Managing your allocation is a dynamic process that requires proactive planning. But the tools and processes shippers use today are static and reactive resulting in shortfalls, contract penalties, and missing out on containers you contracted for. This is further complicated by the fact that a shipping carrier’s product is ‘perishable’ in the sense that the value of available capacity decreases closer to the time of departure.

Allocation management empowers shippers to manage the forward-looking allocation of all their ocean contracts, so they can be proactive and prevent shortfalls while not overcommitting.

In this Supply Chain Now livestream, Scott Luton and Greg White were joined by Gordon Downes, Co-Founder and CEO of NYSHEX, to discuss:

• How to centralize your ocean contracts

• Preventing shortfalls by making sure carrier agreements contain an appropriate level of granularity

• Learning to ‘control the controllables’ to proactively manage vessel delays, rolls, and blank sailings

Intro/Outro (00:03):

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 Luton (00:31):

Hey. Hey. Good morning. Scott Luton and Greg White here with you on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today’s livestream. Greg, how are you doing?

Greg White (00:38):

I’m doing great, Scott. How are you?

Scott Luton (00:41):

I’m doing wonderful, man. Wonderful. We’re getting a little bit of break from the heat here in the Metro Atlanta area. Lots of shade out there. We might get some rain later on.

Greg White (00:49):

You may have had a delicious steak dinner last night as well from what I hear.

Scott Luton (00:52):

We did. And I’ll tell you what, I had a great time with Clay “The Diesel” Phillips celebrating some things with him and his lovely significant other, and Amanda. So, we’ll have to share some details on our next steak 101 – Atlanta steak 101 show.

Greg White (01:09):

Supply Chain Geeks Talk Steak.

Scott Luton (01:11):

Yes. That’s right. Greg, and a new series is born just like that.

Greg White (01:15):

Just like that.

Scott Luton (01:16):

And by the way, if we’re talking about dinner last night, I hear you and your lovely significant other dined with one of the movers and shakers across global supply chain too.

Greg White (01:27):

Yeah. One of the best leaders in supply chain, Rick McDonald and his lovely wife, Kristen. We had some great seafood because I don’t get enough of it at the beach, so I come back to Atlanta for it. And just amazing on camera and off, at work, and away, just what an incredible person Rick is.

Scott Luton (01:45):

Agreed. Next time, we’re going to have to bring the tables together and not talk any supply chain.

Greg White (01:51 ):

That’s a great idea.

Scott Luton (01:53):

It’s got to be everything but supply chain. Hey, we’ll save that for another day, Greg. Clearly, we’re in great company last night, eating some great food. Today though, today we’re talking about the obstacle course that is ocean shipping lately. And we’re going to be talking with an industry leader, mover and shaker that will be sharing ways to optimize your shipping approach particularly your allocation management. Greg, this should be a great show, right?

Greg White (02:19):

Yeah. I mean, what could be a more poignant topic, right? I think we’ve talked about how often shipping contracts really mean nothing. And what NYSHEX is doing is really, obviously, valued by the industry. So, we’re going to talk a little bit more about that.

Scott Luton (02:35):

That is right. Big show here today. But, hey, folks in the cheap seats, in the sky boxes, hey, you’re the second star of the show. We want to hear from you. We’d love to get your take on everything we talk about here today. We’re going to share as many of your comments as we can get to. But stay tuned for what’s going to be a very informative show. So, with that said, Greg, we already got some folks tuning in. Let’s say hello to a few folks. The aforementioned, Clay Phillips, the biggest Atlanta Braves fan on the planet next to someone that might be named Luton, big Braves fan. We really appreciate what Clay and the whole production team do here today, Chantel, Amanda, Katherine and The Diesel, right?

Greg White (03:14):

Yeah. I mean, I imagine that game last night was a little bit distracting for your dinner.

Scott Luton (03:20):

Oh, gosh. Man, on the drive home, old Will Smith did his best to give us a heart attack. But, hey, Kenley Jensen came in all as well and the Braves are still playing great, great ball. Dr. Rhonda Bompensa-Zimmerman is with us here today. Greg, I got with Dr. Rhonda yesterday morning. We did that Veterans in Logistics event. Really appreciated, I’ll tell you, Rhonda, wonderful, heartfelt perspective, real expertise. I appreciate what you shared all around balancing that mental wellness that we all deal with, right?

Greg White (03:53):

We all do. And particularly important for vets, right? I mean they see things that no one should ever see on a regular basis and helping them deal with that. They get out of the service and into the business world is really, really important.

Scott Luton (04:07):

You’re so right. And I learned something new, Rhonda’s father was a Vietnam vet. And she used a lot of his experiences in a very helpful way with our audience. So, Dr. Rhonda, great to see you, admire your work, and great to have you here today. As we mentioned, Amanda, Katherine, and the whole team behind the scenes, appreciate what they do every day. Bryan Ransford is at Seattle.

Greg White (04:29):

A new weather report from Seattle, right?

Scott Luton (04:31):

What do they call folks in Seattle? Seattlens or –

Greg White (04:34):

Seattlens?

Scott Luton (04:36):

Seattlens? Well, Bryan –

Greg White (04:37):

Bryan, help us out.

Scott Luton (04:38):

Help us out. And we have to get you connected with your fellow supply chain practitioner that hails from Seattle since we don’t know what to call that, Josh, who hopefully will be here with us today. But, Bryan, great to see you via LinkedIn. Amanda is echoing, we’re talking about Dr. Ronda’s incredible sentiment and expertise she shared, so appreciate that. Sumit tuned in from Dubai via LinkedIn. Great to have you here, Sumit. Looking forward to your perspective here today. Joey’s back with us. Greg, there’s not been a livestream where he’s not made his mark here lately, huh?

Greg White (05:10):

Not just that. But he’s really active on LinkedIn and adding some good commentary there as well. Yeah.

Scott Luton (05:16):

And he is so observant. “Greg, got a tan,” he says.

Greg White (05:21):

It’s all in the lighting. Just tune that lighting a little bit.

Scott Luton (05:27):

Shelly Phillips is back with us. Really have enjoyed her perspective via LinkedIn from Colorado. Great to see you here, Shelly. I bet it’s Talent or Talent. Let us know. We’re trying to get everybody’s name right. But great to have you here, Talent. He’s watching from Zimbabwe via LinkedIn. Great to have you. Looking forward to your perspective here today. All right. So, Bryan’s answering our question.

Greg White (05:48):

Seattlites.

