a great leadership tip there, Deborah.

[00:40:48] Scott W. Luton: Um, well, what should enterprise customers consider before deciding to retrofit or upgrade? It’s a really important question.

[00:40:57] Will Mansard: Yeah. Well, when I think about an enterprise customer, you know, what comes to mind is some of our larger customers, they’ve got, they, they’re multinational company, they got operations all over the world and they’re gonna do something at scale.

[00:41:10] Will Mansard: And I think, uh, a couple things that, uh, I would keep in mind based on my experience working with these kind of clients is we talk a lot about having a vision. Staying disciplined to that vision. While every warehouse has its own nuances and our clients have, you know, warehouses all over the world and, and, uh, they’re, they’re doing lots of different things, but there’s some core problem we’re trying to solve for, right?

[00:41:32] Will Mansard: Could be justification, could be cost avoidance, could be. A better PICU process, whatever it may be. But we’ve seen a lot of success with clients that are disciplined in the rollout strategy, and that is trying to adopt very similar, not the exact same type of automation at multiple warehouses. Again, a lot of efficiencies this way.

[00:41:53] Will Mansard: Projects just go a lot smoother, especially after the first one. You can kind of rinse and repeat and then. Tied to that, probably a close second, is, uh, related to the software strategy and for all the cool things we do, um, and all the robotics that are out there, what usually becomes the most complex and challenging part of any integration is the software.

[00:42:13] Will Mansard: And so we really like to take a thoughtful approach to that balance between doing something that is, say a standard or off the shelf from a software standpoint, been done before, tried and true, versus developing new software. That’s unique to a customer’s business and you gotta be able to do both. But balancing that is really, really important.

[00:42:35] Will Mansard: And for an enterprise customer, talking about supporting an operation or operations all over the world, many different warehouses, if you can standardize on the software all the way from the WMS, the warehouse execution system, down to how you’re controlling the actual equipment on the floor with the same software and multiple warehouses.

[00:42:58] Will Mansard: Man, it makes everybody’s lives easier. So those are the two tips for me.

[00:43:02] Scott W. Luton: I love that. And e by the way, folks, easier is good, especially when your hardworking team members are are, are fighting so hard to have good days and to delight customers and take care of suppliers, whole ecosystem and dealing with all the change and disrupt.

[00:43:16] Scott W. Luton: Easier is really good. So that brings me to two, two quick thoughts, Deborah, before I circle back. Number one, that balance between custom versus kind of cookie cutter, right? There’s nothing wrong with cookie cutter when it works right? Costs are usually low. Uh, it’s been vetted a thousand times a million times.

[00:43:34] Scott W. Luton: That’s good. As someone said earlier this week, no one wants to be the first person to buy. Uh, new software and be the first user, right? So it’s good that balance. But secondly, Deborah, this is what I, uh, you threw me off with your great leadership comment a minute ago, talking about speed. Captain Mansard, there’s a great saying.

[00:43:53] Scott W. Luton: I think the US seals, the Navy Seals have it. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, and there’s so many applications to, of that, to supply chain. Deborah, what did you hear there though in Captain Mansards? Key considerations that customers, enterprise customers in particular gotta keep in mind?

[00:44:12] Deborah Dull: Absolutely simple is.

[00:44:14] Deborah Dull: Best, and sometimes we don’t get the choice to be simple, right? Uh, we might have many, many, many dozen warehouses, for example. And I’ve spoken with supply chains that tried to go to do the same software and they get done and then there’s an acquisition, whoops. And now they’ve just acquired a bunch of new sites and none of those are on the same system.

[00:44:36] Deborah Dull: I’ve also seen where, which is a good practice depending on your. Problem solving philosophy. They push decisions closest to the point of work and they allow a facility manager to choose the software stack for that facility, which is great independence for them. But of course you end up with all different flavors.

[00:44:52] Deborah Dull: And so simplicity, we’ve gotta keep that as a north star. The reality is we rarely get the luxury of doing that. And so that’s where we come in. How do we simplify the complex and how do we make sure that it can feel copy exact, even if we have different tools in our tool Bill?

[00:45:10] Scott W. Luton: Well said Deborah. Alright, so let’s do this.

