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It's clear we need to have a supply chain that is overall as efficient from a cost perspective as possible.
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But it's been made even more clear in the last, you know, six months, year, that we need to have one that is robust with respect to things like COVID or with respect to global geopolitical changes.
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How we do that optimization that's not just lowest cost just in time, but it's lowest cost, most robust, just in time, highest quality, makes that problem harder and makes automation more key to making that the reality that we have.
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Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you are in the world.
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This is the Digital Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain.
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And I'm your host, Tom Raftery.
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Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 317 of the Digital Supply Chain Podcast.
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My name is Tom Raftery, and I am excited to be here with you today sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain.
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Before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters.
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Now, without further ado, I'd like to introduce my special guest today, Chris.
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Chris, welcome to the podcast.
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Would you like to introduce yourself?
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Yes, thank you, Tom.
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My name is Chris White.
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I'm the president of NEC Labs America, uh, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.
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Okay, Chris, what is NEC Labs America?
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So NEC Labs America is the US lab of the industrial labs that NEC Corporation has globally.
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So NEC has labs in Japan, obviously, Israel, India, Europe, Singapore.
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So we're the piece that's inside the US.
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Uh, we have a site in Princeton, New Jersey, as well as a site in San Jose.
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And what we do is sort of forward-looking disruptive research for the company.
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The key to doing good research is always that you want to be inspired by good problems.
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So our parent, NEC, has a broad range of customers and very interesting challenges that those customers have.
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We work on trying to build new solutions to those problems, not just in an incremental manner of trying to make our products 10 or 15% better, but in a manner of saying, can we actually create entirely new markets?
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Can we solve factors of 10?
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And that's the difference between sort of an industrial lab like NEC Labs America and the sort of conventional business unit research.
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From my perspective, it's the most fun place to be because it's always enormously inspiring problems coming from real customers, very, very smart, hardworking people drawn from across all different ranges of domains from optical hardware, wireless hardware, machine learning, statistics, mathematics.
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And you take hard problems plus smart people and you get magic.
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So it's a great place to work and a fun place to sort of be.
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Nice.
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And so this is like Xerox Park or Bell Labs or any of these kind of basic research institutions, many of which have since shut down.
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Why has NEC maintained NEC Labs?
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Yeah, so I will say that maybe it's Japanese planning that that allowed it to stay.
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I've only been at NEC Labs for about three years.
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Prior to that, I was at Bell Labs for 22 years.
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So I spent my entire career in the industrial lab space.
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I think unfortunately, what happened in the US is that the push for short-term results hurt many of the industrial labs because industrial labs, by very definition, uh are really here to do this sort of big disruptive research, right?
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Open new markets, create new, entirely new spaces.
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And that's not a one-year thing.
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And it's not a one-quarter thing.
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That's a 10-year thing, you get a really big advance.
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And I think in many cases, the industrial labs were sort of pulled closer to the business, asked to do things that were a little bit more incremental.
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And then once you're doing incremental research, you might as well be integrated with the business rather than as in a separate sort of industrial lab.
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So I think what NEC has done, and I really do value their forethought here, is they have these global labs, which allows us to get a global perspective.
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They they give us the ability to sort of be inspired by the real problems that our business and customers have, um, but build solutions that are not just improving our current product, but creating this new environment.
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And I think that they value that.
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And I think that's why we're around, because we're we're really delivering lots of interesting value into the company and at the same time straddling this sort of frontier of academic pursuits.
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So we publish as much as we transfer.
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And I think that that's where the industrial lab has always been great of that balancing between real-world productization of customer problems and advancing the state of the art.
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And my hope is that as we succeed, many other companies might actually have this sort of pendulum swing back where they start understanding that that just advancing the current product doesn't solve the big world problems that we have now.
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Um, that we need to have this sort of balance between problem and solution that is a little bit decoupled from the business.
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And I think that decoupling is what industrial labs did really well.
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And I suspect we'll see sort of the the pendulum swing back in the near future.
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I hope so anyway.
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Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully.
