On this episode of Supply Chain Now broadcast live from the RLA Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, Scott and Greg interview Tom Maher with Dell.

[00:00:05] It’s time for Supply Chain Now Radio. Broadcasting live from the Supply chain capital of the country, Atlanta, Georgia. Supply Chain Now Radio spotlights the best in all things supply chain the people, the technology’s the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

[00:00:29] A good afternoon Scott Luton here with you own supply chain. Now welcome back to the show.

[00:00:34] In this episode, we aren’t broadcasting live in Atlanta G-A, but rather at Las Vegas, where we continue our coverage of the reverse Logistics Association conference and expo, at least for this week. The Center of the Universe for all things reverse Logistics in returns. This episode is brought to you by Re Commerce re Commerce Group. Industries is an industry leader in returned product management returns center services, remanufacturing, reprocessing, repairing and recycling of consumer products for over two decades. The management team at Rod Commerce Group has been servicing some of the world’s leading consumer product manufacturers. You can learn more at Rod Commerce Group eak dot com. In this episode Greg White. I interviewed Tom Marre with Dille Senior Vise President, Global Service Parts.

[00:01:23] Tom, Hatoon. Great. Thanks for having me on the show. You bet. Our pleasure. SRODES said we could not get in and out of Las Vegas for us sitting down with you. Yeah. So I’m glad we had the opportunity at this. Oh, thanks. I’m thrilled to be here. All right. So as we always like to start before we start talking shop and best practices and what you and your team were doing at Dell. Let’s get a sense of who Tom is. So give us give that you were born and raised some your upbringing or something. The some of your. Give us the skinny on how Tom grew up.

[00:01:55] Okay. Sure. So born and mostly raised in the Northeast and New York. Young, maybe three years old, moved to Florida. Okay. Sports is huge for me. No matter sports fans, favorite sports team. So everything I learned from the ages of FRYDAY, I was in Florida, Port St. Lucie, so I’m a Miami Dolphins fan. We’re gonna have a great draft. All right. Boston Celtics. Cincinnati Reds.

[00:02:22] I grew up Notre Dame, Fighting Irish, but now went to Villanova University was a massive wildcat wow fan best basketball team The Nation. But I’m also a die hard University of Texas Longhorn fans supporting them after 21 years in Austin. Yeah. Wow. Butler grew up mostly in the East Coast. I went to Villanova University, got three siblings, parents were educators, went went to Villanova.

[00:02:49] Thought I’d be a great runner and thought I was a great basketball player. So you got to fill out a lot of a lot of students, wind up that way, built a whole new level. But yeah, great. For years there and then embarked on I was going to be a lawyer. Right. When did all the things you have to do? I thought I was a genius and said I’ll take a year off. So I went and spent some time with some buddies in Boston. Will Denise, Boston was officially thrown out that this is where Jay Leno, several people grew up and I was officially thrown out for not gaining enough weight. So I hope we were good. The plan was to move to Southern California, a group of us. And I ended up being the only one there, worked at a ranch, can’t learn how to ride horses, worked at a surf camp, did not learn how to surf blind as a bat, lost multiple pairs of contact lenses, gave up on that. But I really I literally lived in a trailer on the beach open the trailer there was the Pacific Ocean. I worked at the surf camp. Buddy of mine enticed me to learn how to ski. So we moved to Winter Park, Colorado, lived there for three years, met my now wife, who’s from France, who was an exchange student, spending some time working in the U.S. in Winter Park, Colorado. I did learn how to ski. Yes. So that was great. And then followed my then girlfriend, now wife to France. And I lived two years backpack and organized jobs across Greece, England, Ireland, France did that for a couple of years. And I guess I found myself. That’s a pretty broad perspective, right? Yes. But I applaud that you did in your youth.

[00:04:32] What most people have a bucket list for.

[00:04:35] There’s pros and cons. So I didn’t have a for one case. I was twenty. Yeah. And right now I’ve got a 19 year old son somewhere in Canada living out of the back of my wife’s Ford Flex. Oh, my. He built it into a camper.

