Intro/Outro (00:02):

Welcome to Supply Chain. Now 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 time.

Scott Luton (00:14):

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luten and Tantra Bellamy here with you on supply chain. Now welcome to today’s live stream. Hey Tantra, how you doing?

Tandreia Bellamy (00:24):

I’m great, Scott. How are you doing?

Scott Luton (00:26):

I’m wonderful. I know you’re coming off an incredible weekend. Weather was largely nice here in metro Atlanta and I think the fellowship was even better.

Tandreia Bellamy (00:33):

The fellowship was tremendous. Had a great, great, great friends given weekend. Seven out of nine guests were from out of town and we just had a great time hanging out and bonding and everybody cooked something and everybody helped clean, so it wasn’t a big burden from that standpoint and we just had a blast.

Scott Luton (00:54):

Outstanding. Sounds like your fellowship Logistics was moving like a world-class organization. Great to have you here Tan. Really excited about today’s show, folks, it’s the buzz. Every Monday at 12 noon Eastern time, we discuss a variety of news and developments across global supply chain. Really global business news that matters is what we like to call it. And folks, the buzz is powered by our friends over@autoscheduler.ai who’s on a mission to make your warehouse operations smarter, more efficient and adaptable. You can learn more@autoscheduler.ai. Now, Tanger, we’ve got a big show teed up here today. We’re going to be offering a best practice or two on leadership coaching. We all need a good coaching life. We’ll talk about the moves one company is making to navigate this challenging trade environment. Hey, I love case studies and practical examples. We’ll be talking about warehousing, cybersecurity trends all that much more. And in about 10 minutes or so, we’re welcoming a special repeat guest today on the Buzz Ilya Preston, co-founder and CEO with Pacaf who’s going to be sharing intriguing perspective on the fast growing cold chain industry. RIA should be one heck of a show, huh?

Tandreia Bellamy (01:56):

It’s going to be packed,

Scott Luton (01:58):

Jam packed. That is right. So we’re going to have to stay on top of our orchestration, our decision intelligence making and our overall supply chain optimization to get it all done. Stay tuned for great show folks. Hey, two things before we get going. Give us your take in the comments. We’d love to hear what you’re thinking about your take on these topics, whether you’re tuned in via LinkedIn, YouTube X, Facebook, Twitch to matter. Let us know what you think. Just like Tricia, Tricia who shares happy buzz day, say hello and let us know where you’re watching from. That’s right. We’d love connecting the dots for sure. And secondly, if you enjoy the show today, we’d love for you to share it with your friends, your network, your Aunt Edna up in Idaho, you name it, they’ll be better off because you did. Hey Leah, Kim is back with us via LinkedIn from beautiful Seattle, Washington. Leah, hope this finds you well. I wonder what the weather tan, I wonder what the weather’s like up in Seattle this time of year. What do you think?

Tandreia Bellamy (02:48):

It’s probably looking like ours is today, Scott. Maybe not as sunny, but nice. Cool.

Scott Luton (02:54):

We’ll see if

Tandreia Bellamy (02:55):

That’s why I have to have on my fall shirt because we actually have fall today.

Scott Luton (02:59):

We will see if you’re right. So Leah let us know.

Tandreia Bellamy (03:02):

Alright,

Scott Luton (03:03):

So we got a lot of stuff as RA mentioned, a lot of stuff to get to today and we’re going to start with three things before we bring on our excellent featured guest here today. Let’s start with our latest edition of With that said, which published over the weekend we started RA with the news, including this interesting perspective from World Economic Forum. Folks you may not know it’s cybersecurity Awareness month. And this is going to surprise nobody because as you see there in front of you over the last four years, the average weekly cyber attacks on organizations, well it’s more than doubled. However, this might surprise some folks. According to some people’s data, cybersecurity budget growth has continued to decline from 17% growth in 2022 to 4% growth this year. Now that seems to be a problem, Tanya, we also touched on a big potential disruption that may bring automotive supply chains everywhere to a full stop.

(03:53):

So we asked you to keep your eye on what’s going on with the Dutch chip maker. Next, I think I’m saying that right next is been the target of trade sanctions by both the US and by China. It’s right in the middle, which is threatened ship supply for large portions of the automotive supply chain ecosystem. So beyond those two stories, in this addition of what that said, you can see a lot more resources, data points and upcoming live events. Tan. Andrea, did you happen? I know you had a busy weekend. Did you happen to take a glance at what was in this edition? And with that said,

Tandreia Bellamy (04:23):

Absolutely Scott and the cybersecurity budgeting is just unbelievable to me. I just don’t understand how when everybody is getting more and more attacks, you can’t flip on your computer for your emails or your texts without getting spammed by somebody or somebody somewhere that’s trying to, so it just is illogical for that. It’s like safety. If you’re going to ignore it, you’re going to have a significant event that could have serious repercussions for your organization. Keeping an eye on what’s going on and being very diligent is extremely important. But for organizations that is a must.