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And this is the digital supply chain podcast, Chris.
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So what are you doing here?
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Tell me, tell me, tell me about work you're doing on supply chain.
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What can we, what can we, what what what where does our Venn diagram intersect?
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Yeah, yeah, and and first I I I will apologize that I'm not a supply chain expert, right?
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So I haven't done 25 years in supply chain.
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Um, what I've done is 25 years in modeling, simulation, communication, networking.
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And what I would argue is that the modern supply chain, right, where we're going, is less about the sort of coordination of things, right?
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We're we're doing a pretty good job of that coordination, but more about how we're going to take that coordination at scale and reduce the timescale over which we actually make decisions.
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So in my mind, the modern supply chain is really one about collaborative decision making.
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And the second that you go to collaborative decision making, it lands in the heart of the things that we're doing at the labs, right?
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We do a lot of stuff around machine learning, we do a lot of stuff around optimization, we do a lot of stuff around networking and a lot of stuff around simulation.
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So we're building uh what I would say is the sort of next generation platform that allows for supply chain optimization.
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And that means, as I I mentioned, more intelligent decisions, more well-informed decisions, and faster decisions that allow us to sort of match this efficiency of everything else that we've been driving and transferring that into what we see in the supply chain.
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So it's you know, why why we think it's important is is a bit that it's fairly clear that on a global scale, the big problem that we need to solve is supply chain.
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And that the digitization efforts and the networking efforts that we've done in the past, we think are key to actually making that work.
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So at some level, we're here because it's an interesting problem, but at the other level, it's because I think we have solutions which can be applied globally that that might actually help dramatically the overall efficiency of the global supply chain.
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And how how do you what what are some of those solutions?
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What is it that you can do to help solve supply chains?
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Yeah, so so one of the things that we're building, which I think is fairly interesting, is is a project that actually combines three sort of fundamental engines.
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One of those engines is a negotiation engine, right?
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Which is essentially a way of taking many pairwise interactions and turning it into a marketplace of interaction between suppliers and the folks that need different components in different times.
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And what that allows us to do is to specify a mechanism by which even microcontracts can be done on a very, very efficient timescale.
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So what we've done is taken what used to be isolated interactions between pairs and turn it into a global interaction between multiple parties and a timescale which might have been weeks or months before, and turns it into minutes or seconds.
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And that allows us to drive for efficiency in these systems that we couldn't get via this sort of conventional methodology.
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That's one, the sort of negotiation engine.
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The second piece that we're looking at is what we call a policy engine.
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And where that becomes important is uh as you start evolving the supply chain and you start including government entities, which are trying to drive some overall behavior, they often put policies in place.
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And a policy might be, you know, a tax rebate for an electric car or a tax rebate for solar, or it might be a charge for using more than a certain amount of energy in a certain period of time.
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Um, those policies guide the overall, they they sort of modify the metric of optimization for supply chain.
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But in many cases, unfortunately, the impact of the policy is not necessarily what they thought it was going to be.
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And the question is, how do you combine all those policies?
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Yeah.
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And you combine all those policies in a way that actually ensures that you're getting to the thing that you want.
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So we have negotiation, which is the sort of action.
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We have policy, which goes on top of monetary robustness and the other optimization metrics.
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And then the last one that we have is some very interesting agent-based simulation tools that allow us to actually predict the income or the outcome of a given policy combined with the negotiation that we're seeing in order to see what the future impact is going to be rather than just the local impact.
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And that idea of creating this sort of triangle of negotiation, policy, and simulation becomes a platform that we believe might actually allow us to, again, optimize in a local sense, right?
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Because almost any optimization problem, even inside of a company, can benefit from this sort of policy, negotiation, and simulation.
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But more than that, we see it as a key component for this sort of global optimization where you have multiple parties that want to interact to achieve a greater goal, right?
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Carbon neutrality or reduce overall energy usage or any of the sort of global metrics that companies want to go after.
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But instead of them trying to do it individually, working in the context of a platform like this to allow the global optimization uh to happen in a in a sort of autonomous fashion.