[00:04:49] He’s got solar panels on top of fridge backup batteries hooked to the alternator. So he’s doing a gap year. And, you know, I have a tough. Time arguing? Yes. Now, I like to say I did it after I matured a little bit. Yeah, buddies convinced us he’s applied for schools. Is it literally a genius? Right. The problem is he knows it. And so we’re pretty confident he’ll go to school next year. Then I have a daughter at University of Texas graduating. Right. And and this May and a freshman at high school who will one day be in the MBA and my retirement plan. Is that right? That’s good. That’s what I’m telling them. What is your daughter going to do? You think she has her own company? Oh, wow. So already. Yeah. So she and my oldest boy have twice started up companies. He has his own photography company and that’s helping fund his trip. My daughter has a modeling agency, EVO Model Management. So even though my son is Everest and she is ocn and then the youngest is O’Ryan. So it’s even though it’s a mother agency, what she does is finds the talent. Right. So she. She did a little modeling when she was younger and understood that there’s a lot of problems in that and a lot of these industries that have, you know, young women. Yeah. And she went through some of those challenges and learned a, hey, I think I can do something her.

[00:06:13] So she recruits them, trains them, builds out portfolios and then works with the larger firms that I am g for. Right. And she signed several girls so that they can have a future in doing this. So we’ll do it as a gap year for them. So we’ll make it a profession. So she’s been doing that for about she just had her second year anniversary. Now you want to get a really funny story. So my my son is difficult to work with because he does all the technical stuff. Right. He’s the photographer. They had a company where she would go to all the races. She knows she’s met. A lot of the famous runners in the country would interview them and then put them up on a show like yours. But she had a lot of content that people would purchase. Right. And he would get fired every week. And then sundai by her by her. When you had to do the uploads, she’d have to rehire him because there be some technical difficulty. And he’s very Technical, very artistic. And he’ll get it all fixed. She made him sign a contract. He can’t date the models. Smart fired in the first week. Now, on occasion, Greene with a lot of prodding. He does. He does help out if she’s in a bind when he’s a photographer.

[00:07:25] Love it. I love it so much. We could dove into there. One question, though.

[00:07:30] So in your early years were from surfing to skiing to traveling the world?

[00:07:36] Yeah, a lot of my conjecture. A lot of folks don’t do that. Don’t feel empowered to follow up on passions and that sense of adventure. What allowed you to do that? Was it your parents or what? What enabled you to do that?

[00:07:50] Yeah, I don’t think my being a parent now. I’m not sure they were big fans of it back then. You didn’t have the Internet. You didn’t know everything you know today. And that’s, I think, good and bad. Right, to be able to survive on minimal amounts of money. Right. You take ketchup and put it in hot water until yourself as tomato soup.

[00:08:12] All right. I think I was just kind of grew up that way. We’re pretty frugal. And I was able to figure out how to get around, how to do things. I had jobs all growing up, so I never had a problem, you know, walking in and trying to find a job, waiting tables or what have you. Now, my parents, my father was an educator. So here’s his big advice was don’t get lost trying to find yourself. He probably would have preferred law school right away. And to his defense, I never ended up going. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Right.

[00:08:43] But they I think the end of the day as a parent and I’m a hypocrite. Right. The biggest hypocrites in the world are managers and parents. I stole that from a colleague, Nick Patterson. Yeah, but you got it. Procrit. Yes. You have to enable them and let them make the decisions, right. We’re not thrilled that I have a 19 year old started 18 drive and around. He’s driven to Fairbanks, Alaska, the Arctic Ocean, Washington, D.C.. Wow. Right. And that’s that can be a scary proposition. But you learn so much, Jess. And I think my my father once said he owes you know, you’re a great parent if you’ve got good kids who raise a family on their own and and you see them every day. And, you know, they’re not in trouble and they’re, you know, taking care of their families. You know, you’re a great parent when your kids can go anywhere on the planet and be okay. Because I think was I think he credit Erma Bombeck or somebody with that. But they you know, it’s not like they funded it for my Rod. I try to remind my 19 year old all the time, it’s not the same.

[00:09:48] I did it, but I paid for it. I figured out how to pay for it. All right. So before we start talking about what your team and you and your team are doing a deal, let’s talk about your professional journey.

[00:09:59] Reader’s Digest version, so kind of your earliest career, earliest jobs, they post surfing and skiing and traveling the world.

[00:10:08] First job to your current role, kind of paint that picture for that journey for us.