Scott Luton (05:49):

Seattlites, man. I’m glad you pronounced that first.

Greg White (05:52):

Oh, that’s almost like satellites. Of course. Space Needle, all that stuff, makes perfect sense.

Scott Luton (05:58):

Sunny and 90 degrees. So, Bryan, great to have you here. How about that?

Greg White (06:02):

Wow. I wonder Corey’s not here. He’s probably in the basement with a towel on his head and hot.

Scott Luton (06:07):

Akhil is here via LinkedIn. Great to have you here. Let us know where you’re tuned in from. And finally – and we couldn’t get everybody here – Ruben tuned in from Miami via LinkedIn. Great to see you, Ruben. Looking forward to your perspective here today. All right. Greg, we got a big guest here today. Are we ready to dive right in?

Greg White (06:25):

Yeah. Let’s do it.

Scott Luton (06:26):

All right. I want to welcome in Gordon Downes, Co-Founder and CEO with NYSHEX. Gordon, how are we doing today?

Gordon Downes (06:35):

Very good, Scott and Greg. Great to be here. Big fan of the show and excited to be your guest.

Scott Luton (06:41):

Oh, man. That’s like the perfect response to that question, Greg, isn’t it?

Greg White (06:46):

He didn’t even look like he was reading it.

Scott Luton (06:47):

No kidding. Gordon, we’ve had a lot of –

Greg White (06:52):

Great to have you on.

Scott Luton (06:53):

We’ve had a lot of fun in the pre-show getting to know you and what your incredible team are doing. You changed how global supply chain takes place, especially when it comes to shipping. And looking forward to kind of diving in deeper to, especially, allocation management. I don’t know about you, Greg, but I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about that specific aspect of ocean shipping.

Scott Luton (07:13):

But before we get to all of that, Gordon, we’ve got to know when you’re not changing the world of ocean shipping and using your capes and your superheroes to solve problems, what do you do in your downtime?

Gordon Downes (07:26):

So, there’s one sport that I do whenever I get a spare moment and done it my entire life, and that’s surfing. And now that I’m a dad with two kids, my passion’s actually teaching my kids how to surf.

Scott Luton (07:36):

You don’t say. You don’t say. So, wait a second. Greg, Gordon, hang on. Oh, Gordon, we might just have a shot of you in action here. Let’s see. Our team never sleeps on this kind of stuff. This is you, Gordon. This is in Indonesia, I’m hearing. And this might be pre-kids, I don’t know. Tell us about what you’re doing here.

Gordon Downes (08:01):

Yeah. So, that’s a picture from a few years back prior to having kids. And my wife and I spent some months sort of bombing around different parts of Indonesia. And this was a great day, the waves were nice and big, and the sun was out, and I just managed to catch lots of really great waves. So, here’s one of the pictures that we got snapped from the rocks.

Scott Luton (08:17):

I love this. So, Greg and to our listeners that may not be viewing it live, if you listen to the podcast replay, we’ve got a beautiful Hollywood shot of Gordon in action. Now, we had broken out the protractors and the compasses as we try to triangulate the height of this wave. Because Gordon’s like, “No, no, no.” It’s like six feet or something. Greg, what was our best educated math guess here?

Greg White (08:39):

Well, I’d love to put it to our watchers, but I’m going to go with, like, 12 feet. I mean, if you figure Gordon’s around six feet tall, crouched down maybe a foot or two, and that is clearly at least two-and-a-half times his height on the board. That’s got to be a 10, 12 footer. That’s a giant wave for those of us who aren’t surfers but surf.

Scott Luton (09:05):

And, Gordon, we know you’re an entrepreneur, but you could just about get at least a-half-a-container on that surf board and have a whole new wrinkle to your business model.

Greg White (09:15):

That’s a shorty board though. So, there’s not a lot of room. You’d have to use a 20 footer on that. I don’t think it could flow to 40.

Scott Luton (09:22):

One more question kind of kidding aside. I didn’t mean to cut you off earlier, you were sharing about how you enjoy doing it now with your two kids. So, before we shift gears to kind of work stuff, tell us a little bit about who’s the fast learner or tell us about teaching your kids how to surf.

Gordon Downes (09:36):

Yeah. I’ve got two kids, nine and six. My nine year old is my daughter. She’s really excited about it. My six year old is still trying to figure out if he really wants to be a surfer. But my daughter definitely does. The only problem is, I think, when you live in the New York area, we go surfing down the Jersey shore whenever there’s a little bit of a swell. But usually the waves get good when it’s winter or fall and that’s when –

Greg White (09:57):

Or a storm.

Gordon Downes (09:58):

Yeah. Big snow storms usually bring the swell, and that’s when you really got to be committed. And it’s hard to sort of muster the motivation when you wake up on a snowy morning to cover yourself in five mills of rubber before padding out there. So, my daughter’s, let’s put this way, at this stage in her surfing career, she’s a fair weather surfer. But the hope is that as she gets more and more into it, she’ll start to appreciate the better days when the weather might not be that great.

Scott Luton (10:22):

Love it. Well, Gordon, we’ve had a lot of fun with this in the pre-show and on this show here. I appreciate your sharing.

Greg White (10:26):

I have two words for you, Gordon. Outer Banks.

Gordon Downes (10:29):

Yeah. It’s on my list. It’s on my list.

Scott Luton (10:34):

Well, hey, it’s a gift that keeps on giving, so I appreciate you sharing. And now, Greg, we got to start to kind of get into the center plate item here today. Dining was an earlier theme. Where are we going next with Gordon Downes?

Greg White (10:46):

I mean, obviously we want to talk about shipping and allocation and all of that. And you have a pretty notable history from being in the shipping industry and started this company, but special significance of knowledge and some of the things we’re going to talk about today. So, tell us a little bit about what you did prior to founding NYSHEX.

Gordon Downes (11:07):

Yeah. So, I spent 12 years with Maersk. I originally joined Maersk in South Africa, hat’s where I’m originally from. And then, I had the opportunity to live in different parts of the world with Maersk. And great career there and really got to appreciate the inner workings of how our carrier operates. And I also got to appreciate complexities around how contracting is done and how the performance of contracts are monitored, et cetera, which isn’t great. And then, I spent three years with the company called SABMiller, which is now part of the AB InBev Group. And that was very much focused on digital transformation. But spent a lot of the time within that transformation focused on the shipping and logistics side of things, and really got to appreciate that the problems that I experienced as a carrier related to contracting and keeping track of contract performance, et cetera, are damaging for a carrier, but also very damaging for the customers of these carriers. I mean the consequences of getting these things wrong can be quite severe.