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The control is still there for the companies, but to the extent that they can say, this is what I need, this is what I can deliver, here are the time frames.
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The system tries to build the sort of optimal matching in this sort of global environment.
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So that's what we're building as a tool.
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And the long-term goal, right, would be that at some level we know uh there needs to be a, I'll I'll sort of say an internet of supply chain, right?
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A communication method between companies with standardized interfaces and standardized models that allow them to say exactly what I said.
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This is what I need, this is what I'm willing to pay, this is the time frame, and this is what I can produce, and this is what I charge, and this is the time frame.
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And that sort of global matching, not on a week, month, or year timescale, but on a second, millisecond, microsecond timescale becomes the sort of platform that I think gets us to the next stage of supply chain.
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Right?
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It's it's clear we need to have a supply chain that is overall as efficient from a cost perspective as possible.
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But it's been made even more clear in the last, you know, six months, year that we need to have one that is robust with respect to things like COVID or with respect to global geopolitical changes.
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How we do that optimization that's not just lowest cost just in time, but it's lowest cost, most robust, just in time, highest quality, makes that problem harder and makes automation more key to making that the reality that we have.
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Sure.
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And how do you envisage something like that being rolled out?
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Is it are you are you thinking, I I I don't think you are, but correct me if I'm wrong.
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Are you thinking that you know NEC puts up its NEC supply chain platform and everyone gets an account on it?
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Or is it more a series of standards, or how how does it how does it roll out in practical terms?
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Yeah.
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So I I I mean, NEC would love for everybody to sign on and have NEC be the global supply chain management system, but I I think we have reality that comes in.
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I I think it actually needs to look very much like the way the internet has been created.
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So I think there has to be a a set of standards around what is how you communicate with this kind of platform.
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I think there has to be the opportunity for companies to put in um their own kind of optimization, negotiation engine, policy engine simulation, right?
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The clearly the the negotiation that's necessary for pharmaceuticals is different than the negotiation for oil, is different than the negotiation for very specific customized entities.
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So the idea here is that we're trying to build a platform, right?
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On the research side, we're opening new markets, we're trying to create a new environment to point at something and say, this is what we think it needs to look like.
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And then, of course, we start building pieces.
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I would imagine that the first user for the tool that we're building is going to be NEC, right?
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Internally, we have our own supply chain management, we have access to our own data, we can do the things that we're doing here and see if it helps our company.
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Right.
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And to the extent that it starts helping us, then the partners that we have, we try to get them to sign on to the same thing.
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Right.
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And we will certainly sell them the digital platform that does that.
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Or so long as they're using the right kinds of APIs and the right kind of standardized methods, we don't care what they're using for their optimization, right?
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They can build something similar.
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But it's clear that there needs to be some level of automation, right?
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And there already is.
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And in many of these industries, there are already these kinds of markets.
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The question is, how do we actually bring it to this sort of larger scale where the smallest company can sign on because they know how to make a standardized message and actually have negotiations done with the largest company that would be impossible now because they're not even going to answer their phone.
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But if there's an automated way for this to happen, all of a sudden we get to a much greater efficiency overall.
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So I think that's sort of the way the path goes.
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The thing that's interesting for us is I mentioned these sort of three pieces, right?
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Negotiation engine, policy engine, and simulation.
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Um, NEC is actually pursuing each of those independently as products that we might sell into the marketplace as well.
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So the simulation piece can be used for supply chain.
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We've been using it for carbon neutrality, right?
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Energy utilization, but it can also be used for traffic optimization and a wide variety of other types of things.
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The negotiation engine is being used in the context of optimizing scheduling for shipping, for example, right?
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So you have multiple parties that might be shipping to the same person.
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How do they work together in order to say, well, let's put both of our products in the same box?
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That's a hard problem to negotiate if it's a pairwise interaction.
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But if people sign on to a platform that does that optimization, it's kind of an easy thing to solve.
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So I think this is not something that's going to happen tomorrow, right?