Scott Luton (05:04):

Well said tendre. That old adage, you figure out what’s important to you based on your calendar and your checkbook, where you spend your time and where you put your dollars. None of us are surprised with the growing quantity or complexity of the cybersecurity landscape right now. But to see budgets and their growth drop back that dire was really interesting. But folks, hey, let us know your take. Check out the latest with that said and subscribe so you get it almost every week we baking a little bit of leeway there and let us know what you think. Hey, Alan Jacque tuned in from beautiful Canada, the Rodney Dangerfield of Global Supply Chain. Tan was the nickname we and Alan and Amanda came up with. So Alan, great to see you here today. T squared. Oh my gosh, he’s calling out the disruptions over at Amazon this morning and Ria, those have lingered for a while. I was just on Amazon right before we came on here a few minutes ago and it’s still down. So speak of the devil, I’m not sure what the root cause is just yet, but Tantra, did it delay any of your Monday morning activities?

Tandreia Bellamy (06:03):

I didn’t do any Monday morning on Amazon, but I did Sunday afternoon and thankfully I didn’t have a problem.

Scott Luton (06:09):

Okay, good, good, good. And as T squared says, cybersecurity is boring until something big happens. That’s right, well said. Let’s see here. I want to shift over from cybersecurity, which it should be cybersecurity awareness month every month, but also it should be supply chain leadership and coaching month every month. I want to touch on this critical element for organizations everywhere, talent development. Now effective coaching is one of the many elements that go into the talent development equation. Tantra, you’ve coached countless individuals in your successful supply chain leadership career. What would be one key best practice for current and potential coaches out there?

Tandreia Bellamy (06:48):

Leaders have to develop great active listening skills so that you can coach through questioning.

(06:54):

A lot of mentees really don’t know how much they know until you start questioning them and getting them to think about things from a different perspective. When you can get your mentee to self-discover a different perspective, then they’re not trying to think like you. They’re really learning to think for themselves, which lets them have more of a 360 examination of situations, whether it’s people issues or system problems or whatever it may be. Being able to take a step back, really break it down and know how to question what’s going on and to really be able to think through and examine it from a different perspective will lead them to a more well-rounded solution. It’s just going to help them have a better outcome, which is then going to give them confidence and what you’re doing

Scott Luton (07:48):

Tandra, love it. Love it folks. Make sure you follow or connect with RA Bellamy, especially on LinkedIn for a lot more leadership and coaching. Goodness, just like that. And I would just add one more thing then of course there’s a long list, we’d be here for hours. But one thing over the weekend, there’s a YouTube channel I watch regularly called Pilot Debrief, and it’s a former Air Force pilot that flew the F 15, I think maybe F 16. Anyway, he dives into mishaps and crashes. Unfortunately a lot of them lives are lost and he kind of analyzes what went wrong from a human standpoint, from a machine standpoint. And it’s really fascinating. And one of the things that came out RA this weekend in episode was he was really stressing that instructors that teach and coach pilots patience is so important because everyone’s not going to learn and absorb and the light bulb’s not going to click off at the same time at the same rate for everybody. So coaches that are patient he put above all others. Your quick response to that,

Tandreia Bellamy (08:43):

It ties in directly what I was saying because you have to be patient to actively listen. To actively listen. You may have to ask the same question three or four times to see do they really understand what you’re asking, whether it’s a concept or a soft skill, conflict management or a technical skill, being able to really listen to what the person says will let you know where those gaps in understanding are.

Scott Luton (09:11):

Excellent point. If you don’t know that, you can have a hard time really making a bigger impact on that person’s journey. Excellent stuff. Tania. Bellamy. Gosh, we would talk for hours here, but I’m going to move along. We got a big guest coming up. I got one more thing I want to share. I take the world’s worst selfies tan. I’m still working on that, but this is me. I had a great time out at SAP Connect in Las Vegas a week or two ago. I enjoyed the opportunity of meeting old new friends, including this is Dominic Metzker, who’s president and chief product Officer with SAP Supply Chain Management. Now, big news came out of this event including the launch of SAP Supply Chain orchestration. Folks, if you want to learn more about this, come join us on November 4th as Corin versa. And I host David Vallejo with SAP, who’s going to talk all about this development and the power of orchestration across global supply chains.

(09:58):

And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion, Tania, we’re going to talk more about orchestration today with another mover and shaker, but are you ready, Tania, as I introduce that mover that said mover and shaker here on the buzz? Absolutely. You’re always ready Tan. Always ready. Well, we’ve got a terrific guest joining us here today on the Buzz Powered by Auto Scheduler. Ilya Preston is a seasoned supply chain leader that’s working roles for some of the biggest brands in global industry, including Cummins and PWC. Now about seven years or so ago, ia, co-founded Pacaf, a logistics orchestration and decision intelligence platform that’s doing some really big things, especially in the cold chain space. Please join me in welcoming Ilya Preston, co-founder and CEO of Pacaf. Ilya, how are you doing this afternoon?

Ilya Preston (10:42):

Great to be with you. It’s nice, chilly and sunny. So no complaints on my end.

Scott Luton (10:47):

Yeah, I love getting weather updates. I’m not sure why, but I love it. And Ria, I’ll tell you, the weather this week in Atlanta is going to be just gorgeous as well. Ilia of course is in Indianapolis where clearly it’s nice too. But tantra, we’re going to get outside and get some of that fresh air, huh?

Tandreia Bellamy (11:02):

Most definitely.