Gordon Downes (11:57):

So, that’s what gave me the confidence sort of quit my very nice day job and start working on this exciting adventure. Because it really was clear to me that if we can solve this problem, everyone’s going to benefit. It’s not just a piece of technology that gives one side an advantage in a market. It really does sort of uplift the whole market if we can succeed, which, so far, we’re on track.

Greg White (12:18):

That’s great. It’s clearly a need that, I think, anyone who has ever shipped anything on the ocean can relate to. There are so many complexities in that. So, as we kind of level set this, tell us a little bit about what you’re seeing, maybe even have seen, but are certainly seeing, in the current ocean shipping environment and what is it that makes that so complex.

Gordon Downes (12:43):

So, it is a complicated market, and the many components that make it complicated. I mean the one is that supply is, to some extent, fixed. I mean, it takes three years give or take to order a new ship. And, of course, once you order a new ship, that lives for about 30 years. It’s got a sort of useful life in that range. Demand can vary quite dramatically with seasonality and all kinds of other things that can impact demand.

Gordon Downes (13:06):

And what I think a lot of people might not appreciate about shipping, well, when you run a shipping line, as most of these global carriers do, your product is basically perishable. So, when your ship is about to set sale out of Hong Kong and come across the Pacific to the United States, if you’ve got a bunch of empty container slots on there that aren’t filled, you know, the value of those slots is immediately perished. It’s not like selling beer. If you don’t sell it today, you can sell it tomorrow. And so, this drives a lot of very interesting sort of behaviors in the market. Some of it drives, I’d say, fairly volatile pricing in the short term market, and it has definitely implications on the long term market.

Gordon Downes (13:40):

And it’s one of these industries where I think most people, until quite recently when all the supply chain bottlenecks swayed sort of the front page news and even President Biden weighed in on these topics, most people just didn’t appreciate the complexity of this industry. And you just assume that, you know, goods arrived and they were on container ships and it just works smoothly. But, of course, now we know it’s not always the case.

Gordon Downes (14:01):

And it’s funny because – I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences – when I tell people I work in shipping, a lot of them, prior to the pandemic, would say, “Oh. Well, so are you involved in getting my Amazon packages to my front door?” And, of course, there’s a component of that, but really the ocean shipping quite removed. Now, a lot of people really understand when I talk about the role we play in shipping, they can appreciate the relevance. So, it’s a complicated industry. I think a lot of people don’t appreciate the complexity, but that’s starting to change.

Greg White (14:25):

I think it’s interesting what people are saying about shipping. Now, of course, the carriers are making huge profits right now and everyone’s all up in arms and everyone wants to share that. It’s funny, Gordon, to me, I have no particular dog in this fight. I don’t own a shipping company. I don’t invest in them or anything like that. But it’s funny a few years ago when they were bleeding cash in profit, nobody wanted a piece of that. And I think that the cyclicality, as you referred to and some of the administration’s comments, they have not been aware of the impact of that cyclicality on this industry. And so, the getting’s good, if you will.

Scott Luton (15:02):

Great point.

Gordon Downes (15:02):

Yeah. No, it’s fascinating dynamics.

Scott Luton (15:06):

So, we’re going to get into one component of ocean shipping, and that’s this allocation management and how to optimize your approach there. But before we do, you know, you were just describing the complexity kind of the greater ecosystem, the greater environment. Speak a little bit, Gordon, if you would to the complexity of optimizing your approach to allocation management in this environment.

Gordon Downes (15:28):

Yeah. So, as you point out, there’s complexity at all levels and there’s enormous complexity when it comes to managing allocation. Because, of course, allocation ultimately stems from a contract or some form of commercial agreement between the carrier and the shipper where they agree that the carrier will provide allocation on a certain route or combination of routes. And then, the shipper has to, of course, use that allocation.

Gordon Downes (15:50):

And just to illustrate this very simple mathematics. Let’s assume that the average commercial agreement between a carrier and a shipper might involve ten load ports and ten discharge ports. Right there, that’s a hundred permutations if you multiply those together. And, of course, if there is in addition to that 50 weeks in the year because, of course, most of this allocation is managed on a weekly basis, so let’s just assume 50 weeks in a year, 50 savings in a year. That gets us to 5,000 permutations.

Gordon Downes (16:17):

And then, keeping track of every container, because, of course, a container goes through various events, i.e. the container is booked, the MTS picked up, it’s gated into the terminal, et cetera. There are about ten, really, critical events. You multiply that by ten, you get to 50,000 permutations. And a lot of this, it’s hard to keep track of. It’s not exactly clear how the allocation should be split up between the different load ports with seasonality, et cetera. So, as you can just see with basic mathematics, you realize the scale of how complex these things can become.

Scott Luton (16:48):

Yes. So, my 10th grade math teacher, Ms. Porter, one of my favorite teachers of all time, is going to be very proud of this moment because I can follow along with what permutations are. But kidding aside, I mean, goodness gracious, as you were just talking about, just sheer from a mathematical standpoint, and then you layer on everything else that you’re speaking about, the general environment that we’re in and other technicalities when it comes to managing allocation, this is not an easy job. So, anything else?

Scott Luton (17:20):

We’re about to move into – because there’s good news here, Greg and Gordon. And the good news is, is there is a better way, and Gordon’s going to kind of speak to that a little bit here in a minute. But, Greg, weigh in, if you would, on the complexity both in the macro and the functional era, I’ll call it, of what Gordon’s speaking to here.

Greg White (17:38):

It’s so complex that I have tried hard not to delve into it. So, as you know, I was in purchasing for a major retailer back in the day, and we imported a lot of goods from China and elsewhere. And, to me, it was a giant black box. It was PO go out, stuff get on the ship, the ship hit port, port hit warehouse, whatever, trailer hit warehouse, magic happens and it’s in the store. And I think a lot of people see it that way. But there are hundreds of touch points when you include the intermodal aspects of it, of course. But even just the shipping is so complex. And there are customs issues and there are port operations issues in addition to the potential carrier issues, and routes matter. It’s just an incredibly complex dynamic. And I think even people who are in the practice don’t understand it very well.