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Just like NEC is not going to vote all of supply chain, we're not going to get everybody to sign on to this standardized way of doing things.
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But I think that the idea of building this kind of platform, building the interfaces into this that allow companies to optimize their both supply and demand sides of their equation, I think makes a lot of sense.
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And we're testing those ideas.
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And to the extent that it starts to work, I hope it grows into something much, much larger.
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Okay.
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And would the likes of licensing some of that software or open sourcing it or creating standards around it?
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You know, I'm just thinking, how do you push that out beyond NEC's borders, apart from just having partners and suppliers use it?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So I think there's a broader business model here at some level.
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And the nice piece about being labs, I don't have to worry as much about the business model if I'm doing, if I'm opening a new market.
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From an NEC perspective, we certainly are going to have a core simulation engine, a core negotiation engine, and a core policy engine.
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And as I said, we're going to use that as products across the a wide variety of different areas.
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So for us, that could be enough, right, at some level, because because we can do that, that could be a great business.
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But we view this as a piece of a much larger construct, right?
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So all of this started because we were doing work in this sort of carbon neutrality space, right?
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Where NEC, and you know, I mentioned that NEC did a great job of keeping industrial labs.
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One of the things that I've also learned is that that NEC, uh, more than other companies that I may have been interacted with in the past, actually believes what it says.
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So they want to actually drive for carbon neutrality.
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They want to try and provide the framework that allows the world to do that.
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Right.
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We're not an oil company, we're not a solar company, we can't directly impact energy utilization or creation of carbon dioxide.
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But indirectly, the platforms that are used to optimize the way the world interacts, that is our core competence, right?
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So at some level, we started going down this path of what can we do in the carbon neutral space.
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And it was clear that there were many, many systems that were inefficient, right?
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And inefficient systems are systems that you typically create where the demand that you have fluctuates, but you fix your supply because you don't have the ability to have the two matched.
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And that's this sort of static way that leads to a large amount of waste.
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So you start asking the question well, how do I actually drive the time scale down so I can match supply and demand better?
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And and when you do that, you start seeing this idea of, well, you need to know who needs what and when, right?
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That's the negotiation piece.
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You need to know what you're driving for, right?
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So maybe there's certain times of the day where I don't care about how much energy I use because I'm I have more than enough, right?
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The sun is working really well.
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So tell me the metric that I need to use.
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And and then the simulation piece, and again, just to be very specific, this is not a digital twin kind of thing that people are pushing, right?
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I I worry about digital twins where the amount of effort that you put into simulating something is more than the amount of effort that it would be to just measure something.
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So we're not trying to simulate all the details of the entire world supply chain.
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It's about applying the right level of simulation just to understand how the pieces fit together.
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So when we we saw those things come in place, it became natural that we would take the efforts that we were doing, the commercial pieces, and say, let's push this model a bit further.
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And that's where you start getting into this idea of let's standardize it, let's you know, license where we can if we want to make money on this piece, but let's interact openly with others because this kind of a system, very much like you know, if we look at the internet, only works if people sign on, right?
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And people don't sign on to proprietary systems, it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
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So having an open standard that people can use to do Do this negotiation will benefit the world in a level that I think NEC views as a very positive outcome, even if we're not getting every penny of every transaction that happens inside of that house.
00:22:43.390 --> 00:22:44.110
Okay, interesting.
00:22:44.350 --> 00:22:52.190
In the in that energy example you mentioned there, you didn't talk about the possibility of demand side management.
00:22:52.269 --> 00:22:53.630
Is that something you've considered?
00:22:54.990 --> 00:23:00.350
So yes, but not not so much in the context of this tool, right?
00:23:00.910 --> 00:23:11.150
So certainly if if you look at the way things go, the most efficient systems are the systems that on a very, very fine timescale match supply and demand.
00:23:11.550 --> 00:23:12.750
And you can do two things.
00:23:12.910 --> 00:23:20.990
One, you can actually adjust your supply to match the demand, or you can actually adjust your demand in order to match the supply.
