Emerging innovative strategies and technological advancements are set to revolutionize the industry… are you ready for them?

In this episode, host Scott W. Luton delves into the rapidly evolving world of supply chain management with special guests Tom Moore, Founder and CEO of ProvisionAi, and Jake Barr, CEO of BlueWorld Supply Chain Consulting.

Listen in to gain invaluable insights into the significant shift towards outsourcing in manufacturing and its implications on supply chain dynamics and how predictive analytics and AI are becoming game-changers in managing supply chain efficiency and reducing environmental impact. Along the way you’ll also learn practical strategies for optimizing load management, highlighted through successful case studies from renowned companies like Unilever and Campbell Soup.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the future directions of supply chain management and how embracing technology and innovation can lead to substantial cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and more sustainable practices. Tune in to equip yourself with the knowledge to navigate the complexities of modern supply chains and drive meaningful change in your organization.

Narrator [00:00:04]:

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

Scott W. Luton [00:00:32]:

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luton with you here on Supply Chain Now. Welcome. Do we have a show for you today. Watch out. Now what happens when you combine meticulous planning, flawless execution, innovative technology, and empower teams amongst other powerful ingredients? Simply put, incredible things, folks, we got a couple of been there, done that. Business leaders here today joining us that are going to be diving into a variety of topics, including how good supply chains plan, but how great ones execute. So stay tuned for what promises to be an exceptional conversation full of actionable insights.

Scott W. Luton [00:01:09]:

Now, if you enjoyed today’s show, be sure to share it with a friend or your network. They will be grateful that you did. All right, so as I promised, we got two rock and roll guests here today. I want to get to work. And welcome in our guests. First off, Tom Moore, founder and CEO with ProvisionAi and who we’ve deemed to be the John Wayne of global supply chain, one of our newest co hosts here at Supply Chain Now, Jake Barr, CEO, principal at BlueWorld Supply Chain Consulting.

Jake Barr [00:01:37]:

Hey.

Tom Moore [00:01:38]:

Hey, Tom.

Scott W. Luton [00:01:38]:

How you doing?

Tom Moore [00:01:39]:

Great. Doing well today.

Scott W. Luton [00:01:41]:

So great to see you. And the one and only Jack Barr. Welcome back.

Jake Barr [00:01:46]:

Well, Scott, I do have to tell you, I got to give you a props because somewhere between the last several weeks, colleague of mine in central Europe to show the full global reach you have, sends me by mail. Okay. Now, I’m not sure exactly how they officially got it here in a cost effective way from a transportation standpoint, but just to prove your adoring fans go all the way around the world.

Scott W. Luton [00:02:15]:

Well, hey, I appreciate that. I’m going to have to check out big Jake featuring John Wayne back in the day. But, hey, we got Jake and Tom here. I tell you all what, you got a great learning opportunity here today. We’re going to start with a little fun warm up question, because, Tom, one thing that we picked up in our earlier conversations is you recently went to Vietnam a month or two ago. And that’s high up on my list of places that I really want to go. Me and Amanda both. So I got to ask you, what was one of the best parts of your trip?

Tom Moore [00:02:44]:

You know, one of the great things about Vietnam is it’s probably the most capitalist communist country I’ve ever been to. I mean, everybody’s into owning something, and of course they manage things by taxation. So if you buy a car, there’s a 300% tax on it. So scooters and motorcycles everywhere. So as a transportation geek, the one thing I picked up on is how they’re delivering to all these little stores in these really crowded, narrow streets. Motorcycles with literally piled high with toilet paper. Somebody goes to my LinkedIn, they can see some photographs of different means of transportation. One of the favorite things I saw was also a motorcycle pulling a trailer with four water buffaloes.

Jake Barr [00:03:27]:

Really?

Scott W. Luton [00:03:30]:

Hey, it is remarkable. I can’t wait to see the pictures and hear more about your experiences. So, folks, check out Tom Moore’s LinkedIn profile. We’ll drop that link in the chat. Slightly different question for you, Jake. As we have demonstrated here on previous appearances, you are an extensive world traveler. I’ve enjoyed some of your stories over good food up in the Nashville area. What’s one, Jake? One city across the globe that doesn’t get enough recognition on the global travel scene?

Jake Barr [00:03:57]:

I could fill a book with that question, but I’m going to pop you one. Istanbul. Okay. Okay. And the reason for that is not only the diversity of the city, the culture, the people, the historic nature of how both new age day technology and conveniences can be mixed at the same time. You’re going through the grand bazaar or something like that, where the roman legion stabled their horses, right? So it’s just an incredible blend of, I’ll call it the exotic nature of, if you’re a history buff, you’ll love it. If you’re a cultural buff, you’ll love it. If you’re a food buff, you’ll be absolutely thrilled.