Greg White (18:36):

This is what I think is so important about these electronic contracts and about some clarity in terms of performance in these contracts, is, I didn’t even know what to ask. I didn’t know what to ask a carrier for. And, Gordon, you’re in a unique position of having been both a shipper and a carrier and understanding what each should be expecting from the other with real experience, probably some real pain I’m guessing, and understanding how to address that. So, I think that is really important. It’s rare, by the way, when you have somebody offering a technological solution that they’ve been a practitioner, especially from both sides of a transaction like this. And they have both the wherewithal and the drive, desire to solve something that is as complex as this.

Scott Luton (19:24):

That’s a great callout. All right. So, Gordon, anything else you’d like to add before we get into the good news part of our discussion today? And that’s three ways you can really maximize your allocation management. Any final thoughts before we jump in?

Gordon Downes (19:36):

Yeah. I think the one thing for me, which as, Greg, you pointed out, when you’re in this day-to-day, you feel the pain and it’s become quite personal. So, while I was immersed and also why we, at SAPMiller, explore different ways of how could we solve some of these problems. And one of the challenges is the way that the systems in the industry today are designed. For example, carrier’s got many different systems primarily oriented around issuing a quote or a contract, and producing an invoice based on that, and producing bills of lading, and getting bookings loaded on trip, et cetera. But the systems aren’t designed so that you can keep track exactly what did you promise to your customers, and what exactly did you deliver, what exactly did your customer deliver, and how do we sort of resolve any exceptions that might come out of that.

Gordon Downes (20:15):

And so, the carrier systems aren’t designed like that. Most of the shipper systems are not designed in that way. Shipper systems are designed, as you mentioned, Greg, to process a PO, convert that into a booking, get it through a freight station or consolidation station, whatever it is. But it’s not designed to keep track of what was agreed and then how was that delivered, et cetera. So, you’ve got two fundamentally different sets of systems, not optimized for keeping track of what was agreed between the two. And then, you end up with this multiple versions of the truth. And, of course, it’s enormously complex trying to harmonize those things. So, there’s systematic challenges there.

Gordon Downes (20:47):

And the other thing for me, again, talking about the pain being personal, my first job at Maersk was in the bookings department. And when things would go wrong, the amount of effort that you have to put in trying to just do the forensic investigation and what actually happened in this case, it takes an enormous amount of time. And then, there’s also you have one version of the truth. Your customer, as a carrier, would have potentially a very different version of that truth. So, you know, once you start to sort of peel away at the layers and the problem, it gets complex right down to a very, very sort of granular individual process or individual system or individual data source point of view.

Scott Luton (21:21):

Okay. I think you have just brought it home to so many practitioners globally and have hit the mark on what so many have experienced. And you’re speaking to, we’ve got to make it easier for supply chain professionals, shipping professionals, you name it, logistics professionals globally. And that’s where I’m looking forward to kind of getting to the next part of our conversation. So, let’s walk through, there’s three main ways we want to talk about with Gordon, ways that you can maximize your allocation management approach. So, the first one Gordon is?

Gordon Downes (21:52):

Well, many different ways and I agree free bank key. The first and most important one is to make sure that the allocation that you have agreed on with the carrier is clear. And it’s broken down into the relevant level of granularity. So, if it’s too broad, it becomes ambiguous. And then, it’s really hard for the carrier to plan for what cargo you plan to deliver, et cetera. And it can be very difficult for you to get the service level that you’re expecting. So, the first part of course is making sure that the terms and the allocation is very clear and it’s not really ambiguous, et cetera.

Gordon Downes (22:21):

The second part is having the performance data to see what actually happened. And, again, we talked about different systems, have different processes, and different data sets, and they’re not necessarily harmonized. And being able to sort of match booking data, equipment event data, and all these sort of related milestones that Greg and I had touched on earlier. And relay that back to the allocation and then check who performed, who didn’t, where did these breakdowns happen is really important. And doing that in a timely fashion is critical because it allows for cost correction in flight. Versus, if these things are done at the end of a contract, when it comes time to renegotiate, by that stage, it’s very difficult to bring something back on track. Often a lot of sort of bad faith is taking place in that time or at least undermining if the relationship is taking place. So, keeping the data of performance attributed or at least allocated and harmonized with the actual allocation is critical.

Gordon Downes (23:11):

And then, the third component, really, is the workflow. Because, of course, when things go off track – and these things unfortunately tend to happen in the supply chain industry is complex – there needs to be workflows that allow for the timely, the amicable, the efficient resolution of these things.

Gordon Downes (23:28):

And so, those are the three most important components of solving allocation management. And when those things work together, you really do see a vast improvement in the day to day work that people in our industry do. And, also, far greater performance from a shipper point of view and supply chain reliability, less unexpected freight cost, less stress. And from a carrier, very importantly, they can optimize their networks and their best hosts. But even more importantly than that, I think, is that they can better service their customers. So, there’s a lot of benefits that come out of that if you can solve those three component parts of the problem.

Scott Luton (23:59):

I’ve got a couple quick follow up questions for you, but, Greg, I want to get you to weigh in first. Those three things that we’re starting with here with Gordon, your thoughts that come to mind.

Greg White (24:07):

Well, the first thing is that the forensic aspect of it, or even just having the metrics to understand the forensic aspect of it, I can verify that it took days, sometimes weeks, to find out what went wrong. And when you have the data that shows the handoffs and the accountabilities and the performance or non-performance – I can tell you, you made me think of this, Gordon, and it hurt me. It’s not your fault, but it hurt me – I can remember having it out with a carrier when, of course, I didn’t know anything about what I was talking about, except that they had been late. And then, I realized that it was our manufacturer getting the containers late to the port and actually missing the sailing or being late getting rolled off or whatever. Roll off, that’s my least favorite term in shipping, by the way.

Greg White (24:58):

But we put dozens, maybe hundreds, of hours into just figuring that out for one incident. And it didn’t help us solve it at all. All it allowed us to do was point the fingers back at ourselves and then yell at our manufacturer. But it was weeks and weeks later that we even discovered it. So, the timely resolution of this is critical. And then, just having the transparency to know what’s happening, know those expectations clearly, something that makes a shipping contract moderately enforceable from either side is absolutely critical. There are still so many sailings where the contract is not enforceable because, Gordon, to your point, it’s just to vague.

Scott Luton (25:43):

Okay. Gordon, I’m going to give you a chance to respond to that from Greg. Akhil and Sumit, great questions. We’ll try to get those here in a moment. But, Gordon, why don’t you respond to Greg, then I’ve got a couple quick follow up questions to what you shared earlier.