Scott Luton (11:03):

Alright, so Ria and Ileum. Ia, great to have you back with us by popular demand. I want to start with a fun warmup question. So today’s many things, it marks the start rather of Diwali. So happy Diwali to all those who celebrate around the world. It’s also International Chef Day, which makes me hungry. It’s World Statistics Day. I think every day is should be Data and Statistics Day and it’s Heroes Day in Jamaica, heroes Day. And that’s where I want to check in with both of y’all, right? So I want to use this wonderful Jamaican holiday to ask you both, who is one of your heroes in particular, someone that may have furthered your own career or someone that you admire out in industry. Ilya, what comes to mind?

Ilya Preston (11:42):

Yeah, so mine’s probably not all that exciting, but definitely close to home. I would say first of all, my parents for immigrating over to the US and obviously giving us the opportunity to do things like start companies and grow them like Pacaf. But certainly my mom, my mom’s been a very big part of Pac Safe’s journey, I’d say, especially in the early days. We’ve been at it for about seven years now. We’re coming up on our birthday, I think next week or maybe this week, maybe it’s this Friday, October 25th actually. So we’re coming up on our seventh birthday. We’ve been at it for a while. The last several years we’ve seen a lot of growth and we figured things out. But those first two, three years especially were not easy. And certainly there were times where both my co-founder and I, and even our small team at that point, we had make or break moments. And I think for each of those key moments, my mom was there and was very supportive. And whether it be emotionally or advice or financially, she kind of had our back and that enabled us to make it through those toughest of times. And here we are today.

Scott Luton (12:48):

Love that. Congrats on the eureka moments. Clearly you are having and this new chapter of growth, that’s awesome. I love your parents’ immigration story. I’d love to hear a lot more about that. And then of course, your mom in those wobbly of knees, moments, whether your knees are knocking and shaking and she’s got your back. I love that Tantra. I’ll tell you, between your coaching and Ilya’s founder story, we could be here, have a whole different version of the buzz, but what’s one of your special heroes? Tania?

Tandreia Bellamy (13:15):

My great-grandmother. My great-grandmother was my rock, my heart. She really instilled my work ethic, which helped me tremendously with school and also with UPS. My great grandmother was born in 1904, had a sixth grade education, but was the smartest person that I knew. She managed a household, she took care of budgets, she gave me so many life lessons or still with me, I lost her and in 1996, but I had my great grandmother until I was 32. So she is a huge, huge, huge part of who I am as a person. I used to tell her when I was young, okay grandma, when I go to college, you got to come and stay in the dorm with me.

Scott Luton (13:57):

Oh man, something tells me that she was fearless, probably ready to do that. So her name was Catherine. That’s correct. For all the Catherine’s out there. Really appreciate that. And Ia, your mother’s name is Irene. Irene. Okay. Well let’s take from just a quick moment to celebrate all the Catherine’s and Irene’s out there that make so many things happen at home and at work and across industry every single day. Love that IA and Tania, really quick. Nadine, great to see you from Saudi Arabia back with us on the buzz. Look forward to your perspective here today. This is, we’re going to figure out who this is from Indianapolis. I bet they might be a cults fan. Amanda and Trisha let me know. And finally, Trisha has also shared that earlier opportunity coming up in November, so check that out. Okay, we got a lot to get to here today, jam packed.

(14:41):

So we’re going to get down to business here on the buzz powered by our friends at Auto Scheduler. A lot of good stuff. I’m going to start with one of my least favorite topics. Yes, but we got to talk about it tariffs and the ongoing trade war. But I want to start how this one interesting company is navigating this ongoing situation. So tariffs are bound. I don’t have to tell Y any of Y Allall that some of the newest announced tariffs in the White House include 25% tariffs on heavy trucks and truck parts and a 10% tariff on buses all set to go into effect November 1st. Our forensic supply chain dive are reporting that furniture retailer Lovesac are seeing big gains from a four-step tariff plan. Now, I don’t know if y’all have seen any commercials, it’s the couch. I hope they’ll be able afford one day.

(15:19):

It’s really cool. They make more stuff than couches, but y’all may have seen any commercial. Now they’ve got a fascinating approach to building modern day, highly functional couches and other furniture, integrated furniture, as I’ll call it. Nevertheless, their four step approach to mitigating the trade environment includes one, negotiating new agreements with some of their longest serving suppliers. Two, shifting production out of China, which eventually could be as low as in terms of their production there as low as 13 to 14% of overall production by February, 2026. Number three, price increases. Yes, a lot of customers are going to be paying some of those price increases. And number four, cost cutting. Now this is probably a playbook that countless other organizations are using as well, right? One last thing, neat thing I find neat about Love Sack. The company says it has diverted over 180 million plastic bottles from landfill by incorporating the materials into its products. Get this, they chop up the bottles and the flakes, then they melt the flakes into chips, which then they spin into yarn that’s woven into its products. That is cool. But Ilia back on the four step tariff mitigation approach. Your thoughts?