00:23:21.470 --> 00:23:40.670
You know, I I often have one of these, you know, the broader discussion around carbon neutrality, you know, there are there's an old supply chain thing that I that I do know which uh says that you don't want to store dead fish because dead fish will eventually not be fish.
00:23:40.910 --> 00:23:43.630
It's not a good product if it sits and goes away.
00:23:43.870 --> 00:23:51.630
Um but in certain things like perhaps steel, an ingot of steel is actually something that's fine to store.
00:23:51.790 --> 00:23:59.790
And if you look at the amount of electricity that goes into creating an ingot of steel, you realize it's a tremendous way of saving electricity.
00:24:00.350 --> 00:24:11.390
So there is a broader idea in the negotiation side of this, which might say, say I have an industry that is very elastic with respect to its electricity, right?
00:24:11.550 --> 00:24:14.190
As much electricity as you give them, they can use it.
00:24:14.430 --> 00:24:16.110
As little as you give them, they can use it.
00:24:16.269 --> 00:24:17.870
So they have lots of flexibility.
00:24:18.030 --> 00:24:24.830
And then you have another industry where the amount of electricity that they can use is completely inelastic, right?
00:24:24.910 --> 00:24:27.710
They don't have the ability to turn it up or down, it is fixed.
00:24:28.030 --> 00:24:40.590
So one question you might ask is how do I get the elastic company and the inelastic company to collaborate so that they actually drive for an overall good with respect to their energy?
00:24:40.830 --> 00:24:47.070
So, you know, middle of the day, hottest day of the summer, the inelastic company is stuck.
00:24:47.230 --> 00:24:49.790
They have to use as much as they they can.
00:24:50.030 --> 00:24:53.790
But the elastic company might be able to trade some of their elasticity, right?
00:24:53.950 --> 00:25:03.230
I'll I'll make less steel right now, and I'll let you use my electricity so that globally our sum lands below the caps of industry.
00:25:03.470 --> 00:25:05.790
So you look at something like that and you go, okay, that makes sense.
00:25:05.870 --> 00:25:07.710
That that's a great collaboration.
00:25:08.030 --> 00:25:17.550
But the second that you say, well, you know, all the steel companies should be calling all of the malls and airports to try and negotiate that deal, all bets are off.
00:25:17.630 --> 00:25:26.430
It doesn't make any sense at all because it's, you know, it's it's too small, it's too detailed in time for them to want to go out and pursue something.
00:25:26.990 --> 00:25:27.230
Okay.
00:25:27.470 --> 00:25:35.470
But if they had a platform that says, you know, I have elastic energy usage between the hours of 8 and you know, 8 a.m.
00:25:35.630 --> 00:25:36.350
and 8 p.m.
00:25:36.670 --> 00:26:02.269
After 8 p.m., you know, maybe I'm a little bit more fixed because some things are offline, and then another company that says, I need power between these different ranges, an intelligent system that knows the requirements and the capabilities and knows the policy positions in place can solve that and can do that in a way that, again, doesn't require any manual intervention between the companies.
00:26:02.590 --> 00:26:24.430
So that's the supply chain that that I think we get to, where you can you can start trading things between companies to achieve a greater whole that would be very difficult to even recognize that the trade makes sense if it were just individuals on a phone or lawyers sitting behind agreements and contracting things between companies.
00:26:26.990 --> 00:26:31.470
And how do we get to where we are today to that being a reality?
00:26:34.750 --> 00:26:36.350
I I'm not sure I know.
00:26:36.750 --> 00:26:40.430
So so I I think we I I will tell you what we're doing, right?
00:26:40.509 --> 00:26:47.150
So from the lab side, we're working with some partners in this space who have these kinds of challenges.
00:26:47.550 --> 00:26:53.950
We are applying these tools with them to see if we can show that there is some significant value.
00:26:54.430 --> 00:26:57.070
So I think that's the first step of doing it.
00:26:57.710 --> 00:27:02.670
I think the next step is, as we mentioned, the standardization and propagation.
00:27:03.310 --> 00:27:03.630
Right.