Gordon Downes (25:55):

Yeah. I agree wholeheartedly with everything Greg said. And we see this play out every single day in the industry, or at least when I was sort of in the day to day sort of operation of the industry. And here’s the big tragedy, just taking what you’ve said and extrapolating this, I genuinely believe that in most cases, not necessarily all, but in most cases, the carrier and the shipper actually just want to figure out how to deliver on what they’ve agreed to. There is no underlying intent to break the agreements or to pull a fast one on the counterparty. There’s genuine underlying intent to follow through.

Gordon Downes (26:26):

But because there’s sort of half truths and patchwork data, et cetera, it results in one of almost an adversarial way of discovering what happened. You have to almost accuse the other party to say, “According to my data, I’m in the right, you must be in the wrong.” And, therefore, it creates this sort of combative approach to solving issues. And that’s not a good thing for a carrier or shipper. And it’s sad when you see that happen. And you see many great sort of business relationships that have been nurtured and developed over years sort of fall apart of some of these things when they really get under stress. So, yeah, I couldn’t agree more with what you’re saying and it’s just a tragedy when you see how it plays out.

Gordon Downes (27:01):

Now, just a couple of things that, for me, I think are interesting. We did a survey of some shippers and NVOCCs that joined a webinar we did recently, and it was fascinating just some of the data points is, more than 50 percent of the participants – and there’s some really big companies in that list – use Excel to keep track of all this stuff. And then, hence, Greg, while you’re saying it takes countless hours to sort of cobble together all the data from all the different systems and who said what happened, et cetera, and try and document that kind of stuff in Excel. Given the number of data points we talked about earlier, Excel is not the right tool for solving these type of problems.

Gordon Downes (27:33):

And the other one is, I think 74 percent of participants said that, you know, it takes north of six hours a week of just manual wrangling of data to get to a point where they feel comfortable they know what’s actually happening with the allocations, et cetera. So, it’s a real problem. And you’ve got certainly a very personal data point there, Greg, but this is definitely indicative of a problem. That’s pretty broad across our industry.

Scott Luton (27:55):

It is. And it’s a common theme of all these conversations we’ve had going back a couple years now, right? Everyone has their own spreadsheet and it’s really difficult to get to that single source of truth so you can take the actions that are needed. And to your point, Gordon, protecting and really growing the relationship that exists. Because if the relationship is at odds, to your point, it really holds so much back and it’s much more difficult to solve problems.

Scott Luton (28:21):

But I want to go back to the three points you shared. Just if you had to kind of ballpark it, where do you see organizations not acting on one of those three things most often? What’s maybe the most important out of the three things?

Gordon Downes (28:35):

I think the most important one is definitely getting to a point where there’s clarity between the carrier and the shipper. If there’s no clarity, it’s really hard for the other things to sort of have a positive impact. I would say that’s the most important. The most complex, of course, is the second part, which is being able to reconcile what actually happened with what was agreed and where these breakdowns took place. Because, again, going back to what Greg had shared with his example, this is just incredibly complicated, and what makes it even more complicated is the fact that, again, everyone’s got slightly different versions of the truth and these things are not harmonized. So, importance, definitely point one. Complexity, definitely point two.

Scott Luton (29:11):

Okay. All right. Greg, we got some great questions here. And, again, Gordon, you always had the veto authority if you want to tackle these questions after today’s live conversation. But Akhil says, “Great to hear such valuable points. What do carriers do in case the ETA got rolled off and we got the majority of the week’s loads from the same, how do we plan for such uncertainty?”

Gordon Downes (29:35):

The question itself is quite a loaded question. When I spent time as a shipper, the way that we looked at our supply chain health was really based on OTIF or On-Time In-Full error, et cetera. And when you break down OTIF into the various sort of causes of things that are not OTIF and you put them into different buckets, the biggest bucket is the fact that you didn’t get on the vessel that you intended. And that is by far the area that you can control as a shipper and improve on. When you talk about the bucket of things that got on the intended vessel, but the vessel was delayed because of, usually, it’s something like bad weather, congestion, or the carrier had to rewrap the vessel for some form of network optimization, those things are really hard for a shipper to control for.

Gordon Downes (30:20):

But, of course, you can do your homework and try and recognize from past performance when is it likely that these vessels are going to be congested or delayed outside the vessel, et cetera, or when is the transshipment connection going to be missed. But those are things that are hard to control for. But the good news is that, generally speaking, that’s a small root cause of the OTIF challenges that a lot of shippers will experience. So, I hope that answers the question. And as a good friend, who’s an athlete, always tells me, ” You’ve got to control the controllables”. And that’s, I think, where we tend to sort of focus majority of our time and the technology.

Scott Luton (30:56):

I love that. It’s so important controlling the controllables in global supply chain. Greg, your quick comment before I move on to the next one.

Greg White (31:02):

Yeah. I think these electronic contracts, the clarity that Gordon keeps going back to, they make the controllables known and more controllable. At least you understand what your risks are of being rolled off or what the implications are of missing a sailing or whatever. So, the more you know, the more you can control. And then, you can assess your risk of using a particular carrier, using a particular port, whatever, even implications of weather or whatever that could be impacting your shipment.

Scott Luton (31:34):

Well said, Greg and Gordon. Dr. Rhonda is talking about just how incredibly intricate all this sounds. I completely agree with you. Kim Winter – we’re just talking about [inaudible], “Greetings from UAE. Enjoying Gordon’s allocation deep dive with the deadly duo of supply chain over dinner.” That’s so funny.

Greg White (31:53):

Kim, as long as you’re out there, settle a bet for us. How tall in feet and inches not stone or any of that stuff, how tall are you, Kim Winter, please?

Scott Luton (32:00):

All right, Kim. We were just talking about rugby too. So, you got to bring it. And Akhil says, by the way, “That answered my question.” Kudos.

Greg White (32:08):

There we go.

Scott Luton (32:08):

I’m going to pose one more question to you from our cheap seats and our sky boxes. Sumit is talking about how dynamic pricing impacts on e-contracts when there’s a delay in the chain. Anything you want to talk about when it comes to dynamic pricing and delays.