Scott W. Luton [00:04:49]:

Okay, Istanbul. I appreciate you sharing. As we start to get to work here, I want to start with this fundamental truth that some folks out in industry haven’t quite embraced yet. Houston, we have a problem. We got a big problem. In fact, we’ve got a big gap. So, Tom, I want to start with you. So tell us, in your view, how supply chains can often be based in dreamy perfect world scenarios without taking into account realistic constraints and this big gap that regularly exists in our world.

Scott W. Luton [00:05:18]:

Your thoughts?

Tom Moore [00:05:19]:

Tom, one of the things we see is that there are basically silos, and the silos are both operational and systematic, and the silo number one is planning, and silo number two is basically the folks who make the plans work. We partner with some of the big supply chain planning systems. So we’re going to have to say, hey, they do what they’re designed to do. The problem is that they react to a chain of events. And that chain of events is you and I go to the store on Saturday or Friday night or Sunday, and we buy all kinds of stuff which has to be replenished. So the grocer’s putting in orders. Hey, those orders all hit. And now we’ve got to ship all those orders.

Tom Moore [00:06:02]:

And then the supply planning system says, oh, I’ve got to replenish all that. And, oh, by the way, not only do I have to replenish all that stuff, I got to do it all right now, because we’re looking at a very short horizon. So the operations guys now have this thrown over them. One is we might not have enough space in the warehouse that you’re trying to ship to. We may be incurring excess transportation costs because the transportation manager will sit there and go, hey, I’ve been asked to ship a whole bunch of shipments, 24 shipments one day, breathe the next. This is real data, and this is constant. And what we’re taking over here is, how do you manage that? If the transportation manager says, oh, I’m not going to get 24 trucks, and we have a shortage, and outage at the warehouse, Otif suffers, who’s going to get hammered? Transportation guy. So he’s going to do whatever he has to do, spend money, spend all kinds of resources to get those trucks.

Tom Moore [00:06:58]:

Next day, he’s got nothing to ship. Carriers have to react to all that. So they’re now dead, heading trailers into these locations. They’re having all kinds of problems there. The warehouses may not have capacity to ship it. The ones receiving it may not have capacity to receive it. And worse, that can impact OTF on time in full. Now we got 20 trailers waiting to be unloaded.

Tom Moore [00:07:21]:

Well, guess what? The inventory I need for that important target, Walmart Kroger shipment, is in trailer number 19, and it’s not going to be unloaded for a couple of days. So now we’re shorting a customer.

Jake Barr [00:07:34]:

Scott, the dilemma we have is a fairly simple one. What I’d like to do is just to simplify a bit of what Tom was talking about on the challenges, because a lot of the architectures and technologies we use to support just the basic response of a business running its supply chain were designed 20 to 30 years ago. So whether we’re talking, as he correctly noted, planning systems. Right, supply planning system, or let’s throw in the WMS, the warehouse management planning system, or the transportation management planning system, they’re all independent. Entities. And quite frankly, what’s been missing is the ability to bring intelligence at the seams to connect those deficiencies. Because guess what? Left to its own device, the supply planning system is still going to say, you know what, Tom? I’m going to throw in and say I need 200 trucks tomorrow versus an average daily load of 20 to have you go execute. The warehouse is going to sit there with their finger down their throat.

Jake Barr [00:08:48]:

I got a crew for it. I’ve got to pull it, I’ve got to schedule it, I’ve got to pick it, I’ve got to have it at the door. Oh, wait, I don’t have enough door space. And now we’ve got the other dilemma of the truck piece. When if you’re using the intelligence, you can not only see part of that coming, you can massage and work around it. And more importantly, you can put a logical plan that doesn’t cause a bunch of willing workers to go running and scampering like scalded dogs trying to go, the building’s on fire. We don’t have enough door. So the combination of old tech manual workarounds that a lot of the firms still depend upon trying to come to a successful interoperability, I’ll call it connection with today’s business pace and environment has been a non starter.

Jake Barr [00:09:51]:

So I applaud Tom for what he’s doing in that piece because it’s bringing a very practical overlay. All that stuff that we did is invested capital. So I love not having to replace my WMA. I love not have to replace my TMF. I love not having to replace my supply planning solution. But still I can identify where are my opportunities because I don’t know about you, but the last time I checked, we have a massive driver shortage, b, a collapsing of the industry in terms of folks that are viable suppliers to hire to even move freight. Third, all that, by the way, affecting on time in full. Right.

Jake Barr [00:10:37]:

And those who are available going, hmm, I have an opportunistic pricing opportunity to steal Scott’s wallet in one easy swoop.

Scott W. Luton [00:10:52]:

I wouldn’t be a hot target. I’d be low on the target for my wallet, Jake, but I love how you’ve couched that. And Tom and Jake, we’re going to talk about how we can bridge this gap in a minute. But Tom, I’ll come back to you and get you to respond to how Jake was kind of coloring the challenge out there. And I love in particular one part of Jake’s response there he was talking about this intersection of old technology manual workarounds, which everyone here listening and watching can relate to that interoperability challenge.