00:27:03.710 --> 00:27:11.550
So we ask for, you know, maybe a couple of companies to work together to see if this kind of negotiation works for them.
00:27:11.790 --> 00:27:17.150
As it starts to work, it grows, having some conversations with governments, right?
00:27:17.230 --> 00:27:20.430
So that I think the government is a is a strong piece.
00:27:20.750 --> 00:27:28.670
I I won't say we're really pushing it yet, but clearly most government policy doesn't work well.
00:27:28.990 --> 00:27:35.550
That's my maybe my opinion, maybe that, but I think most of the government folks we've talked about say the same thing, right?
00:27:35.630 --> 00:27:45.790
Every time that they institute a big plan, they worry that it's gonna drive the exact opposite result because there's so many interrelated things that that they need to do it.
00:27:45.870 --> 00:27:52.110
So so I think some kind of policy management engine is gonna be critical for them.
00:27:52.430 --> 00:28:32.269
And I think once they start getting involved, then this sort of broader internet of supply chain that I I manage, I think also might have internet of compliance or an internet of, I don't want to say regulation because that that feels bad, but you know, at some level, if if there are tax credits being done because you as a company are achieving some goal or not using energy at a certain time or something like that, uh, this is the ideal mechanism for which you can basically sign on and ensure that you're actually getting the results that you're supposed to get, right?
00:28:32.350 --> 00:28:48.670
That the reporting goes up through this system, that you know, the fact that you've traded your elasticity to some other company, and if if the government is driving for that, so there's there's a way of managing overall compliance to those government pieces that I think is also important.
00:28:49.150 --> 00:28:57.230
So my thought would be that the way we'll see this happen is individual companies will start using things like this, right?
00:28:57.390 --> 00:28:59.710
The automated negotiation will go up, right?
00:28:59.790 --> 00:29:01.070
So we'll see that happening.
00:29:01.310 --> 00:29:11.790
But on the government side, I think governments are going to have to figure out how to manage policy from the local to the global to the, you know, even broader kind of management system.
00:29:11.950 --> 00:29:18.670
And I think that will also grow and those will coalesce into this sort of broader framework of standardization.
00:29:18.910 --> 00:29:22.190
That that would be my, I mean, I'm a technology guy.
00:29:22.430 --> 00:29:33.870
I'm naive when it comes to business, I'm naive when it comes to social change, but uh, from a technology perspective, the nice piece about this is that there's a driving force, there's a need.
00:29:34.190 --> 00:29:39.230
And and the thing that I found is that you can never push technology into a situation.
00:29:39.470 --> 00:29:44.670
Technology always gets pulled into a situation because it satisfies a specific need.
00:29:44.830 --> 00:29:48.590
And I think we have a need here, and I think it's getting recognized on a global scale.
00:29:48.750 --> 00:29:55.310
So I think that as we build these technologies, they're going to get pulled in and hopefully integrated into something that is good.
00:29:56.509 --> 00:29:58.030
Okay, great, great.
00:29:58.269 --> 00:30:01.150
We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Chris.
00:30:01.230 --> 00:30:09.710
Is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?
00:30:11.390 --> 00:30:14.190
Uh I think we've covered most of it.
00:30:14.350 --> 00:30:22.830
I I think one place that that might be an interesting one, but might be an entirely new podcast, is what happens at an individual level, right?
00:30:22.990 --> 00:30:30.750
So are we as individuals, the consumers at the end of the supply chain, um, going to participate in this system as well, right?
00:30:30.830 --> 00:30:33.390
Where we can actually have requests in due timeframe.
00:30:33.550 --> 00:30:44.670
I I I will say my my rough answer is I think that's a bit further off, but I wouldn't have anticipated Amazon's success in the just-in-time delivery, you know, next day kind of thing.
00:30:44.830 --> 00:30:49.390
So it may very well be that the third peg of what I mentioned, right?
00:30:49.550 --> 00:30:54.110
Industry, government, that this might be what consumers want, right?