Ilya Preston (16:25):

Well, as a recovering management consultant, I would say the playbook looks familiar, right? Raise pricing lower costs. So I think nothing too out of the ordinary or nothing jumps out. I could say that based on our own customer base, we’ve certainly seen a lot of companies kind of address the whole China tariff concern and moving stuff out of China as quickly as possible. And I think the article certainly mentions that to neighboring countries. We haven’t seen the kind of influx of nearshoring or onshoring into the US that we thought we would. A lot of manufacturing, assembly and production is still remaining outside of the country. And I’m sure domestic inflation maybe has something to do with that, but certainly there’s still a tremendous amount of cost benefit from partnering with various European and Asian countries, especially for that kind of work. We don’t do any work with obviously furniture retailers, but we do work in broader retail and especially in life sciences, and we’ve seen a lot of focus around cost reduction.

(17:29):

Now, cost reduction looks different I think across different industries in our industry and especially in life sciences. It’s looking for opportunities to move lanes from air to ocean. It’s looking to remove the amount of packaging or how long you’re qualifying packaging for with thermal life. It’s holding suppliers accountable with regards to performance and optimizing supplier selection and holding them accountable for SLAs and then collecting on those SLAs and penalties. I think a couple of maybe broader things that we saw in the article that also apply to what we’re seeing. There’s certainly been an influx of, I would say this is anecdotally at this point, but there’s been an influx of rail that’s been used as a mode of transport. And then I think the article also mentions optimization of warehousing. And we’ve seen that across the board, across all industries. So heavy investment into automation, heavy investment into visibility of in transit cargo and making sure that your warehouse crews synchronize their labor. No one product is coming in, have the right appointed, have people ready, not having downtime of them waiting around for a truck or getting there too early or getting there too late. So I think there’s been a fairly heavy investment across the board, but I think generally speaking from what we saw in the article, no real surprises, maximize revenue, reduce costs. It’s the old tried and true playbook.

Scott Luton (18:49):

What’s old is new. Again, loved your perspective there. Ilya and Tania, your thoughts on love sack approach, at least

Tandreia Bellamy (18:56):

As stated, the biggest surprise for me was that cost cutting was the last leg of the strategy. You have a lot of organizations that start with cost cutting and as we spoke about cybersecurity, you start out, you look at cost to say, oh, this cost is high and growing. We must have to cut it, we must need to cut it. And you can absolutely, positively have negative impacts when you start indiscriminately cutting without truly understanding the importance of the connectivity dependencies before you start the cost cutting. So I was happy to see that. Cost cutting was the last lead

Scott Luton (19:34):

Tan, a great call out. And our own Kim Reuter, one of our outstanding hosts that you’ve met. I know Andrea and ili, you may have met her as well. She was in a related supply chain dive article talking about, Hey folks, call timeout. Make sure you understand all the inputs where they’re from, so then you can kind of put together a sound plan for where there’s opportunities and where you’re most susceptible to tariff impact. So good stuff there. Kim Tan and ia. Good stuff. Really quick couple comments. Let’s see. Bobby Bobby’s tuned in from Indianapolis. He’s at this H-P-C-L-C conference. Hey Bobby, let us know some key takeaways there. Great to see you via LinkedIn, TE Maji from Seattle. We’re waiting to get a weather report from Seattle. Te Maji, great to see you here today. Let’s see here. Hey Ivan, the biggest Mets fan, I know at least east of the Mississippi is here tuned in from New Jersey.

(20:25):

Great to see you Ivan and Tricia is posting links to all these articles, so go check that out. One more comment, Amanda says, Hey, here’s to all the Catherine’s and Irene’s makes me tear up. Alright, so Ilya, you, one of the things you mentioned was warehousing. That’s where I want to go next, right from the story from the Wall Street Journal. So as reported by the WSJ, the world’s largest owner of industrial real estate says warehouse leasing decision-making and overall demand is picking up steam. This comes after about three years of slower demand. Now Chris Kaan, I hope I’m getting his last name right, with Prologis said just last week, that demand has clearly turned to corner quote Cushman and Wakefield says that the average warehouse vacancy rate across the country will remain flat at an 11 year high of 7.1% in third quarter 2025. That doesn’t sound great. However, it’s the first time in three years that vacancy rates haven’t increased. So it kind of reflects that we’re seeing a pickup inactivity. So ia, your thoughts on what we’re seeing domestically with the warehouse industry?

Ilya Preston (21:28):

Yeah, so I think mean it mirrors some of the broader economic trends and lagging indicators. So inflation, the rate of inflation increase has certainly turnaround. I think we’ve seen a lot of other economic indicators kind of start trending in a more positive direction over the last year. So I think it’s really a byproduct of at least a couple of different things. Number one is tariff uncertainty still looms large and I’m sure people want to kind of shore up and make sure their capacity is there, especially given the seasonality. So given what time of the year that we’re in, given that we’re coming up on holiday season and we’ve got Thanksgiving, Christmas, new Year’s, Valentine’s Day, a lot of big dollar holidays coming up, and so it’s really, I would say not a surprise given both the economic indicators and given the uncertainty around tariffs as well as I think where we are in time of year.