[00:10:12] Yeah, well, I’ll say in university because I thought I was gonna go to law school. It was English and psychology which has nothing to do with Supply chain. Right. So in hindsight, may may not have been the best choice, but they were great for law school. I got into Supply chain by accident. So my father was ill. I had flown back from Europe and the phone rang and it was a late temp agency and they said, hey, you passed the drug test. You can start on Monday. I said, great. You got the wrong number. But what’s the job? Yeah. Right. And it was it was an interesting role. It was TRW that was quickly separating off Computerland and then Computerland. After I joined quickly, he got split and became Van Star and the franchises kept Computerland. So I went in and I as a temp, I went in. It was part of excess and obsolescence projects. So I’ve always been in aftermarket service part. So we’re pulling a bunch of inventory from the field U.S. base and separating it and deciding what’s going to go for maybe refurbishment, repair, resell. Right. All that kind of stuff. So I learned a little bit. And then just, you know, getting to know the team leaders, getting to know me. I ended up running the warehouse. Then I ended up running a repair center as well as the warehouse and continue to just move up within what the company was then named Vance DA. And then one day it snowed like 20 some inches in 24 hours and never lived in New Jersey at the time. And my wife said, you need to make a decision. Miami or Las Vegas, Greene. She wasn’t kidding. Wow.

[00:11:53] So zero tolerance policy for 20 years is it’s no longer a flight attendant with United Airlines at the time.

[00:12:00] And she could, you know, transfer to either of those. And for me, I don’t recall the reasons we ended up in Las Vegas or right here for two years. And the company was nice enough. I actually took a demotion in order to facilitate that. And then I ended up running a rental like otherwise.

[00:12:16] You’re going to get a demotion, the mayor. Yes.

[00:12:19] Yes. Lose. Lose 20 percent of your pay or 50 percent.

[00:12:25] So that we had as a lot of companies do.

[00:12:27] Right. Dell was just phenomenal growth back in the 90s. And they took senior vise president from our company, who took a vise president who brought myself. And many people were still at Dell today over where Dell was growing so fast. I wanted to kind of professionalize the aftermarket services piece of that by getting people, you know, who were doing that as an industry verse says you don’t when you’re growing real fast, you find smart people, put them into new roles and give them opportunities, which is great, but wanted to augment that with a few people. Been doing it for a while. So I did that for about five years and ended up at Dell in Austin and my first job there. And we’re growing so fast back that it happened to a lot of people. I showed up and had a new job my first day. So I interviewed for Job A, I actually said no. Almost a year later and multiple stock splits. All right. My company was moving me to Atlanta. Nothing against Atlanta, gentlemen, but we preferred Austin and ended up in Austin.

[00:13:31] And when I showed up, we had just the announcement of digital being acquired by Compaq occurred. So Compaq is obviously a big competitor back in the day. And they were doing digital, was doing our repair depot for our notebooks when we ship them in. And so quickly, I was put onto that project with a brand new job and we had to move it riser, move it to a company P.C. server source. And then I just grew within the aftermarket supply chain inside of Dell. Back then, we were all very subregional, all inside the business units. And today, we are a global services organization that didn’t exist, you know, 20, 21 years ago. Yeah. And as that continue to grow out, I did stints where I ran North America, same day supply chain. I ran all of Latin America than the Americas. I did a few months in Singapore helping work on a project out there. As we started to outsource a lot of our supply chain and then, you know, many years later, now I’m responsible for the entire aftermarket service.

[00:14:35] So on that note, that costs so much to dove into across that journey. But for the sake of that interview here today, Greg, let’s dove into kind of what that mean. Everyone knows Dale, right?

[00:14:47] Right. Right. I think everyone knows in their mind what Dell does, either what it did originally or what it does now.

[00:14:58] But tell us a little.

[00:14:59] A bit about what global, sir, what role does global service ports play in in the Daryl ecosystem and Dell Technologies now as is obviously very large and by helping companies digitally transform their business because every company now is an I.T. company at some level. Right. And then they need a lot of help. And we’re uniquely positioned to provide and end to end solutions a piece of that. When you get into the hardware portion of Dell technology, so storage product all the way down to Chromebooks, that is part of the global services organization. We sell these products, hundreds of millions that are out there under active contracts that we have to serve as my team’s responsibility is to have the right part, right place, right time, right quality to ensure we keep those those consumers or those companies up and running so they can do well what what they want to do with our technology. Knight I’m fond of saying nobody wants nobody buys a Dell laptop means they enjoy typing, right? That laptop has a PowerPoint or that server has a purpose and our job is to enable that purpose. Yeah, right. There’s humans need to thrive and it takes the technology to enable all that to happen. So it’s keeping our customers up and running through whatever disruptions may be occurring in the world, in the industry, etc. Right now, coronavirus is a massive disruption to the supply chain.

[00:16:30] All right. We’re starting to see the news report this morning about the automotive in particular is, to your point, is disruptive across industries. There’s so much still unknown that is going to further impact, but they’re better shut down. They are shut down some automotive lines in Korea and they’re about to shut down the rest of them in China. But as as part shortages are starting to catch up and really be a huge obstacle, despite some the containment, which is good news that we’re hearing. So we’ll see. We’ll see how this plays out. But I like how you mentioned that your devices that no one buys a computer to type. It’s a vehicle to Rod the digital wave regardless of what the user’s passion is, right?