Gordon Downes (32:24):

So, the way that the contracts we work with typically work is that the price of the contract is fixed. So, once the carrier and the shipper agree, then it’s a question of what are the commercial terms? What are the performance requirements, et cetera? And there are very, very few exceptions where there might be some variation based on a fuel factor or based on very, very, very small cases in index, which might result in price adjustments over long term contracts, but that’s unusual. I think dynamic pricing really applies to stock market. And we talked about the fact that you’ve got the carrier ships are perishable. We used the space on their ships is perishable in the sense that when the ship’s about to sale from Hong Kong and it’s got a hundred empty slots, what do you do? And one of the levers that carriers would follow is to discount the spot price in order to incentivize shippers to bring their cargo and then help them follow up that space. And as long as the price that they sell at is higher than marginal cost, generally it makes sense for them to do that.

Gordon Downes (33:18):

And so, that results in this sort of dynamic pricing that a lot of carriers do. But dynamic pricing really is prevalent in the spot market, not necessarily the contract market. Now, of course, the spot price does influence or indicate what the market prices for contracts. Those two things are related. But just as I described, the contracts typically have fixed prices. It’s very unusual that there’s variation in this process.

Scott Luton (33:39):

Well said. And I appreciate you taking that question. And, Sumit, great question there. All right. So, what I want to go to next – we got some time here. And by the way, big shoutout to Matt, a member of the NYSHEX team, a former member of our Atlanta supply chain community. I hope he’s doing well. And congrats, if he’s listening, to his newest addition to his family. Gordon, speaking of NYSHEX, as Greg likes to ask this great question – Greg, you know what? I can’t imitate it walking down the hall, pose your question to Gordon?

Greg White (34:09):

Yeah. I guess I love asking this because it really gets the root of what a company’s value proposition is. And that is, let’s say I’m a shipper and I’m walking down the hall, what is the pain that’s going through my mind that has me need to make the call to NYSHEX to solve this with these more reliable contracts?

Gordon Downes (34:31):

Yeah. The pain, Greg, I think, it’s similar to what you described. But to summarize it, it’s really this unpredictability that results in unreliability. And this fear that you don’t have all the information that you need in order to manage your supply chain, to optimize your supply chain, et cetera. So, these things are all sort of highly related. But I’ll bet you, there’s a lot of shippers who feel that there’s room to improve on how they are performing on their contracts, how they carry their partners and performing on their contracts. And there’s a lot of benefits that come from that. So, I would hope I’m right. But I think that a lot of shippers would resonate with the pains that you described and the predictability, unreliability, et cetera, is an important component.

Greg White (35:10):

I guarantee you that they do. Look, my contention is not that I think the most dangerous answer is not it costs too much, it took too long, even it was too unreliable. The most dangerous answer to any question in supply chain is “I don’t know.” And I think anything that we have that allows us, even if things are going wrong, to know where and why and how gives us at least the opportunity to resolve what’s going wrong.

Greg White (35:38):

I’m curious as you guys have kind of taken the field here and started to roll forward, you clearly have a lot of support throughout the industry. I’m curious because I think we all have not really addressed kind of the unspoken aspects of shipping, and that is, there is a lot of intentional obfuscation. I happen to, by the way, Gordon, agree with you that the companies, they generally want to do the right thing. They just don’t want to get poked in the eye when things go wrong. So, I guess I’m curious, are you seeing more headwinds or tailwinds and acceptance of these more transparent and accountable contracts?

Gordon Downes (36:15):

Yeah. That is such a fascinating question. And the answer, for me, at least is equally fascinating, in that, by and large – now, there are exceptions – but by and large, carriers are starting to recognize that they need to give their customers different contract products based on their customer’s needs. And they also start to treat their customers a little different, i.e. customers that they know want more predictability or willing to invest the energy and the time, et cetera, in monitoring their performance and helping the carrier get to the bottom of exceptions when they come about. They are prioritizing that freight. They’re giving better service and they’re building sort of contract products specifically to address that type of need. But by the same token, a lot of those same carriers have contract products, which are based on sort of best effort, like, “We’ll do our best if we can accommodate you, we will. If we can’t, then you’ll have to find an alternative.” And I think that’s fine.

Gordon Downes (37:04):

There are many other industries who’ve done something similar. Just look at airlines, they sell non-refundable seats and refundable seats and standby seats, et cetera. And I think that this is now sort of the direction of travel that our industry is going in, and I think that’s positive. And I don’t think any carrier in their right mind would take an approach to say, “Everyone has to do business with me in one particular way.” It’s kind of hard. And it wouldn’t necessarily address the market that the carrier probably wants to go after.

Gordon Downes (37:29):

And I think it’s also true from the shipper point of view in that, I think shippers are starting to look at their supply chain with a more sort of analytical mindset and start to say there are certain lanes or SKUs or whatever it might be that I really need this predictability. I can’t afford to risk, you know, one week not getting space or some sort of extended delays, et cetera. And then, saying those SKUs or those lanes, those are the ones that I really want to make sure that I have clear allocation that’s committed, et cetera. Versus other lanes where maybe I have more sort of buffer safety stock, et cetera. Maybe I have more variability in my own supply chain and I can’t be as particular about my allocation as I would like. Therefore, those ones I’m going to use as sort of the best effort like product.

Gordon Downes (38:07):

And so, I think it’s unfolding in a very interesting way. And like I say, by and large, pretty much most carriers – well, all carriers that we work, most carriers that we deal with are sort of moving in this direction. And I think a vast majority of shippers are also starting to think differently about this supply chain and sort of segmented based on those criteria.

Greg White (38:24):

That’s good news.

Scott Luton (38:25):

It really is good news.

Greg White (38:27):

I really think that transparency and clarity in these contracts is really critical for what we need to have happen in supply chain. So, disruptions are going to happen. Sometimes it’s going to be somebody’s fault. Sometimes it’s going to be somebody else’s fault. Sometimes it’s going to be nobody’s fault. Or an uncontrollable disruption. So, I think the more that we know about the rules of the game the better off it is, or the better off we all are. And it’s good to hear that the industry is largely adopting this. I think you’ve had quite a lot of input and quite a lot of support from some of the bigger players in the industry to help you get this going.

Gordon Downes (39:13):

Yeah. No, definitely.

Scott Luton (39:14):

Okay. All right. So, you know, we really need to book you for about three hours, Gordon, and really get to the bottom of all this. It deserves such a fuller conversation, but I appreciate what you’re sharing here today especially as it relates to the portion of the whole equation, allocation management. We’ve got some additional great questions from Akhil and Jacob. We’re going to save those offline. We encourage you to connect with Gordon and the team to have that conversation later. Sumit likes your point about, “I don’t know Bang on.” I could just picture you hitting your head against a brick wall when we get that response. Kim, six foot.