Tom Moore [00:11:20]:

Right.

Scott W. Luton [00:11:20]:

We got all these systems and none of them talk to each other so often. And then today’s pace, which isn’t getting any slower, unfortunately, even my home state of South Carolina. So, Tom, react to how Jake was painting that picture.

Tom Moore [00:11:33]:

You got a huge investment in all these different systems and they don’t talk to each other. And more importantly, we do have this huge human capital that we’ve got to throw at things. Now, we have one client that was getting people out of bed at like three in the morning, so they could be in work at four to make sure that they could get the data right, so they could start doing their deployment tendering by lunchtime. That’s not a way to run a railroad. But you go back to that question of, we’ve got all this investment in systems and there’s a lot of data out there, but there’s nothing that’s bringing it all together. If you think about a planning system, you can plan twelve months in advance. So data is probably pretty useless after you get out three or four weeks, but you’ve got all this data. What do our planners when they’re doing supply plan, for example, looking at? They’re looking at a very small window.

Tom Moore [00:12:27]:

Today’s Thursday. What am I going to ship on Monday? And they’re not looking to say, well, month end is coming in a couple of weeks, I better start laying in some extra stuff because month end is coming, and I know that’s going to be a big hit. And so you’ve got a lot of data there. You’ve got data in your TMS because you’ve got different freight rates. If you ship with five carriers, it’s probably going to be more expensive than if you ship with the top carrier that you want to deal with. You’ve got data in your WMS. How much stuff have I got? Then you’ve got all the data in the ERP that says, well, do I really even have that inventory? The deployment system is telling me I need to deploy it, but I may not have it as in available. The promise.

Tom Moore [00:13:08]:

So there has been no system until recently that’s been able to pull all that data together and make intelligent decisions, not just for today, tomorrow, Monday, but out for the following weeks. That’s a critical factor.

Scott W. Luton [00:13:23]:

Yes, and a massive opportunity.

Jake Barr [00:13:26]:

Scott, I always use the term clock speed. You have time based constraints you’re working on that are different across all these individual work nodes or work areas. So whether it’s supply planning, or how the warehouse is queuing. Am I looking at the universe through the next shift or the next 8 hours for shipping or the next day for planning consumer customer demand. And so this element of saying, hey, there’s a way to use intelligence to actually look not only within how you’re running each of those independent processes, but more importantly for how I can optimize based on how I’m able to see things that you don’t have the ability to. Because I hate to put it this way, hard working men and women that come to work every day trying to do their absolute very best for the firm that they’re working on and in the piece of work that they’re working on. Now let’s get real. I’m sorry.

Jake Barr [00:14:29]:

You know, I’ve been around for a long time. I simply can’t do all the computations in my head to figure out the amount of customer made I have, and the number of doors I have, and the number of suppliers I’ve got for the transportation lanes, and the number of storage spaces I’ve got in the building, in the warehouse, and the number of lines I’ve got that are puking out production at me. Oh, by the way, some at the rates I was expecting, some but slower than the rates I was expecting. And I’m supposed to be able to say, hey, my plan is okay, right? That’s a fallacy. It’s time for us to recognize that I don’t care what WMS, what TMS, what supply planning solution, whether it’s best of breed, whatever the gaps of the ability to talk across and to realize that is a big ecosystem where if we look at all of those pieces, we can probably come to a much more efficient, daily executable plan and not waste a lot of money. And that’s money both in labor and manpower. The productivity levels, definitely the rates we’re paying to move freight and then assume that somebody’s going to unload it on the other side. If I stuff them 200 trucks in a day and a half, it’s just absurd to think that we haven’t stepped back before this to appreciate needing to do that.

Scott W. Luton [00:16:07]:

Yes, I love. All right, so where we’re going next is bridging the gap in a very powerful, sustainable manner. But I want to make sure folks out there, because what Tom and Jake both have been speaking to is the multitude of levels that this gap impacts. An organization and the ecosystem, you name it. From the team Tom used that example of folks getting up at three in the morning, getting to the plant by four. Raise your hand if you want to do that. Every day, all day, every week.

Jake Barr [00:16:37]:

Right?

Scott W. Luton [00:16:37]:

The financial impact, the operational impact, the risk impact, and of course, the impact on your customers and your suppliers, the whole ecosystem. It’s a massive opportunity. And to pick back up on what Tom was saying, a lot of the data, maybe all the data you need, is sitting there in all these different systems, raising their hands, say, hey, pick me in the kickball draft. Back in fourth grade, I always got picked last, every time. So, Tom, shifting gears to the good news, right? And I love your mantra, one of your mantras, Tom, that you said in our first conversation, and as part of all your conversations out in the marketplace, good companies plan, great companies execute. Good supply chains plan, great supply chains execute. So the trillion dollar question, Tom, inflation, y’all know, how do you bridge that gap and then build on it? Address it foundationally in a way that you can build on top of it. Tom, your thoughts?