00:30:54.190 --> 00:31:05.470
And and it might be the way that consumers actually ask for things and manage their overall costs inside of some kind of system that that is doing the negotiation for them, right?
00:31:05.550 --> 00:31:08.509
That is allowing them to say, I need this, this, this, and this.
00:31:08.590 --> 00:31:09.950
This is what I'm willing to pay.
00:31:10.110 --> 00:31:11.950
These are the constraints that I have.
00:31:12.269 --> 00:31:13.710
Go optimize my world.
00:31:13.870 --> 00:31:21.790
There's certainly inefficiencies in the consumer side that could be optimized that I think it would be very interesting to see how that that might evolve.
00:31:22.269 --> 00:31:24.830
Yeah, and I I get your point there.
00:31:24.990 --> 00:31:28.830
The the energy space is one that I've been working in for quite a while.
00:31:29.070 --> 00:31:35.070
And so when I mentioned that point about demand side management, it was I was that's kind of what I was thinking about.
00:31:35.310 --> 00:31:42.670
Both in the commercial world but also in the residential world, it's possible to roll out demand side management.
00:31:42.750 --> 00:31:44.830
Whether you can get take up is another matter.
00:31:44.990 --> 00:31:54.269
But the likes of fridge freezers, the likes of electric immersion water heaters, these are storage mechanisms.
00:31:54.509 --> 00:31:56.910
We don't think of them that way, but they are.
00:31:57.150 --> 00:32:08.750
If you have an electric water heater, an immersion water heater, for example, when electricity is cheap, you can have that ramp up the temperature of the water to 50, 60, 70, 80 degrees C.
00:32:09.230 --> 00:32:16.750
And then when electricity is expensive, let the temperature drift back down to 60, 50 degrees, whatever it is.
00:32:16.910 --> 00:32:20.110
As long as you've got hot water when you turn on the tap, you don't care.
00:32:20.269 --> 00:32:31.550
You know, as long as it's well insulated, well lagged, you don't care when it's actually heated unless you absolute unless it's unless it happens to have been drained and is absolutely cold and you need it right there and then.
00:32:31.630 --> 00:32:35.870
But for the majority of the time, you if you have a big tank and it's well lagged, you don't care when it's heated.
00:32:36.030 --> 00:32:48.030
And similarly, with cold products in your fridge, in your freezer, you know, you don't care if the stuff in your freezer is at minus 10 or minus 20 or minus 5, you know, as long as it's frozen, same kind of idea.
00:32:48.190 --> 00:32:57.310
You can suck in energy to bring it down to minus 10, minus 20, whatever it is, and then let it drift back up to minus 10, minus 5, as long as it stays frozen.
00:32:57.470 --> 00:32:59.070
Again, same kind of idea.
00:32:59.310 --> 00:33:02.269
And there are other movable loads in your household as well.
00:33:02.430 --> 00:33:15.550
So if we had smart devices in our home which listened to pricing signals or carbon signals on the grid and adjusted their behavior accordingly, which didn't impact on us.
00:33:15.710 --> 00:33:23.310
You know, we open the fridge, we open the freezer, stuff is cold, we turn on the hot water tap, stuff is hot, you know, but it's happened magically in the background.
00:33:23.470 --> 00:33:31.310
To your point, the negotiation takes place, it happens magically in the background, and our carbon footprint comes down, and we're doing demand side management.
00:33:31.470 --> 00:33:33.310
We are sucking in that extra energy.
00:33:33.550 --> 00:33:35.630
EVs are a phenomenal example of this.
00:33:35.790 --> 00:33:39.870
You know, you plug in your EV when you get home from work in the evening, next morning it's full.
00:33:40.030 --> 00:33:41.630
You don't care when that happens.
00:33:41.870 --> 00:33:45.470
You could do the same with dishwashers, clothes dryers, whatever.
00:33:45.710 --> 00:33:48.990
You you know, you fill the dishwasher at six o'clock in the evening after you've eaten.
00:33:49.150 --> 00:33:52.430
I live in Spain, we'd be doing it at 11 o'clock at night, but that's neither here nor there.