[00:17:25] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the important thing for people to recognize is some of the names that you talked about in the old days, the disruptive model that Dell had was that they sold you a laptop direct or computer direct. Before that, you had computer land, you had Gateway, USA, USA.

[00:17:47] I mean, you went someplace. You. I know this sounds crazy to a lot of our listeners out there, but you physically went someplace to look at and buy a computer.

[00:17:56] And and that evolution has continued as the cloud has become more and more prominent. That’s become a bigger part of the business at Dell. Right. And yet the laptop business, I know because I’m a big time Costco shopper and they sell a ton of Dell product, but yet that laptop and computer business has has continue to thrive. And as we’ve talked about with some of our other guests, there’s there’s sort of a cast off effect as these products break down or are even obsoleted. You have to do something with those parts and and you have to do something with parts to keep the product alive as it, you know, has certain aspects of the of the computer fail or fade or whatever. Right. And that’s a reality for business. And I think that’s it’s interesting, because I’m not sure that people would understand why Dell is at a reverse Logistics summit. That’s King Plow.

[00:18:55] It is a good point. The circular economy now affects every single company, regardless of what products they’re making. Right. And Dell’s known this for a long time. And I’ve been a part of the River Rivers Logistics for over 10 years. Sit on the board today. And it’s passionate across all of Dell that not just a bill product that will last a long time and support whatever purpose our customers are going to utilize it for. But we don’t want to end up in landfills. All right. We want that product to be able to recycle, repurpose, Rod use. Right. And that’s a reverse Logistics is all about. And there’s tremendous benefit. Right. And if my boss was here and he will be later today said my job is not the tactical day to day stuff. Right. We have a planning organization. We have to decide in over 165 countries that we support and an over 800 stock in locations. We need to decide what part, what quantity to put in each of those so that we can hit the different service levels our customers require, which can be to our next day mail it into. Fix it. Different, you know, various service levels. We have to be able to do that so we plan it, procurement, procure it. We have to bring it into our warehouses. We have demanders. Those warehouses. Inventory control, pick, pack, ship, deliver it to our customers. And the big pieces, getting the defectives back. It is a very challenging job when you’re calling and you’re talking to one of my family members and trying to diagnose a problem. Right.

[00:20:27] I know any family family member in particular.

[00:20:30] Well, almost all of them, except what they tend to do is now call my 19 year old. Yeah, right away. But if so, you’re trying to figure this out over the phone. Yeah.

[00:20:40] Right. And we’re gonna do our best. Right. We have World-Class Technical support. We’re gonna drop orders. I’m gonna have my organizational ship out a motherboard or a hard drive, whatever is required. And we want to get that customer up. That is 100 percent the main focus of our organization is take care of that customer.

[00:20:57] But the value I get those defective parts back. Yes, I’m able to do the analysis on those and determine what really went wrong. Right. So that’s the data that is critical for reverse Logistics v as my job is not just to get the customer back up and running. It’s to help Dell build better products in the future. And they never need it. Yeah. hoenn and tactical support to have the better diagnosis capability.

[00:21:23] So it’s all of our data that we bring into a data lake that is leveraged by our product engineers and our technical support engineers in order to provide a better overall experience for our customers.

[00:21:35] I love that perspective because, Tony, as you know, from working with him on the board, he’s a big proponent and was in his prior life of build it better or inform the the consumer better to avoid the return. That’s the most important part of reverse Logistics is to avoid as much reverse Logistics as you possibly if you avoid ever having an incident, those are the happiest customers you’re ever gonna have.

[00:22:00] Yeah.

[00:22:01] You know, as you’re describing what you do the benefits there. I love you’ve got a data play. Right. Which goes into a root cause analysis, which helps all the product lines. Right. You are keeping things out of landfills, which we can’t spend enough time energy trying to do that now. But then as with any corporation, there’s a financial incentive because you are taking some parts and able to reuse them. I would assume and other devices and rebuilt and remanufacturing computers, which are also finding bigger, bigger markets these days, too.

[00:22:38] Yes. And we do all of that and are remain you’re factoring a refurbishment activities, a different org. Right. But but we do that and we do it together in a way where I’ll actually do some tear down in order to leverage that inventory as well. But for us, when we bring that product back and if we go through a repair process, we’re able to put the latest and greatest revisions on it. We’re able to give feedback to our product engineers on hey services compatibility from one revision to the next. Can we make this more seamless? Is everything you ever buy? You’re going to have to dispose of that site in one one way or another. So we want to reduce that as much as humanly possibly half love and financially, it makes great sense. All right. Because you can avoid a purchase and the development of another product. You will have to one day dispose of. Yeah, right.