Greg White (39:48):

I would’ve guessed taller, but okay.

Scott Luton (39:50):

We were talking, like, 8’2″ Kim in the pre-show. But, Kim, great to see you.

Greg White (39:55):

But a mountain nonetheless.

Scott Luton (39:57):

Hopefully, you’re eating something really good. All right. So, Gordon, as we start to come down to home stretch, you and the NYSHEX team have offered up some resources, I think, for folks. I want to kind of reverse the order and really quick make sure, because, Gordon, you mentioned earlier, I think you’re referencing this webinar that the NYSHEX team hosted with Julius Tan, Director of Logistics with CarParts. And I want to say CarParts, their commercial jingle has stayed between my ears forever. But he was talking about optimizing their care allocation. I think it was a well received webinar. We’ve got the link. Amanda and Katherine and Clay, if you’re still around, if we could drop the link to the replay of this in the comments so folks can, not take our word for it, but listen to it for themselves.

Scott Luton (40:39):

And then, the second resource we want to ask you about is this allocation management tool specifically that NYSHEX provides. So, Gordon, why should folks check this out and kick the tires on this thing?

Gordon Downes (40:51):

Yeah. It addresses the challenges that we spoke about, and Greg was sharing about from his experience in the industry, et cetera. And, ultimately, this provides a solution which now can be applied to all types of contracts, not just the hard and fast sort that are two-way committed, but even those contracts where there might be sort of a best effort commitment, even in the case where there’s no firm commitment of consequence of what happens if something goes off track. But, nonetheless, it’s important to keep track of these things. Because (A) that allows the shipper to understand where things are going wrong. Are there things that are going wrong on my side of the equation? What can I do to tighten that up? And (B) it in informs what courses of action should that shipper take in the next go round. Like, is it time to start moving towards a contract where there may be more consequences? Or are there other benefits or other ways of being able to solve some of these challenges?

Gordon Downes (41:39):

So, there’s a lot of value from that. And there’s also another really important just tactical point. And we talked about the personal pain that we felt in the industry, both as a shipper and as a carrier. And there’s a lot of stress and workload associated with some of this. So, big component of that technology is, even if it’s not a traditional, two-way committed contract, it’s a contract which has, again, different types of terms. You can still run that through the application. You can still get the benefits of the efficiency. All the data, basically, at your fingertips. The workflows that allow you to see, “Okay. This is off track, let me trigger an exception. Let’s get whoever’s involved in the shipment to sort of provide their perspective on this. And let’s make sure that these things get resolved amicably and quickly so that you can get the contract back on track, and everyone can be better off as a result.” So, there’s enormous amount of value for everyone. And it’s a really exciting sort of use case for the technology that we’ve developed.

Scott Luton (42:31):

Agreed. And, folks, we’ve got the link to check out that allocation management tool in the comments, if you want to click away from kicking the tires on that. I think Gordon welcomes it and welcomes all the tough questions too. I tell you, we really enjoyed our live conversation and our pre-show conversations.

Scott Luton (42:46):

But, hey, I want both of y’all, if you can, to weigh in on this, because it’s been a big theme. You look at a lot of third party research sites or data sites and the mountain of heartburn and stress and burnout in global supply chain is very real. And, Greg, what this strikes me, and what Gordon’s approach and what they’re doing in NYSHEX offers an opportunity to change how we do business and, amongst many other things, help the team de-stress and help demystify, decomplexify – did I just make up a word?

Greg White (43:19):

I like it.

Scott Luton (43:20):

Those are some of the most important things we can do as leaders during this era of global business. Greg, your take. And, Gordon, we’ll get your take on that before we start to wrap.

Greg White (43:30):

Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, first of all, human can’t effectively solve the problems that Gordon and his team are solving with these contracts, because we can’t do anything about it. All we can do is the hours and hours of research, mostly after the fact. And I think that is a frustration in and of itself. But think about this, I mean, we’ve all, if any of us have ever cast off from shore, think about not knowing. You cut that PO, you know something’s going to go wrong. You know the philosophy I was taught in supply chain was, assume everyone will fail you and provision for that.

Greg White (44:09):

I think if these contracts are used by people – honestly, I’m not sure why everyone on the planet isn’t using these things right now, but you’re welcome, Gordon. I hope that helps – I mean, really, it just makes sense. Because (1) you feel a lot more comfortable when you’re about to ship something. And the results are proven. If anyone’s gone to the NYSHEX site, the results are astounding in terms of resolution, in terms of compliance, and OTIF, and things like that. And when I say astounding, I mean like really astounding. So, take a look at how much comfort you can have when you cut a PO or you schedule a sailing or whatever, think about how much comfort you can have in knowing that even if things go wrong, you’re going to be able to recognize and resolve that instantaneously. And, also, the results show that less is going to go wrong if more is defined more effectively in the agreement.

Greg White (45:13):

So, I just think it’s a huge weight off of a person’s shoulder as they’re trying to do their job. Even going into it, there are so many aspects of the stress. There’s the stress that’s probably more nascent, but the stress of just cutting an order and getting it shipped. There’s the stress, which is incredible, while it’s in motion, you feel like yours is always going to be the container that falls off in a storm or whatever. And then, there’s always the stress of the resolution after something does inevitably go wrong. Imagine if you can alleviate all of that in a huge measure, that’s just so powerful.

Scott Luton (45:50):

Imagine a world is when –

Greg White (45:52):

Right. In a world.

Scott Luton (45:53):

Greg, that was so poetic.

Gordon Downes (45:56):

I’m very impressed, Greg. I could not agree with you more.

Scott Luton (45:58):

Right. It’s almost like Greg’s middle name is EB, as in the author of Charlotte’s Web. I mean, it was literary your answer. But, Gordon, I want to come back to you especially on the de-stressing your workforce and making it easier for them and changing how business is done. But really quick, Charles Walker is one of our favorites around here. Greg, it’s been too long since we had him join us live.

Greg White (46:21):

Yeah, it has. You’re right.

Scott Luton (46:22):

He dropped so many t-shirt-isms and you’re ready to run through a brick wall. So, Charles, hope this finds you well. And I hope you check out the link and give us your take on what Gordon’s saying here today. Okay.

Scott Luton (46:33):

Gordon, your final word. We’re about to ask you how can folks connect with you and learn more and connect with NYSHEX. But your final word on the importance of leaders making it easier for their teams.