Scott Luton (22:24):

So no surprises. I wish we all had less surprises day to day in global supply chain. But Tantra, do you agree with Ilya? What’d you see here in the warehouse space? By the way, I should level set tantra. I think the count is 1.27 million warehouses you’ve been in and out of throughout your career. Is

Tandreia Bellamy (22:40):

That right? Yeah, I think that’s it. Yeah, I completely agree with Ilya. It’ll be interesting to see what inventory levels are doing. So are we having increased demand? Just because inventories are expanding because of the uncertainty? If inventory levels remain the same and warehouse demand increases, that means that consumer spending is moving in the right direction, that’s going to help the economy. If inventory levels start to expand because it’s just safety stock, then not as great a

Scott Luton (23:12):

Story, not as great a story. And we need more good stories certainly, but hey, things to keep our finger on the pulse of. I really appreciate that Ilya and Ria ssu via X. Hey, thanks for resharing the buzz here today. I hope you have a big week ahead. Also, looking forward to your perspective on India stories here today. Va Nathan from India via LinkedIn. Great to see you here today. And the good old sheriff, Tevin e Taylor Tan is here asking tough questions. Is demand picking up with warehousing or new builds slowing down to capacity? That’s a great question, Tevin. If you’ve got answers, let us know, but great to see you Tevin. We’re going to move right along in this jam packed edition of the Buzz Powered by our friends at Auto Schedule. I want to pull up this story. Not only folks is October manufacturing month, but it is also cybersecurity awareness month as we established earlier.

(24:03):

Now here’s an interesting read from our friends at CIO dive, which offers up findings from a survey of over 200 CEOs and CIOs in the United Kingdom and the US Clash of the Titans is not just a movie, right? What’s old is no. Again, the research shows that more than two in five, more than two in five CIOs are clashing with their CEOs when it comes to spending more IT investment dollars kind of goes and supports that earlier data that we shared on the front end. Andrea. Now perhaps a root cause is this one third of CIOs say they were not confident that they knew exactly what their CEO wanted from them. That’s telling, and only 36% of CIOs said their company is adequately investing in IT modernization. Alright, Ilya, as we mentioned, we’ve seen a lot of this for quite some time. The one third of CIO’s figure in terms they weren’t exactly sure what their successful role was essentially. They kind of surprised me, but your thoughts Ilya?

Ilya Preston (24:58):

Yeah, so I mean, earlier in my career I was in supply chain strategy. It was always very frustrating and telling for me to see functions at all levels of the organization, optimize for whatever primary KPI they’re optimizing for. So if you’re in procurement or sourcing, you’re optimizing for cost. If you’re in quality, you’re optimizing for zero defects. If you’re in materials or operations, you’re optimizing for inventory. I think the fact that this bubbles up to the highest levels isn’t overly surprising where you have competing priorities. I think maybe a big contributor to this is the rate of technology change is changing so fast, and I would venture to guess that most CIOs have a deeper grasp and stronger understanding of that change and of technology in general than a lot of the CEOs, especially at large organizations Now in our organization, we’re a 40 person company, my co-founder and CTO and I have to be on the same page a hundred percent of the time or this is never going to work.

(25:59):

So this is very unrelatable, I think to most startups that are starting out or in the growth phase and kind of going from, call it product market fit through scaling and growth and you have to be rowing in the same direction that you can’t have a company that goes from zero to one and then one to 10 and then 10 to a hundred without everybody rowing in the same direction. But at large organizations it’s, once again, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but not overly surprising. Again, I think it’s technological proficiency that may be playing a role here and the rate of change in general where CEOs can’t really keep up, they have a full-time job, right?

Scott Luton (26:36):

Good stuff there. And Tania, one of the elements that Ilia just shared there in the unsurprising bucket, I’ll put it, is something that I think of a lot in this era where we can break down silos more powerfully than ever before. It seems in some cases we’re building up silos more often than not. And when the CIO and the CEO aren’t aligned on how each other viewed each other’s roles, there’s just some serious silos. But your thoughts tan and the overall story and the survey and some of the lack of alignment,

Tandreia Bellamy (27:04):

Absolutely positivity, they have to be a hundred percent and lockstep with large multinational corporations. If that’s the case, the business strategy hasn’t been defined because they should be working towards the same goals for the same reasons, with the same potential outcomes. There shouldn’t be that mismatch. It shouldn’t be that disconnect if the company’s strategy is sound.

Scott Luton (27:29):

Well said, RIA. Sounds like they need to be coached up a little bit. Ria and Ilya, we’ll see. All right. A lot more stuff to get to here today on the buzz, but I want to bring a special resource to the table folks, and we covered this last week. Great new resource. So from our friends at auto schedule, Keith Moore and the team rolled out a free warehouse agent about two weeks ago. It’s available to anyone out there. So if you want help forecasting labor against demand or analyzing load boards and thinking through labor shifts or drafting communications for carriers or where I need lots of help crunching numbers and analyzing data. Hey, use the warehouse decision agent for free, do all of that and then some in minutes rather than days. We’re going to drop a link right there in the chat so you can learn a lot more.

(28:12):

Okay, ia, me and Kendra both want to dial it in a little bit more on your perspective and what you’re seeing, especially as you and your team are doing big things in the cold chain space, which, gosh, some data projects get this folks, the global cold chain market rather is going to grow from 380 billion here in 2020 or as it was last year in 2024 to a whopping $2.2 trillion in 2034. Oh my gosh, I should join you in that space. Iliad key drivers include rising consumption of oppression, frozen food, growth of e-commerce, groceries, tighter specs on temperature controls and pharmaceuticals and much, much, much more Ilia when it comes to the high growth cold chain industry. Give us a few general observations in terms of trends or hot topics.