[00:23:30] You know, on a previous show we talked about built for CE Design Building, it sounds like as you’ll look at how you develop your own products. And at Dell, you take that seed mindset because we’re we have so many factors that go into how we design things for its post-U.S lifetime these days. Right.

[00:23:54] The serviceability is a big focus of ours has something. Obviously, you’ve got to have product that customers are enticed to by the look, the feel of that. But if you build something that’s got 500 different screws on it. All right. That’s not going to work. Right. All right. So you want to remove some of the complexity. Interesting.

[00:24:11] So how how how has ours sort of moved towards a throwaway society? How has it impacted your part of the business? You’re part of the business is fixing product that’s broken, right? I mean, it is. Or providing the parts that do so. Right. So how has that impacted your business? How do you see that kind of trending?

[00:24:31] So in our side of the business, we as so much of it is under contract. All right. So it’s an active services contract that while the customer we don’t we have consumables, of course, on his part side that are what you would call throw away. But it hasn’t had a major impact on Asma’s. We’re still the customers are incented. Well, you see, if you get a service part from Dell, you’ll have on that package a nice Greene label that talks about reuse. Right. They reusing the packet. Why it’s good for the environment and we educate our customers on if we get that motherboard back or we get that hard drive back, we can do things with a bigger impact we’ve had is data privacy rights. So we self offer such as Keith your hard drive. The things that don’t come back to us would be more components that are storing data and we give customers and offer an order for them to avoid having that level of perceived risk. Now, if it does come back to us, we’ve got all the proper controls in place to destroy that data. So a customer doesn’t have to worry.

[00:25:35] All right. Let’s shift gears a little bit here. We want to go broader. There’s so much that just your team is involved with it. Well, let’s go broader Scobey on Dell. When you look at the the NDA in global supply chain landscape right now, what’s one or two industry trends or developments or innovations, you name it, that you’re tracking more than others?

[00:25:59] So in the service parts world, we’ve always been more or less kind of the little step brother of manufacturing. Right. You got four Logistics, which everybody knows with the automation, the robotics, very lean. So that that’s, you know, case studies galore. As we said earlier, you didn’t go to school for Supply chain in the old days. Right now, that started to happen. And you’re starting to see kids take that as a curriculum and now you’re seeing reverse Logistics Keith. Right. So trends in specifically in my world and the reverse Logistics world, we’re for the first time ever seeing true investment in robotics is now we’re talking smaller warehouses that have tremendous more complexity. Right. So it’s going to be lots of SKUs that you’re going to be supporting product for 10 plus years, not just that manufacturing where you’re going to get it out the door and move on to the next product in six months. So we have the complexity of having to move across borders on a regular basis, bring the defectives, do the repair. So it’s been difficult over the years to get companies to invest in robotics because it wasn’t as well suited. We are now seeing that take off. The other big pieces, the data. So the innovation and leveraging artificial intelligence is huge and it’s going to change the industry. You’ve had a lot of smart people doing Excel based analytics and figuring out solutions now with artificial intelligence. To give you an idea what we’re doing inside of Delane with our partners, we can determine when a notebook is being returned to us, where would have it on 100 percent of the platforms, but a significant amount before it ever gets gets to us.

[00:27:38] What components do we have to replace? And it goes down to specific re paroline. That’s all with artificial intelligence rasheen learning engineering. We perform the facts. We called our predictive repair digital repair solution and then we take that data, we feed it into a data lake we’ve got that’s combined with significant other amounts of data to help build a better diagnosis solution for the customer. So we want to keep them up and running without even having an insane right. And as I said earlier, to get that data to the product Froome. So it’s leveraging in my world artificial intelligence across the entire supply chain. In order to do that, we have to digitize our supply chain. And over the years, it hasn’t been 100 percent. It’s got a planning module, you got a procurement, you got inventory. They were all interconnect. Right. So our focus is getting that to be one single digital supply chain. So if there is an effect somewhere with a Tier 3 supplier, maybe in China, that is going to have an impact. The planning tool knows without a human, even being involved can make the decisions, pull from repair. Do something different. Redistribute inventory, adjust appeal. So it’s a we can’t do that without artificial intelligence is just moving too quick.