Gordon Downes (46:44):

Yes. Look, we all know that hiring great people in any business is critical. And I think in supply chain, given all the complexity, you need really great people to manage that complexity. And not only that, but I think that, generally speaking, the supply chain industry is quite relationship-driven. It’s important to have relationships with your service providers. If you’re a carrier, it’s critical to have relationships with their customers. And when you put people under stress and they feel like they’re overworked and they feel like they’ve got half the facts and they feel like their counterpart isn’t towing the line, it really starts to damage those relationships, which puts even more strain on the people. Because people don’t like necessarily this type of conflict or having to go in and argue every time you want to sort of get something resolved or you escalate something or who knows.

Gordon Downes (47:30):

So, I think it’s critical from any sort of leader’s perspective, if you want to hire great people and put them in an environment where they can do their best work, take out that stress. And by taking out that stress, you are also setting up your company to be a better sort of partner to your suppliers. Or if you’re a carrier, to be a better carrier for your customers. And results in a wonderful virtuous cycle of all kinds of benefits that come from that. But it really does take a concerted effort to say, “We need to solve this problem.”

Scott Luton (47:59):

So well said. I think you really hit the nail in the last 30 minutes.

Greg White (48:02):

Virtuous cycle. Yeah. I love that.

Scott Luton (48:04):

Hire great people, give them great tools, and expect them to do great things. And clear the path for them. Okay. So, Gordon, a couple different ways that folks can plug in to you and the NYSHEX ecosystem. We definitely want to mention the Supply Chain Secrets Podcast, which has been a hit. Folks can check that out wherever they get their podcast from. What would you suggest if they want to connect with the Gordon Downes world, other than connecting with your agent, how can folks connect with you?

Gordon Downes (48:33):

I don’t have an agent. And I’m always happy to connect with people. LinkedIn’s always a great way to sort of connect with me personally. But I also think that our website’s got a good sort of set of information to help people understand a little bit more of the practicality of how the technology works and so on. And if you put your name and email into our website, one of the people from our team will get in touch with you and help you understand, like, what is the use case and the ROI, and all those other good things. So, the website is a good channel and, again, LinkedIn’s always a great way to get access to our sort of thought leadership.

Gordon Downes (49:04):

I have to give a shout out to Don and the Supply Chain Secrets Podcast, because I think it’s a great show. I love listening to it. So, hopefully, people in your audience will also find some interesting content over there.

Scott Luton (49:15):

I bet they will admire the good agnostic digital content you are putting out there. Global supply chain needs more of it for sure. And appreciate what you’re all doing. Okay. Of course, we want to encourage people to follow and connect with Gordon on LinkedIn. Also, of course, find NYSHEX on LinkedIn. In addition to that, the link to the podcast, I think we’ve got the link to the allocation tool, link to the replay of the webinar. We are linked out here today. Gordon, hey, I have really enjoyed your breath of fresh air and how you and your team are really looking to – in a meaningful way – change how a very traditional industry is doing business and how we can make it easier on our team. So, Gordon Downes, Co-Founder and CEO of NYSHEX, a pleasure to connect with you here today.

Gordon Downes (50:02):

Likewise, Scott and Greg. It’s great chatting with you. I really enjoyed it. And we’ll look forward to the next episode.

Scott Luton (50:07):

That’s right. We’ll keep fighting the good fight. See you soon.

Greg White (50:09):

Thanks Gordon.

Scott Luton (50:15):

Oh, man. I’ll tell you what, and it’s not just us, Shelly’s a big fan. Charles is a big fan. We’ve got some of the comments here we couldn’t get to. And, Charles, appreciate that. A big old digital hug. Okay.

Greg White (50:29):

You got to give him a ho-ah.

Scott Luton (50:31):

Yeah. Ho-ah. Hang on a sec. Ho-ah, it depends on what service.

Greg White (50:34):

Yeah. So, let him hear the Air Force one.

Scott Luton (50:37):

Nah. You have to come back. You have to tune into Veteran Voices to check that out. Greg, I don’t want to make fun of my ho-ah. All right. But, Greg, back to the topic at hand. We touched on so many things. I know we were kind of focused a lot on allocation management. But at the end of the day, by the end of the episode, it was a very broad, conversation on some big thing that really fall in line with a lot of other conversations we’re having with Rick McDonald and many others. Your final comment here about Gordon’s perspective.

Greg White (51:07):

Yeah. I think, first of all, when you have that kind of interaction, you realize that this is a solution whose time has come. And I got to tell you, I wish it had been around when I was still a practitioner. And, truthfully, I believe that this should and could be an industry standard. I mean, this should be the way we do contracts. And imagine if every – not even just shipping. Sorry, Gordon, I’m not trying to expand your scope. Not just ocean shipping, but ground transport and other contract, imagine if they were all kind of funneled through this place where you could get such tremendous transparency, accountability, and reliability, and resolve ability, the more people participate in a service like this, the more stable, the more reliable the supply chain becomes. And that’s precisely what we need.

Greg White (52:01):

And the reason for that is, we have been begging, Scott, you and I, and many of our colleagues have been begging for decades for that seat at the table, for that recognition, for that awareness, for that knowledge throughout the world of what supply chain does. And guess what? We got it. And now there’s no going back. So, this kind of transformational transparency is really critical to how we do business going forward. And it’s critical to the reliability that we all want to have in the supply chain. So, I think industry standard, everybody sign up for this thing. Seriously.

Scott Luton (52:42):

That’s right. Hey, as a professional, we’re like the proverbial dog that caught the car.

Greg White (52:47):

Yeah. Now what?

Scott Luton (52:48):

[Inaudible] and you got to deliver it now. But, hey, fortunately, we are a part of a global industry that has immense amounts of talent, of innovative leadership, like we saw here at Gordon. A lot of folks that are asking the questions Why? Why? Why? so we can change how business is done and make it better and more stable and transformative, as you’re speaking to.

Scott Luton (53:09):

So, folks thank y’all for joining with so many great comments we couldn’t get to here today. Charles, I’m ignoring your last comment. I am not letting that into the conversation. But, hey, whatever y’all do, check out those links, ask those questions why. Kick the tires on what we’ve been talking about. Ask the tough questions. But whatever – deeds, not words – on behalf of our entire team here, Greg, Amanda, Katherine, Chantel, Clay, you name it, Scott Luton, challenging you to do good, to give forward, and to be the change that’s needed. And we’ll see you next time right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks everybody.

Intro/Outro (53:44):

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 Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time on Supply Chain Now.