Ilya Preston (28:55):

Yeah, so I think you mentioned some of the drivers. I would add aging populations definitely to that, especially on the life sciences side, transportation infrastructure and being able to get medicines to parts of the world that were much harder to reach prior to now. Obviously medical innovation, things like CAR T therapies that are highly effective at treating blood cancers and other types of diseases. It’s really fascinating to see what’s going on. I think our space predominantly focuses on kind of that transportation and quality segment of the cold chain. So how do I most efficiently, most safely move my goods from point A to point Z? And then how do I ensure that those goods are safe for consumption, whether it’s medicines or foods or whatnot. And we do see a lot of themes in the industry in our space. I think years ago, 20 18, 20 19, 20 20, it was visibility, visibility, visibility.

(29:53):

We want visibility, we want to see where our product is. Now, I’d like to take the credit for being the first ones. To my knowledge, I think we were the first ones that kind of self-identified as orchestration back in 2019. And we were truly, we kind of envisioned this world where you have to synchronize labor, you have to synchronize what’s happening with your transportation decisions, with your quality decisions, and truly become an orchestration platform. So I think the shift from visibility and this realization that visibility dot on the map is only going to go so far in getting you outcomes that you want, and it’s really more so about aggregating that data with other valuable data that you have in your network to be able to drive decision making. It’s the ability to take action. I think that’s been an underlying theme that we’ve seen.

(30:38):

We’ve seen another theme in our space where a lot of the businesses that were really, really hot in 2020, they’re still hot, don’t get me wrong, but iot device companies for one, maybe certain services, packaging for example, and specific subsets of packaging. I think now people want a more agnostic software solution where they don’t need to train their employees on 10 different platforms. If you’re using three different device providers, if you’re using conventional devices versus real-time devices, if you’re using packaging X versus packaging Y today, there’s like 10 different softwares that you have to get to know, log into, try to bring all this data together, whether you’re looking at passive data, real-time data, milestone data, telematics data shipment documentations, which are typically in ERP and TMS platforms, SOPs, which are in quality management platforms. All of that is, there’s no singular shipment record that ties it all together. There’s been a massive shift in our world over the last 24 months with companies saying, you know what? I just want one unified standard experience with my platform and I’m going to interchange what they view as the more commoditized aspects around it. So whether it’s devices, whether it’s packaging, whether it’s three pls, four pls or carriers, that’s been a pretty big, I would say, theme in the orchestration and visibility space over the last two years.

Scott Luton (32:08):

Ia, you shared a lot of things that it could be a whole podcast series, a tan synchronization, seamlessness, streamlining, were some of the trends that he touched on, and I love his comments around thousands of apps and platforms, and we shouldn’t have to become experts and super users on all those things. But Tantra, what’d you hear from Ilya on some of the things going on in the cold chain space,

Tandreia Bellamy (32:30):

If I may? Can I ask a question? Of course.

Scott Luton (32:32):

Sure. As long as excellent, Ilia is good with it,

Tandreia Bellamy (32:36):

How does the proliferation of all of these food recalls work into what you’re doing from an orchestration standpoint? I mean in the supply chain, typically, once the product was delivered, it was done. Now there’s so many other things that are going on from specifically a food safety standpoint. What do you see in that space?

Ilya Preston (32:57):

Yeah, I mean very, very similar thematically in the life sciences space as well. I mean, anytime that you have an influx of food recall or product damage, right, that’s going to impact the entire value chain, starting with insurance, cargo insurance and loss ratios, and of course replacement product, then there’s root cause analysis that has to happen. There’s obviously quality processes that have to come into play. I mean, it kicks off the entire value chain. So I would say anytime you have a plethora or a heightened prolonged sense of product loss, that certainly helps the business case For solutions like ours. I will say a core driver has always been, for a lot of these companies, it’s everybody kind of, I would say builds in loss ratios into their financial models. So people expect to lose product. It’s really more so there’s a lot of other costs associated around everyday decisions.

(33:51):

Which routes are you taking? What modes of transport, how much packaging, thermal life are you qualifying your packaging for? How much inventory? I think to your point, are you holding in buffer stock and how quickly is that inventory selling through? And there’s a lot of decisions that have to be made around cost. And today all of that data still remains fragmented. So putting it all together under a singular shipment record eliminates those data silos and effectively enables you to make those real-time trade-off decisions. But certainly I will say to your question, anytime that you see heightened levels of food rejection recalls, I mean even worse, safety, like people getting sick, potentially life threatening, that is massive, massive, massive issue for the BCOs. And that’s when that adds a massive justification to the business case. Now it’s not just about cost, it’s actually about compliance and safety and regulatory.

Scott Luton (34:46):

Okay, I tell you what, but the question, billion dollar answer, stay tuned more at 11 and tan. Good stuff. Before I move on, I want to get to this blog article that I think created a lot of feedback out in the marketplace ia, but before I do that one, only Claudia free is in the comments here. She fearlessly leads a great nonprofit called EAL Green, doing some really cool things. Claudia says, focus is critical in successfully navigating the sea of data. That’s right. A tidal waves of data and there’s plenty more changes coming away. That’s right, Claudia. And she also mentions integration is key to scaling. Excellent point. That’s right. We’ve got to integrate all this technology being thrown at us. Okay, so let’s do this Tan and Ilia. I got this little image I’m going to share now. Interesting side note. This I think is a picture of me in one of my tougher days, Ilia.