[00:45:13] Scott W. Luton: Will, um, yeah, I bet there’s gonna be some folks out there that as they think through the last hour, they’re like, Hmm, I bet I’m gonna walk back out to where the, the go. Go back to the gemba. Where all the true experts of what we do are, and I’m, I’m gonna see what ideas they may have because I bet we’ve got some tremendous opportunities in this current warehouse that, by the way, costs a bunch of money to build, but there’s room for improvement here.

[00:45:41] Scott W. Luton: So Will, if they wanted to track you and Ahmed down, whether you’re at home across the great state of Indiana, or as you’re out and about in industry, uh, working with all the movers and shakers, how can they track you down Will and start working with Bastian Solutions?

[00:45:57] Will Mansard: Yeah, well, I hope we’re easy to get ahold of, bastiansolution.com, and we’ve got a, a great website, lots of good case studies and videos.

[00:46:04] Will Mansard: You can learn a ton. Best way is to just submit an inquiry on our website. Yeah. And I, I assure you that I see those emails on a daily basis and every customer who has submitted something to Bastian what questions they’re asking. And, you know, our, our marketing team is distributing those out to the right people so we can get in touch and, um.

[00:46:22] Will Mansard: You know, Ahed, Lieutenant Ahmed’s, uh, first Lieutenant Ahmed, I almost said second Lieutenant. He’s very active on social media, you know, so he’s, he’s the easiest one to get ahold of all kinds of good stuff out there. So you go follow Ahmed.

[00:46:34] Scott W. Luton: Um, you know, I’m with you. I was, I was, I am a new follower of First Lieutenant Ahmed and you drop a lot of good focused, but also some, some, uh, more general business and leadership advice, reg.

[00:46:47] Scott W. Luton: I love it. So folks, we are dropping some links here. I wanna take him one by one. First off, Ahmed, you gotta respond to that high praise. Uh, from Will there, uh, you like sharing. Uh, your experience and expertise and perspectives regularly? Huh?

[00:47:01] Ahmed Arif: I’m just surprised people wanna listen so, you know, I, I just do it, but you know, apparently people wanna hear it, so Yeah, you got it.

[00:47:07] Ahmed Arif: You know, you find these little observations or nuggets in life and as you see ’em, you note ’em down and then you reflect on ’em and kinda let it percolate and then eventually something good comes out.

[00:47:16] Scott W. Luton: I’m with you. Well keep it up. Keep it up. And I wanna go back to Will, Will says he gets all of these and I bet he does.

[00:47:23] Scott W. Luton: Venture over to BastianSolutions.com and, uh, if there’s something. That you want help with, make sure you talk with the captain and the first lieutenant here. I, I got a hank Deborah. I got a hankering suspicion that, uh, they’re pretty good at what they do. Huh?

[00:47:37] Deborah Dull: I think so. I am looking forward to filling out the inquiry form.

[00:47:41] Deborah Dull: I have a number of projects actually I need help on. Oh, okay. And I, looking forward to taking this conversation to the next phase.

[00:47:48] Scott W. Luton: I love it. I love it. Well, let’s help, let’s help the, the Deborah’s out there. Do just that. So I’ve, I’ve kind of halfway asked you this question, but I wanna do it again. Uh, Ahmed.

[00:47:57] Scott W. Luton: How can folks track you down?

[00:48:00] Ahmed Arif: Just like Will said, our website, but uh, also on like LinkedIn, that’s the best place.

[00:48:05] Scott W. Luton: Okay. And look, there, we got one click away from connecting with first Lieutenant Ahmed Arif. I’ll check out that out. I got promotion during this call. This is, you did, you did, you know that’s kinda what they did back in World War ii, right?

[00:48:18] Scott W. Luton: Actually, folks would, would, would move up ranks really quickly. It’s amazing if you go back in military history and you’ve done that here, right here in the last hour. Uh, alright, so Will, how can folks track you down too? Is it, is it LinkedIn or is it somewhere else?

[00:48:30] Will Mansard: Yep. That’s the way to do it. That’s the way to do it.

[00:48:32] Will Mansard: Alright, we’re so making that’s and easy.

[00:48:34] Scott W. Luton: We’re gonna drop yours, your contact right there as well. So let’s do this, Deborah. We’re about to get your patented key takeaway, but before we do, I want to share a couple of great resources that the team has brought. Hey, we can all use more resources, especially practical resources.