Tom Moore [00:17:27]:

First of all, as you pointed out, a lot of people may not actually fully recognize that there is a gap. You got to understand there is a gap. And I would say a lot of planning people, we make good plans and we just thrum over the wall. Invariably, we get invited to talk to companies by their transportation, people who feel the pain, right? And as we all know, excrement flows downhill. How do you take all this data and then introduce constraints across the system, constraints that maybe cost barriers, constraints that may be based on space, constraints that look at the operational reality that this warehouse is closed on Saturday. We’re not going to be shipping to it. We can’t look at things in isolation. You have to look at things holistically over the whole horizon with lots of data that we talked about before, and basically try and do things in a way that says, we recognize there is a constraint on how much you can ship out of a site, how much you can receive in a site.

Tom Moore [00:18:34]:

And as Jake pointed out, it’s really hard to do manually. We’re working with a client that their smallest warehouse has 14 different supply sources now to not bury that site. How do you coordinate amongst 14 different planners who are in probably 13 different places and who are trying to get their stuff done? They’ve got different amounts of lead time. It’s a monumental task. We’re fortunate that we developed some technology that looks at all this big data, pulls it all together, and does an optimization in total. And when I say in total, I mean, again, if you squeeze on the location one way, somehow it’s going to pop out somewhere else. Right. So, for example, we’ve got a location that can only ship 200 trucks today.

Tom Moore [00:19:27]:

Well, we need more inventory at a particular location from that site. Well, that means another site is going to get less trucks. Simple as that. Everything has another action on it. So we’ve focused on with a tool called level load, which is a technology that looks at all this data, brings it all together, and manages it. In particular, CPG and other large shippers manage things, and they manage things in truckloads. We’re going to ship this many truckloads, and we’re going to look at things in terms of how many loads can we move, how many loads can we receive? It’s not at the individual SKU level, although that flows back into the prioritization of what goes on those trucks. And the last and most important thing is customer service.

Tom Moore [00:20:15]:

We absolutely have to maintain customer service. And so missing a service for a customer has to be an incredibly high cost in these calculations. So level load looks at all these things, pulls them all together, and comes out with a plan that historically would have been like this, but is now much smoother. Is it flat? No, it’s not flat because you and I go to the grocery store and we have a run on toilet paper, excuse the expression, or we have some big sale on tide from Jake’s old company. So things aren’t always going to be nice and smooth, but they do need to react to customers. But inside the constraints. You can’t put an eight foot forklift through a four foot door.

Jake Barr [00:21:03]:

Well, actually, I’ve seen that you can. Well, hey, it’s a magical view.

Tom Moore [00:21:10]:

You know, there are a lot of problems out there that exist. There are problems that people want to solve, and there are problems that people don’t want to solve, okay? They just want to complain about. And it’s a question of motivation and the level of person who sees and understands the problem. One of the challenges most companies have is organizational, and that is you’ve got an organization, primarily operations folks, and you’ve got an organization of planning folks. Where do they come together? At what level do they come together? And getting that person at that level is one of the critical things that you have to understand, because the transportation guy doesn’t have that much influence. The warehouse guys, no one cares about them. One company called them Merlot. Why? Because they whine a lot, you know.

Tom Moore [00:21:57]:

But, you know, the whole goal here is really to get a coordinated supply chain, and that requires people at multi levels in the operation to understand there is a problem and want to do something about it.

Scott W. Luton [00:22:12]:

You know, one of my favorite parts of our conversation a while back kind of goes to the point Jake was talking about, organizations don’t have enough people to throw at the challenges that exist today. We must lean in to technology. There is a better way. Why create all this organizational heartburn? Tom, address that. You talk about how the impact to our people alone is a reason to do better.

Tom Moore [00:22:37]:

You know, I was sitting in a presentation recently from Procter and gamble, and this is a public one, so I can talk about it. And they basically said our goal is to reduce the amount of touches that people make. And they put up a beautiful graph up on the wall about where they were in this journey and where they started and where they are. And being able to say that 90 something percent of their orders go through without being touched, that’s a pretty wonderful situation. Okay. I’ve got the same thing with another company that I can’t publicly talk about. They’ve gone through and done a really good job of automating. How many trucks are we going to need? And this is one of the kind of the neat things that they’ve done is they’ve said, we want to pretend to trucks.