(35:33):

I don’t know how y’all got into my home studio there, but I think we’ve all had days like that. That aside, I want to get into a couple of your key thoughts related to this blog article that is published over on the pacaf website. Now here you talk about how the pharma logistics industry has defined its problems way too much at the surface level and somehow thought that was good enough, and you share this golden nugget, which is related to a lot of what we talked about here today. You say orchestration isn’t about watching shipments, it’s about continuously improving the entire life cycle. That’s right. If we’re only gaining some insights on our shipments with a successful orchestration platform and approach, we’re in trouble. Ilya, tell us more here, huh?

Ilya Preston (36:12):

Yeah, well, I guess let me walk you through kind of the status quo of what’s been done in our industry. I think first and foremost, you kind of go through this planning process, right? It’s known as lane qualification. It’s basically doing a lane risk assessment on a particular lane, selecting the right vendor mix for that lane and making sure that everything from a compliance standpoint is set. You have things put in as a part of your standard operating procedures, you’re good to go, and then you kind of set it and you forget it. So you have this SOP, you put it into place three months, six months, 12 months down the road. You have no idea how did my original plan actually go compared to real world performance? And I think that’s what we’ve seen in the cold chain space specifically. There’s a lot of really, really good technologies that are out there, data loggers, iot devices, real time aggregation, visibility platforms who I’m sure risk management platforms, even decision intelligence platforms that have been out there for well over a decade and they’re really, really good at tracking commoditized goods.

(37:16):

But when it comes to these much more, I would say sophisticated products, temperature sensitive, time sensitive, value sensitive, these are your life sciences, these are your food and beverage, these are your electronics. These are products where you can’t mess around and you need truly a vertical kind of software platform that ingrains itself deeply into existing workflows and helps you get things done. And so I think a lot of these solutions have been around for well over a decade. We haven’t seen anything really move the needle in cold chain. Product loss ratios keep getting worse year over year, operational inefficiencies still remain rampant. And most importantly, people don’t have the data and the information that they need at their fingertips to drive decisions in near real time. You still need to rely on expensive consultants. You still need to have a plethora of data scientists. You need to analyze data and Power BI and all these tools.

(38:09):

There’s nothing that kind of brings together both the planning aspect of what should have happened, what did I put in my SOP? And then autonomously looks at your real world performance data to create that feedback loop back into the planning process. Have AI that comes in and automates root cause analysis and corrective action and recommendations that are hypertextual that are based on your existing SOPs. So it’s actually telling you what to do based on your existing processes and workflows. And I think that’s really what we try to call out there in that blog post is you can’t keep doing the same things over and over again and expect to get a different result. You truly have to understand the nuances of the problem in cold chain. And I can go deep into that for Dave if you’ll have me.

Scott Luton (38:56):

I bet. Well first off, we’re dropping a link to the blog article right there. Thank you, Tricia. I appreciate that. So y’all go give it a read. Let us know your thoughts, let Ilia know. I bet he welcomes your take. Whether you agree with anything he says or disagree, what do we hear there from IA Tendra? I

Tandreia Bellamy (39:11):

Think it really, really points out that cold chain is different. So not only can you not do the same things you’ve always done, you can’t do the same things that are done and other transportation chains and understanding how to properly optimize is different for cold chain. I think we put more constraints on ourselves simply because it is cold chain and we don’t, because the information is siloed. You don’t optimize it as well as it should be done because you’re doing it in silos. And that is a great call out.

Scott Luton (39:46):

Every industry in every sector believes it’s different in many ways. And then there’s a handful that probably really is different and that you don’t want to mess around with. As IA said, that certainly is cold chain in that smaller bucket. Alright, so IA really quick in our remaining time we’ve got here and we’re going to get Tanger’s pat, a key takeaway for we wrap here, the buzz power by auto scheduler. So pacaf has been on a tear, it sounds like. I’ve enjoyed rubbing elbows with you and your team over the years and it sounds like you are rock and rolling right now. What does an organization do in a nutshell? And then secondly, what’s one project you’re really excited about here as we’re coming down to home stretch for 2025?

Ilya Preston (40:21):

Yeah, that’s a great question. So what do we do? We are logistics, orchestration and decision intelligence specifically for temperature controlled logistics. So in a nutshell, we help planning transportation and quality teams essentially do three things. Number one is eliminate data silos and number of logins that they have to use via a data agnostic, basically transportation control tower, which we call command center. That brings in all of this data. Agnostically number two is we help digitize and automate key portions of the actual workflows. So things like lane qualification, exceptions management, temperature and product release. You can only do that if you’re GXP validated in our space and we are GXP validated. I hate to say that it’s a moat, but it is somewhat of a moat because it’s not easy to do that. And then number three is we help companies and people essentially make better decisions faster using their own networks data.