[00:48:51] Scott W. Luton: I wanna start with this great strategy guide, consulting strategies for warehouse distribution operations from all of our friends there at Bastian Solutions. Y’all check that out. Uh, we’ll put the link right there in the chat. And then secondly, I love use cases. Deborah, you like use cases.

[00:49:07] Deborah Dull: I love use cases.

[00:49:08] Scott W. Luton: I do too. It is so practical. I like to see the problem, I like to see what was done and then I like to see the impact and Will and Ahmed do a lot of that. So here y’all can check out a Hercules Ceiling Products Case Study, check it out and, and plus I like the video version of the, of the case study.

[00:49:25] Scott W. Luton: That’s even better. So we’re dropping links to both of those resources right there in the chat. So Deborah. Right. You’ve got the toughest question of the whole day, I think, because by my count and my 17 pages of notes, there’s lots of good stuff that Will and Ahmed have delivered. What is your key patented takeaway from today’s conversation?

[00:49:46] Deborah Dull: You know, Scott, today I’m gonna have to give my royalties to the captain, uh, ’cause I’m gonna take the takeaway from him. Earlier in the show, he said. What’s the cost of doing nothing?

[00:49:56] Will Mansard: Hmm.

[00:49:56] Deborah Dull: And as we think about projects, we often get excited about the potential of change, and we’ll hit some friction of why do we wanna change?

[00:50:04] Deborah Dull: Truly? And while we should understand the cost of what we’re doing right now, it actually could be really difficult to figure out or slice of the puzzle and that run cost, but it’s not really the cost. Of doing nothing today. It’s about the cost of doing nothing 18 months or two years from now. And these projects sometimes take that long.

[00:50:22] Deborah Dull: So if we want to be in a different state two years from now, we’ve gotta be thinking about that today. We’ve got all these whizzbang technologies I’ve talked about all around us. And Scott, you said no one wants to be first, but gosh, that that ship has sailed. You know, a lot, even the newest technologies are out.

[00:50:37] Deborah Dull: Supply chains are using them, teams are using them. So think about what would it mean if we did absolutely nothing. Two years from now, the world has moved around us. Our partners have moved, our customers have moved. As suppliers have moved, our employees have moved and have higher expectations of us as a leadership team.

[00:50:52] Deborah Dull: So that’s our takeaway for today. What’s the cost of doing nothing?

[00:50:56] Scott W. Luton: What’s the cost of doing nothing? And sometimes, a lot of times it’s far greater than, uh, you can even consciously envision Massive, massive cost. Good stuff there. Deborah Dull always a pleasure. I love your perspective on these shows. Uh, and by the way, folks, check out Deborah Dull, Circular Supply Chains.

[00:51:13] Scott W. Luton: You wanna follow her on across social and check out her books. She is on fire as well. Alright, Will Mansard with Bastian Solutions. It is terrific to have you back with us and I’m so glad you brought great friends that has been doing big things just like you. Ahmed Arif is terrific to meet you and learn from your perspective today as well.

[00:51:34] Scott W. Luton: Will y’all please rejoin us again soon, Ahmed? Does that sound good? Sure love it. Outstanding and Will. We’re gonna have you back in between your family trips around the world. Hey, happy to do it. Appreciate you having, you bet. Alright folks, I’ve enjoyed the last hour and Deborah, always a pleasure. I enjoyed your perspective and kind of how you rounded out these tremendous opportunities we heard from Will, and especially with how we can realize these opportunities in a smart.

[00:52:02] Scott W. Luton: Productive, outcome focused and limited disruptive way, if that makes sense. So folks, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I have. Big thanks to Will Ahmed and Deborah for joining us. Big thanks for all of y’all to tuned in. Know we didn’t hit everybody’s comment and question, but you still have got homework.

[00:52:20] Scott W. Luton: You gotta take one thing. You got a big truckload of options too. One thing that Will Ahmed or Deborah shared today and put it into practice deeds, not words. That’s how we’re gonna keep transforming this beautiful industry of global supply chain. With all that said, behalf, the whole team, Scott Luten, challenging you to do good, give forward, be the change that’s needed.

[00:52:38] Scott W. Luton: We’ll see you next time. Right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks. Bye.

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