Tom Moore [00:23:26]:

We want to get ahead of everybody else, so we get the carriers we want, and we get our supply chain first. Tender acceptance up in the 99% range. Think about that for what it does for the carrier. And so they’re pre tendering based on all this data that we give them on a Monday and not saying what’s going to go on the truck until Friday. Again, no touch. And on Friday, our software that looks at the loading says, I’ve got six trucks. I need to load six trucks. What are the most important things from highest priority to lowest priority that I can put on that truck? That’s where I draw the line.

Tom Moore [00:24:05]:

Okay. Now I’m going to optimize those trucks and take those in a most optimal fashion.

Scott W. Luton [00:24:10]:

So tomorrow you paint a pretty picture. And in just a second, I’m gonna get Jake to weigh in. First, we’re gonna talk more about the short and long term impact of where you’re going on carriers, customers, staff members, financial costs, including one of my favorite parts of y’all story, what you’ve been doing, taking trucks off the road. We’ll touch on that in just a second. So, Jake, before we get into the impact, talk about what you heard there and what you know about how we’re bridging the gap and how we can bridge the gap.

Jake Barr [00:24:39]:

You’ve got to be able to show people data to open their eyes. I’m a big proponent of live experimentations back in the sixties. Back in the sixties, I was still using a wooden slide rule. So I want to pause that one for a second and agree, hey, there’s always advances in technology that take some benefit from the important piece is that when you’re trying to really go cross process, which this issue really is, it represents its planning, it’s execution. Right. And there are a number of people involved in that. And so I’m from the belief that you can show me some data, I may not personally be able to execute it by myself to the level of excellence that is possible if we put all of the data together and run the process differently than we did in the past. So when it’s the difference to a certain extent, Scott, when you’re looking and saying, well, Tom, I need to find an incremental zero point zero, two cents per mile improvement in my transportation cost.

Jake Barr [00:26:00]:

Right. Versus saying, let me step back and say, how do I re engineer the way we’re doing the work to a much larger dollar opportunity to be not only for cost savings, more importantly productivity. Right. There’s not too many organizations we work with where they’re walking around saying, hey, I’ve got more than enough people. And in fact, they’re going, hey, I don’t have any people. Can you help us acquire a few extra? And, oh, by the way, I need skills in those people that do show up that were better than they were in the past. Right. So you got to realize that this is not an incremental kind of thing.

Jake Barr [00:26:46]:

It’s a business problem we’ve been dealing with for several years, where you have to take a different approach. You’ve got to step back and say, it’s cross processes, it’s cross organizational silos. And if we really want to make a step change, we have to try something a bit different.

Scott W. Luton [00:27:06]:

Love it. Jake, you put it so well because it’s not as simple as, would you say, zero point zero, two cents per mile. It’s doing business differently. And I also loved how you called out, it’s not just financial savings. One of my favorite things you all both have touched on is we’re alleviating, reducing and in some cases, eliminating organizational heartburn. We’re making it easier for our people who want to be successful, making their days easier to deliver for the organization and their team. So, Tom, on that last point, I want to shift over. You started to talk about how doing business differently and better, you mentioned the carriers, their world’s better organizations become preferred shippers.

Scott W. Luton [00:27:48]:

Talk more about the short and long term impact of stepping into this opportunity of truly that step change, of doing business differently and the impact on carriers customers, those costs that Jake talked about, and of course our team members speak to that.

Tom Moore [00:28:02]:

Tom, I always talk about customers first. Right. Cause that’s the most important thing. What are customers seeing from doing this? And the answer is they don’t know why it’s happening, but they’re getting better Otif, better on time, better in full on time is relatively straightforward because if you don’t have the product and you’re going to hold the truck while something else is unloaded, it’s going to take time to get there in full. We’re shipping the highest priority things and we’re making that determination really close to when we actually deploy it. So we’re making it with better data. We have more information at that point in time. Customers, big win.

Tom Moore [00:28:45]:

When you talk about the transportation side, there are two wins here. Number one is on a day to day basis. If you can get that first tender acceptance way up there means you’re dealing with the carriers you want to deal with, not some other carrier. Okay. That’s a very important factor. Longer term, though, if you can show a carrier that there’s less volatility. And we had a situation where a company was shipping from Wisconsin down to Chicago and we implemented the level load solution and they got a lot smoother. So this carrier came back to the company and said, we can handle more of your loads.

Tom Moore [00:29:24]:

And the corollary was the company went back to him and said, and can you do it at a lower cost? Now, I can’t tell you that because you have a reduced volatility, and that’s part of the pricing piece that most carriers deal with is that how many deadhead miles do I have to do to get a truck into this particular location? If we can reduce that which we know we have, then that reduces the cost of service and therefore the transportation rates should go down. Now, we’ve run this sort of experiment live over the last year or so, and because transportation rates are going down, it’s really difficult to know how much has been caused by reducing volatility and just the overall market overall. It makes sense that when you look at the pricing model of most big carriers, they’ve got that in there.