(41:20):

That’s probably simply put, we have AI that injects itself all throughout the platform, whether it’s looking at live shipments and essentially silencing noise and highlighting shipments that are actually at risk, whether it’s looking at that feedback loop and aggregating data after the fact and then telling you what you can do better tomorrow. Those are the kinds of things that our platform does today. What am I really excited about? So one of the big themes that I didn’t mention earlier, but that we do see is AgTech Solutions and Ag Agentic workflows. I think that’s one of my most recent blog posts is actually just about that, where you have to be able to discern what is real versus what is smoke and mirrors. I think building Ag agentic without having the right infrastructure in place is very dangerous. Your agents are not going to be able to do what’s necessary without the right infrastructure in place, without really a full understanding of the entire workflows and a full segmentation of even those workflows. You really need agents performing one core aspect of one core workflow. And so we’re introducing our first set of agents in Q4 of this year. And I think because we are a vertical software and because we are deeply ingrained into these organizations existing workflows and decision-making and automation, these agents from what we’ve already been testing with our partners are going to be highly, highly effective. And so we’re very excited about that and that’s probably what I’m most excited about in terms of what we’re working on.

Scott Luton (42:53):

I would be too, and maybe your agents can help my beloved Atlanta Falcons want a better offense. We shall see.

Ilya Preston (43:01):

I don’t know if there’s a hope for that.

Scott Luton (43:04):

As the Cols fan, the Colts are doing big things this year. That is outstanding news. Congrats on the growth, congrats on the new initiatives here this year. New innovations and one of the core things Tan that he mentioned, they do, they help teams do make better decisions faster. And my hunch is they even help eliminate some of the decisions that humans very busy humans have to make out in our global supply chains. And I love that. Ra, quick your response before we make sure folks know how to connect with you both. And we round things out,

Tandreia Bellamy (43:32):

Scott, this is our 15th hundred and third podcast together and guess what? We’re still talking about the importance of data. When he started, he said the first thing that they helped do is eliminate data silos. Because if your data isn’t integrated properly, there’s no way you can make the correct organizational

Scott Luton (43:54):

Decisions.

Tandreia Bellamy (43:55):

So once again, data wins.

Scott Luton (43:58):

It does. It sure does. And we keep talking about it because industry doesn’t listen to us. But you got to tune in folks to great, great resources, innovators like Ilya and RIA and folks that have been there and done that. And we try to facilitate that really easily almost every day of the week here at Supply Chain now. Okay, let’s do this. I’ve got a question from Tom which answer it here in a second. But first Ilia, let’s make sure folks know how to connect with you and Ivan and the whole team on the move over there at pacaf.

Ilya Preston (44:27):

Yeah. First name@pacaf.com. So in my case, it’s pacaf.com. You can also find me Ilya Preston on LinkedIn. You can also find me in Indianapolis today at the H-P-C-L-C conference. If you’re here at the Marriott, swing on by. We’re here, Bobby, Chris, and myself. Where else can you find me? I think those are probably the big ones.

Scott Luton (44:46):

That’s a lot of places and we’re going to make it even easier. We’re going to drop Ilya’s LinkedIn profile right there. So engage with them right there. And before we get out of here, I’ve got a couple final questions for you, tan. Andrea, what’s your favorite key takeaway from this holistic and big conversation we’ve had here with Ilya and how can folks connect with you?

Tandreia Bellamy (45:04):

My key takeaway is people really need to tune in to supply chain now, to continue to get educated, even with great conferences all over the world, it’s really difficult to try and get all of this information on your own. So Scott, you do a tremendous service to all of us by finding these incredibly informative guests that bring the information to us. So thank you. And I’m always available on LinkedIn, RIA, Bellamy.

Scott Luton (45:32):

It’s just that easy. You’re two way too kind, tantra. But hey, we love doing it. We’ve loved doing it for a long time. And as you mentioned, it’s like 2 million episodes. I can’t wait. We’re going to be thrilled with it up for me in this 6 million. There’s so many different stories to cover with the innovators like you both that are doing some really cool things and we want to be connectors, very effective connectors. So to that end, I’m also dropping a link. Thank you Tricia Pack Safe right there. You can learn more. You can check out that blog article, you name it. And be sure to follow and connect with Tantra Bellamy right there on LinkedIn as well. Okay, RA, again, thanks for your key takeaway. Really appreciate Tantra Bellamy being here with me. IA Preston, co-founder and CEO of Pacaf, really enjoyed your perspective here today. Thank you for challenging how we’ve always done things in cold chain and industry. So great to have you here Ilia.

Ilya Preston (46:19):

Anytime. Anytime. Scott, thank you for having me.

Scott Luton (46:21):

You bet. Enjoy the great conference there in Indianapolis, tan. Look forward to breaking bread with you soon, my friend. Of course. Big thanks Amanda and Trisha behind the scenes, helping to make production happen each and every day. And most importantly, big thanks to our global audience for being here with us. Hope you enjoy the show as much as I have. But you got homework folks. Tria and Ilia both dropped a ton of knowledge on us. You got to take one thing you heard here from our Esteem panel, share it with your team, put it into practice. These not words. That’s how we’re going to continue changing how global supply chain happens and leave no one behind. So with that said, on behalf of the entire supply chain now, team Scott Luten challenge. You do good, give forward, be the change that’s needed. We’ll see you next time, right back here on Supply Chain now. Thanks everybody.

Intro/Outro (47:03):

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