[00:28:53] A volcano in Iceland affecting traffic pattern, right? Right. To have that quick response, we think the artificial intelligence will take over the bulk of the call it tactical decision making across the supply chain. And in the old days when we had a real smart, mathematically inclined person being a planner. We know p_h_d_. Right? So we have I think we have four p_h_d_ on the team now who are helping drive the algorithms, as you think 21 years ago, yet somebody knew how to use Excel. Right now is they really good at math? You’re very good. Very good. Go right. And it still runs a big part of the global economy. But now we’re getting students who have gone through school, supply chain experts gone on to get their p._h._d and data science or or an equivalent that are now coming into industry and changing it dramatically. Now we look at other trends, blockchain, for instance, to see if there’s ways of a more secure supply chain. Yeah, we’re looking at drone technology and doing. Some true testing there where we think there are some opportunities, especially when you get into some of the emerging markets and you’re supporting some of the customers who have like pharmaceutical needs. You have to get a product out to a customer in a very difficult environment. Now, private, as they’re, you know, spread across some of the emerging markets.

[00:30:19] It is interesting, as you know, we talk so much about a and it’s so interesting of how, you know, some contingent of the overall consumer base or even in the business world, things still around the corner. Asia has been leveraged and is doing things that I think a lot of folks still lean, Rula, as you know. Right, as they’re interacting with their retail brands or you name it, in every almost to a person. We’ll talk about what’s new global trends, will they track? And everyone’s talking about how not just how Asia’s been leveraged now, benefits now, but how they’re doubling down in 2020 and beyond. So it’d be really be very interesting. And the exciting thing at least. But we like talking about because whether you’re talking drones, you’re talking automation or in any of these kind of industry 4.0 themes, you know, a lot of folks are real worried about jobs or getting displaced. But really what we hear leaders talking about is how that’s going to open up doors of opportunities for so many folks that that that will we’ll do more within organizations and more more, you know, if you’re doing the same thing day in, day out.

[00:31:41] He’s going to be 40 hours a week. It is you can have a challenging period ahead.

[00:31:46] But unless that same thing is welding or driving, there is plenty of there are plenty of opportunity for humans to continue to do that. And they’re making a bundle do. That’s right. Great. But even those things, I think.

[00:32:01] I mean, not plumbing, but certain things will will come to be automated. And the truth is, look, the way that the way that the generational demographics are changing, they have to be right. We used to talk about, you know, the John Henry story. Right. We used to talk about the steam engine as being a threat to the worker who could drive who could drive 100 pins and. Yes, into the railroad ties. Right. But that’s that’s not what’s happening today. A.I., what’s happening with A.I. is it’s taking on those things that are repetitive or mundane or or less intuitive. Right. That require lots of deep learning and and can be managed with predominantly that that deep learning or experience or learning. And then that just elevates workers to the next level time, those things. Right. People, you know, you shouldn’t be fearful.

[00:32:56] Yeah. You know, I would just add that, you know, I’ll even go back to the John Henry story. Everybody’s going to have a fear of that change. Yeah. And what nobody really knows, but it has always happen is it creates jobs. Nobody even knew would exist. Yes. It opens up brand new opportunities or environments. There’s you’ll be, I believe, a massive rush to smart cities. Yeah. And making those smart cities are going to create a ton of jobs. Right. Now, if you’re trying to hire warehouse workers or mine repair engineers, drivers, it is very difficult. But that’s not going to be like that forever. Right. All right. Economies are they’ll go up and down. They’ll change. Right. The difference is, I think you’ll have kids coming out of school today that will reinvent themselves three, four, five times throughout their careers. The old days of having a career that’s, you know, followed maybe a pack. Yeah, one. But stayed within the vertigan one track. Right. Twenty five years or hard or whatever. That’s. Yeah. Yeah. We have a we have it inside. Right. Change management. All right. We’re moving we’re implementing new inventory system. And as we did that, we moved 100 percent of the reporting to power by. And it was a struggle. People wanted to, you know, see their data in a certain way. And my message to the team was, I would never hurt you in that way because your ability to do something in Excel does not impress anybody in the future. And the beauty of it is learning the new technologies is easier than ever before. Jury member, you know, certainly back in my day to learn how to really use Excel. Right. I need to spend some time and effort. Yeah. Pedro BII, you spend the weekend in your you are using it.

[00:34:37] You know, it’s not only easier, just as platforms and technology and how they’re built, it’s easier for the generations that are coming and they’re used to it. Yes, we have.