Scott W. Luton [00:30:21]:

Can I interrupt for just a second before you move to the next? Because I think Jake wanted to validate part of the impact you were just talking about.

Jake Barr [00:30:29]:

Make no bones about it. The ability to do the predictability is having an impact on the rate. So I work with several firms where the entire focus of being able to do that, the volatility in the transportation business, the ability, again, we’re dealing with an industry that has a driver shortage who is having to make outward commitments to get drivers home, to even be able to retain the ones that they have. Right. So my ability to actually upfront be able to use and optimize the way I am projecting out how many pieces of equipment very important for capital asset utilization and importantly, the human asset element, which is factored in enormously recently on being able to sustain, I can have all the capacity, all the power units in the world, and if I don’t have the reliable human element of it, I can’t even meet the rate that I’m contracted for today. Right. So this element, the leaders in the space, the leaders, that is, companies who are really going after this from a supply chain standpoint, are looking at how to use this predictive element, not only stabilize, but then to also compress the cost structure, because I win. You win on how we’re able to manage that flow.

Jake Barr [00:32:02]:

Yes.

Scott W. Luton [00:32:02]:

Well said, Jake.

Tom Moore [00:32:04]:

Okay, Tom, I’m going to pick up on something, and that is visibility. Visibility is so what, what are you going to do with visibility? It’s only valuable if there is some action that comes out. And we’ve been very fortunate that, you know, when we look at the, the visibility we have to all these systems of being able to put through and say, here are the actions that you need to take out of this. You need to tender these trucks for this day. You need to load these trucks in this way. And so by doing that, the benefits just flow all through the whole business. It’s not just looking at the data, it’s looking at the data and using advanced algorithms to make decisions. And those decisions drive the customer service benefits, the carrier benefits, the benefits in load optimization, and benefits in transportation savings, the benefits of the warehouse.

Tom Moore [00:33:01]:

It all fits together, and you’ve got to have a system doing it.

Scott W. Luton [00:33:05]:

Tom, excellent point. Visibility isn’t good enough. We’ve got to have solutions and the ability to solve these challenges y’all both are speaking of. Okay, so, Tom, going back, you were talking before, we kind of went on a little side road here. You’re talking about the short and long term impact. You started with customers and then you went to carriers, and then let’s talk about costs and the team members, if you would, finish that thought. And we’ll circle back to Jake.

Tom Moore [00:33:30]:

Tom, I can’t give you the numbers from customers of savings on leveling the network. I know the public comments have been many millions. I actually know how many millions there is. And I know that the payback was very, very quick. So from a cost perspective, great opportunity. From a people perspective, it’s that getting that 90 plus percent of things that flow through the whole system and don’t have to be touched, and you don’t have to have somebody with their hair on fire trying to solve some almost intractable problem at incredible cost. And that’s a huge benefit. It’s that touchless planning that Proctor and others are going for.

Jake Barr [00:34:17]:

I refer to it more as self directed work. Right. You’re actually using the intelligence to reconstruct what is the logical work plan for each of those individual team members. And it flows back because you’re taking the collective intelligence across the process areas to actually redefine both the work, the timing of the execution, and importantly, those process outcomes that are critical. And it’s not just, yes, the cost is a component. Yes, the on time is a component. When I’m able to have all of my people in my operation, it’s a little happier work environment, let’s put it that way. That’s right.

Jake Barr [00:35:05]:

Where they’re not having to go through the continual frustrations of, I mean, it’s the Tom and Jerry cartoon, you know, how many times do you have to see the bash happen before you realize it’s coming again? Right?

Scott W. Luton [00:35:18]:

That’s right.

Jake Barr [00:35:18]:

Oh, no, wait. We have 200 orders coming downstream for promotion, and someone is going to logically believe that we can all fit it in the building and all fit it in the dock and also find magical trucks to go fill it when it can’t be unloaded on the other end. So we’re going to do that and we’re going to repeat it over and over.

Scott W. Luton [00:35:39]:

Tom, we’re starting to come down the home stretch. I wish we had a couple more hours here, but one thing I definitely want to bring up, which is one of my favorite parts of what you are doing, is you’re taking trucks off the road.

Jake Barr [00:35:50]:

Right?

Scott W. Luton [00:35:50]:

88,000. Let’s see if I got this number right. 88,000 trucks off the road last year alone, Tom. So beyond the customer impact, the carrier impact, the costs, taking those down, the Tom and jerry effect.

Tom Moore [00:36:05]:

Right.

Scott W. Luton [00:36:05]:

The heartburn went amongst our teams taking it down. We’re doing good for the environment.

Jake Barr [00:36:10]:

Right.

Scott W. Luton [00:36:10]:

And the sustainability factor, which is in demand by every factor out there in the marketplace. So tell us. You got to be proud of that, Tom.