[00:34:49] Yes. Come in. We hire them right out of university and they’re they’re excellent, talented individuals. And we say, hey, have you ever coded anything? A python? Ryder machine learning lang right. Say no, but I’ll be back. Give me a weekend. Yeah. Yeah, literally a weekend. And some of them it means it’s more natural to. Yes. Yeah. But I do think you’re gonna see a spike in the other jobs, the arts, the customer service, the ability to, you know, interact with individual. So nobody knows.

[00:35:17] But the confidence level I have that artificial intelligence and all this other automation will create opportunities that’ll be 10x what we have agreed. It has happened with every industrial revolution we ever had. No reason I won’t happen again. It’s just trying to get through. That period of change is difficult.

[00:35:36] Agreed. There’s so much. Appreciate your time here today. So tell us about how can our listeners learn more and connect with Daryl and maybe even compare notes with you?

[00:35:48] Yeah. So we’re involved in a lot of different areas, right? So via the RLJ. Right. The reverse Logistics association is always a good way. It’s really about bringing like minded or industry individuals together. Yes. Right. And a lot of that critical. Right. That connection there is about partners learning to work together, finding new customers, all that kind of stuff. I’m involved in several universities. All right. I sit on the advisory board for the SUPPLY CHAIN Executive Consortium Advisory Board for Arizona State. We are very open when it comes. Every email you ever get for me, it has my my cell phone and everything. She can contact the Dell Supply chain team directly. OK. We’ve got all the social media. We got Twitter. So my my Twitter. Right. I’m the second greatest all around athlete ever.

[00:36:38] How about that? How do you know? You know, the greatest UPS, Jim Brown. It is not Jim Brown, but he’s in the running. Yeah. All right. It is Danny Ainge. Danny Ainge.

[00:36:50] Did you know he was the football player of the year in the state of Oregon? Quarterback could’ve gone anywhere. A great basketball player or starting third baseman from Toronto Blue Jays didn’t get a scratch. Golfer, really? So I give Danny Ainge a. I’m a master of none. But I go to a mall. Who else would be there? Still live in? Is it? Oh, no. He’s in Boston. He’s the GM. All right. Oh, that’s right.

[00:37:14] That’s right. Dave Winfield, Bill, that same Lu.

[00:37:16] He would a high jumper, a football, basketball, baseball, driving, not football.

[00:37:21] He was drafted in baseball, basketball and football. And he chose baseball. Frank Thomas. Frank Thomas, modern day. Frank Thomas, not the old today. The front Frank Thomas played mainly for the White Sox.

[00:37:35] Then all burn tied.

[00:37:37] Yes. Yes. But anyway, there’s shortage. But so you’re active on Twitter. We’ll check you out there. But really appreciate. You know, it takes as we become huge, not just RLA fans, but big fans of Tony Schroeder. It takes support from the big brands like Dale through the mid-market and through the into the smaller businesses to support and engage and participate in events like this. Because to your point, it’s even in this digital age in how we consume and we relate and communicate with each other, be all the social platforms that’s as important as not go anywhere. But man sitting down and, you know, building rapport and sharing and communicating best practices and benchmarking that still has not, you know, that hasn’t been replaced. LLC come 2050.

[00:38:31] See if they know really what you learn coming to these events is phenomenal. We’ve had more partnerships. You have lack of a better term cutting deals at RLA than any other industry event we’ve been at. And we have seen partners come together to solve solutions and even mergers and acquisitions, all by bringing the companies together.

[00:38:52] How a buck can see that? I can totally see that from just the companies we’ve talked to, OK, and in the lab and yesterday and in this part of today, I see the synergies between certain companies and others here.

[00:39:05] And there is definitely you gonna look at the history of the last like 15 years, the amount of consolidation that has taken place and will continue to happen by Israel. And I do think for all the students out there, supply chain is a career. Yes. And we’re in the reverse. Right. You’re you’re taking care of the environment. You’re helping the company. Right. Your bottom line. And you’re keeping your customers up and running. It’s a fun place to be. And it’s still very creative, very entrepreneurial, because you’re solving issues every single day.

[00:39:36] We have to connect you with Karen Eggroll. Yes. And I think that’s a great idea. These are the bright future recipient that we talked about in Ramshaw with Dell in the analyst organization. Because you just spoke the same words that he spoke to our Burnie’s live other. Yes. We have to connect.