Tom Moore [00:36:18]:

It’s a wonderful thing. And I remind our team every day that, hey, what we do is fundamentally good. Makes it easier for you and I to cross the road. Everything is good about reducing the number of trucks, and it’s sort of a gateway drug from the way we use it. We start in with load optimization. And load optimization generally saves somewhere between five and 10% of the number of loads. But by actually being smart about how you put things together, some people call it TETrIS. By span of putting the TETriS together, you can actually get more stuff on every truck.

Tom Moore [00:36:51]:

And we’ve just proved this time and time and time again, and with big companies, Unilever, Campbell Soup, those kind of folks, and smaller companies. We did a project for Riviana Foods, and we’ve got one plant in Memphis that we put load optimization in as a first step, and we’re saving a million bucks a year. I mean, that’s an amazing number. Great. One plant operation. So it’s not just for the mega guys, it’s for the smaller folks as well. Why do I call it a gateway drug? Because it’s one of those steps that you take on your way to this touchless planning. It’s one of the steps you take on the way to getting level loading, working, etcetera.

Tom Moore [00:37:32]:

And it pays for itself so quickly. Frankly, it’s quite frustrating when you talk to somebody and they go, our trucks are always full. That’s not what data shows. We got some data from the Georgia Department of Transportation and looking at 258,000 heavily loaded trucks. Ones that weigh out of those are.

Jake Barr [00:37:51]:

All circling Atlanta right now.

Tom Moore [00:37:54]:

No, they’ve stopped in the Atlanta. Probably 91% of them weren’t within 2000 pounds of the maximum gross vehicle. White allowable. What’s wrong with this picture?

Jake Barr [00:38:05]:

Right?

Scott W. Luton [00:38:06]:

Hey, so really quick, we got some resources we’re going to share with folks. We’re going to make sure folks know how to connect with Tom and Jake. Jake, quickly, if you can respond to what Tom just shared, and then I’m going to pose to both of you all what folks can do today to act on this massive opportunity. So, Jake, first respond to Tom, if you would.

Jake Barr [00:38:25]:

Tom’s. The work that their team has done is both a sustainability win, but what you can’t minimize is that it’s also a capacity win in an industry that’s not exactly financially investment sound. So we’ve got a big gap today in the number of viable players that are in the market. And this has been true. Over the decades, right? We go through an over investment cycle, fleet changes, ownership change, getting to the point where we’re using predictive analytics to help shape the next generation of what our supply base looks like is absolutely vital. Okay? It can’t just be a rinse and repeat of the traditional node. So I want to give them props for that because the expansion of this across multiple big name players, shippers wise, is having a demonstrable effect on the quality of the output that the remaining current players can provide today. So now I’ll jump to the point and say, hey, wait a minute, what’s the one thing they could do to really deal with it today? First piece is, I’m going to be very blunt.

Jake Barr [00:39:44]:

You know me realize that the way the market is operating from a business performance standpoint, we didnt just wake up and find ourselves in an environment where everyone has the Amazon effect. That wine sees stuff here in the next 2 hours at our doorstep. Right? And thats the e commerce piece by the way. Its bled over into the expectations and the retail piece. Right? So the performance of quick turnaround, of instantaneous low availability. But at the same time, weve never promoted more, Scott. So let’s not forget about that in a number of the industry verticals. So we are actually chasing the consumer touch point, that is price points, etcetera, to try and influence them buying more, right?

Scott W. Luton [00:40:32]:

Yep.

Jake Barr [00:40:33]:

You add this all in a mixing bowl and if you attempt to apply the same approach you’ve used forever, it’s just lunacy. Right. So you need to step back and say, look, I get it, the market conditions that we’re trying to supply has changed. So for me to take the traditional approach of how I’ve had siloed thinking on how to optimize getting the best performance on the backside is crazy. That’s right. So I need to start by saying I need to bring together my operating team, my transport team, my planning team, and giving them a responsibility to actually deliver me a step change.

Scott W. Luton [00:41:21]:

Yes. Well said Jake. And I liked your first suggestion of what folks can do today is wake up and get real, right. Stop acting like an Android going through all day in and day out.

Jake Barr [00:41:33]:

Right?

Scott W. Luton [00:41:34]:

So Tom, Jake just challenged folks out there quite well. What would you add to that? What steps folks can take today? One step to jump on this opportunity that you and Jake both have described.

Tom Moore [00:41:46]:

You know, you always need a champion, right? You need a champion who’s actually going to do the work. And the work starts out with, look at your data, have you really got variability in your supply planning? I think the answer is always yes, but you got to validate it for yourself and then understand what those premium costs are associated with that. How many additional folks do you have to have in the planning organization because they’re dealing with this? How many additional folks do you have to have in transportation to get all those trucks that Jake’s 200 trucks in one day? What are your premium costs? What’s it doing to your OTF on time and fall? The reality of the situation is you have to know and feel the pain and get that pain point to the right person in that organization because again, planning, they’re probably relatively happy with where they are. Operations is the one that feels the pain. So we need to get it to the point that decision can be made.