[00:39:55] He came home with a message of wasall plot. Chain is perfect for millennial. Yes, exactly. Loved it. So we’ll do that. Kiran, if you’re listening. Yeah. Hello. Here, here’s a bit. Bernard Matress. Yeah, that’s right. All right. We’ve been speaking with Tom, the Wooddale Senior Vise President, Global Service part. Fascinating conversation. Really appreciate what you’re doing and your thought leadership. And thanks for carving out Tom Sheer and some with our audience. OK. Yeah, you bet. Now, sit tight for a second. We’re going to wrap up as always. We invite our audience, come check us out at also events like the reverse Logistics says shaking conference and Expo. And Greg, first up, is the largest supply chain trade show in North America, right?

[00:40:37] Thirty five thousand and two people will be there. You and me and 35000 of our closest friends at Remote X Modoc Show, Motor Show, dot com in Atlanta at the Georgia World Congress Center, March 9th through the 12th. Free to attend materials handling this product. And I mean, not a reason in factories, many warehouses, many conveyor systems, and by many we mean 50 by 50, but not the size of a full warehouse. Right. So it’s a great opportunity to see what’s going on there. Lots of companies contributing to that. So we’ll be streaming live from there, interviewing twenty. Twenty five people hopefully while we’re there. And also on day two of Moto X, the Vetlanta Supply chain Awards is March 10th from 10:00 a.m. at 1:30. So you’re going to get to buy. You’re going to get lunch bought for you. That’s right. Nominate, nominate and nominate. If you’re interested in sponsorship, please give us a shout. But that’s not our biggest concern. And if you want to be there, you better sign up quick. Yeah, those two will sell out fast. Yeah, we’re very close in our.

[00:41:48] We’re pleased to have a keynote there. Christian Fisher, president, CEO of Georgia-Pacific. We’ll be sermons or keynote. And our emcee is Shane Cooper and Cooper, former senior executive at Lockheed Martin and chief transformation officer at WesTrac. So we’ve got one heck of a one two punch up at this awards program, which is all about celebrating the best of what takes place across and in Supply chain in metro Atlanta. Only requirement is you have to have some kind of presence or operations in that twenty nine county area and a repair facility counts. That’s right. Absolutely. We have a reverse Logistics award where we model over nominate nominate not the your quick learner, but we to that point, because of our partnership with RLA, we’ve modeled that a new award in year two of the Alliance Supply chain awards off their program here. Awards. Program? Yes. All right. So beyond that big event which takes place in March, we’ve got two events with the Automotive Industry Action Group, right, Greg?

[00:42:46] Yes. So that’s what April twenty eighth and ninth and no VI Michigan. That’s right. See UPS CSR number six on that train. Know? Yes. Caller. Yeah, it’s a little bit of trivia. We learned from Jim Liegghio. So, yeah. So that’s there.

[00:43:05] Sorry. That’s their corporate responsibility summit, April twenty eighth and twenty ninth. And then we’re back in June. It’s Sandwich is another event. We’re back in June, June 9th for their Supply chain summit. Yes. And then we have a top secret day.

[00:43:20] Yes. A day after which, Tom, you you may be arguably where this since you’re so plugged in to collinet next generation and that in the academic pipeline it support Supply chain Wayne State University. We’ve heard big things about their growing supply chain program. So we’re gonna be up there covering the AIG Supply chain summit on the night that follow up day. I believe we’re gonna be on campus talking with students and professors as part of that program. We’re gonna get to find out directly just how little we know about and how uncool I am and how cool Greg is. But that’s nothing. All right. So last event, A.M.E. Atlanta 2020. Lean’s summit is coming back to Atlanta, May 4th to the 7th, where there at that Association for Manufacturing Excellence event, May 4th interview and all the all the participants in this event, which is, of course, geared towards manufacturing and folks at love, continued improvement. Yep. Lots and lots of best practices there. You can find out about all these events right on our Web site on the events tab. You can also find past replays, other resources, all at Supply Chain Now Radio, BCom. And Greg, where can they find our podcast?

[00:44:28] They can find it at Apple podcast, Google podcasts, Spotify, anywhere you get your podcast. Really? And don’t forget YouTube. Pay you. It’s your turn. It almost got me. All it’s got to do the time he tries to trip me up at the end of every show.

[00:44:43] Surprising with the question I ask him a you own own target. Not bad, huh? OK. So we’ve got a big thanks again, Tom Wooddale, for joining us and sharing a lot of things. You probably did not know that this iconic brand is involved. So. And while Supply chain is not born, which it hearkens back to a different episode, we use that very tongue in cheek. But there’s so much going on in the world Supply chain reverse agist tics returns, you name it, that’s making us all better. Okay. On behalf of the entire team, Scott Luton Greg White, stay tuned as we continue our live coverage of the reverse Logistics comp reverse Logistics Association conference and expo right here in Las Vegas, Nevada. We’ll see you soon.