Jake Barr [00:42:44]:

Scott, don’t forget too, while we have all this going on, we painted the basic of how the everyday goes. Let’s turn the Rubik’s cube just one little cricket. Forgot to mention. At the same time were planning and executing out the base. We have bigger thought processes back in the home office which says, hey, today across the industry verticals we work with, almost a third of the manufacturing that was previously done in house is being split out to contract manufacturers and contract packers. Because the volatility, the variability that Tom previously spoke to on the demand side, the way were trying to protect it now is to say, well, I dont want to build that in my asset because its too expensive. Im actually going to farm it out to a number of other people. Oh, wait, Tom, did we just add trucks to the road or did we just take trucks off the road? I think we just added a bunch of other trucks and now ive got all the data flows, stuff that have to be intersected to pull together to now actually go make that one available to promise commitment again.

Jake Barr [00:43:58]:

So the reason why it’s positioning the way I did is problem is not getting smaller, it’s getting bigger.

Scott W. Luton [00:44:06]:

That’s right.

Jake Barr [00:44:06]:

So if you attempt to use the same approach you were using for game over.

Tom Moore [00:44:11]:

Yeah.

Scott W. Luton [00:44:12]:

All right, so, Tom and Jake, I want to make sure folks know how to connect with y’all both. It is a must have fuller conversation.

Jake Barr [00:44:18]:

Right.

Scott W. Luton [00:44:19]:

And by the way, Jake, just a quick observation. I bet Tom and his team can look at data. It’s like they’re playing 70 chess over there at ProvisionAi. I’m over here playing checkers.

Tom Moore [00:44:30]:

That’s a compliment.

Scott W. Luton [00:44:31]:

High compliment for you and the team. Tom Moore.

Jake Barr [00:44:33]:

It’s disappointing. I make the first move on the board and Tom just immediately goes check.

Scott W. Luton [00:44:38]:

Me for other folks to have that experience. And kidding aside, better yet to have the eureka moment and then to execute on this opportunity we’re talking about how can folks connect with you and the ProvisionAi team?

Tom Moore [00:44:52]:

Call me personally because I’m happy to go through and talk with folks who really have that burning desire to make change. We’re doing good things. We’re getting trucks off the road. We’re doing things that keeps me getting up in the morning.

Scott W. Luton [00:45:06]:

I bet you’re springing out of bed in the morning, not just getting up, I bet you’re springing out of bed. And Tom has a great YouTube channel. I’ve enjoyed some of your videos there. We’re dropping a link to your state of the supply chain podcast on YouTube as well. Tom, you’re busy. You and the team on the move.

Jake Barr [00:45:26]:

So Jake, Bart, I’m typically on an airplane going to some client someplace. You can always find me on LinkedIn but I’m always close in some kind of movie format.

Tom Moore [00:45:38]:

Love it.

Scott W. Luton [00:45:38]:

All right, well thanks to you both for being here tomorrow. ProvisionAi, Jake Barr with BlueWorld Supply Chain Consulting. Jake, I’m a sneak this in really quick because you and I both have enjoyed this conversation with Tom. If you had a succinct key takeaway that folks cannot forget about from this conversation with me and you and Tom, what would that be?

Jake Barr [00:46:00]:

Jake?

Scott W. Luton [00:46:01]:

And then I’m a sign off.

Jake Barr [00:46:02]:

Predictive analytics is going to change the world in the supply chain game.

Scott W. Luton [00:46:09]:

It’s just that easy. And Tom’s already leading that change. So folks, connect with Tom Moore, Founder and CEO, ProvisionAi. Tom, thank you for being here.

Tom Moore [00:46:17]:

Thanks Scott.

Scott W. Luton [00:46:19]:

You bet. Look forward to next time. And then Jake Barr, hey, the one and only John Wayne, global supply chain and CEO, principal at BlueWorld Supply Chain Consulting. A real pleasure here Jake. So folks, make sure connect with ProvisionAi the resources page. Make sure you check out Tom Moore’s podcast over on YouTube. We got the link there. And whatever you do folks, take action man.

Scott W. Luton [00:46:44]:

Act on this goodness that Tom and Jake have laid out here. Do something today. Your teams are ready for it. They want to do better. They want to succeed. Let’s make it easier for them and the whole organization to make this step change and realize the art of the possible. So with all that said on behalf of the entire team here at Supply Chain Now, Scott Luton, challenge, you do good, give forward, be the change and we’ll see you next time right back here at Supply Chain Now. Thanks everybody.

Narrator [00:47:12]:

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