00:33:52.509 --> 00:33:53.550
But you know, you get the point.
00:33:53.790 --> 00:33:58.350
Long as it's, you know, long as the dishes are clean and dry the following morning at 7 a.m.
00:33:58.509 --> 00:34:00.269
when you get up, you don't care when it happens.
00:34:00.430 --> 00:34:02.910
You know, these are movable loads, eminently movable loads.
00:34:02.990 --> 00:34:03.390
So yeah.
00:34:03.550 --> 00:34:06.670
Anyway, get getting on it, that's a whole other podcast, as you said.
00:34:07.870 --> 00:34:10.509
But but I think you you mentioned something really important here.
00:34:10.590 --> 00:34:21.469
Because I I think the whole smart grid push that happened maybe 10 years ago in the US was really around all of these kinds of demand response kind of optimization.
00:34:21.630 --> 00:34:28.269
Uh, and I think what hurt it was the fact that it wasn't standardized and open.
00:34:28.590 --> 00:34:32.190
It was closed and and walled gardens.
00:34:32.349 --> 00:34:40.190
So, you know, if you bought the right refrigerator, right microwave, right, you know, all those pieces, it would work, but it would only work inside of that context.
00:34:40.430 --> 00:34:46.349
And I I think that what has to happen here is a more global interaction.
00:34:46.510 --> 00:34:53.070
And if we get to that more global interaction, then yeah, I think the smart grid use cases all come back in very, very quickly.
00:34:53.309 --> 00:34:58.110
And people are are not gonna do this if they think it's cool technology.
00:34:58.349 --> 00:35:01.950
They're gonna do this if it actually becomes a problem or or something for them.
00:35:02.110 --> 00:35:05.150
And I think that also hurt the smart grid as as well.
00:35:05.389 --> 00:35:14.110
But I I think, you know, as people get more and more electric cars, right, and everybody tries to charge at five o'clock when they get home, we're gonna have to solve that problem.
00:35:14.269 --> 00:35:22.110
And I think this kind of negotiation solves that problem because it is a way of registering your intent, right?
00:35:22.269 --> 00:35:25.470
I work at night, I need the car to be charged by 6 p.m.
00:35:25.630 --> 00:35:31.150
or 8 p.m., or I work in the morning and it doesn't need to be there until, you know, 9 a.m.
00:35:31.710 --> 00:35:36.349
So I think there's important pieces of that that are going to come into this as well.
00:35:36.430 --> 00:35:49.309
And I think the open standardized model that could actually transcend from company to government to individual hopefully will help and have more success than maybe we had in the past.
00:35:49.710 --> 00:35:50.269
Yeah, yeah.
00:35:50.349 --> 00:35:51.550
No, you're you're absolutely right.
00:35:51.630 --> 00:35:59.230
I remember at the time it was, but the the whole smart grid push started around 2008, 2010, that kind of time frame.
00:35:59.389 --> 00:36:02.670
And I wrote several papers and gave several talks at the time about it.
00:36:02.750 --> 00:36:10.829
And I called it electricity 2.0, modeling it on web 2.0, and talked about it, you know, being like the internet.
00:36:11.150 --> 00:36:19.309
The electricity grids should be like the internet, it should be pretty much IP-based, where everything, to your point, was open standards and everything could talk to everything else.
00:36:19.389 --> 00:36:20.910
And it's the only way it'll work.
00:36:20.990 --> 00:36:22.590
And we need to expand the grids as well.
00:36:22.750 --> 00:36:30.349
I mean, it's not too bad here in Europe where many of the grids are interconnected, but where you've got island grids, you've got something like 500 grids in the US, it's ridiculous.
00:36:30.430 --> 00:36:32.030
Where and most of them are not talking to each other.
00:36:32.190 --> 00:36:32.910
Yeah, anyway.
00:36:33.230 --> 00:36:35.710
Whole nother podcast, as we said.
00:36:36.349 --> 00:36:45.630
Rust Chris, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the topics we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?
00:36:46.110 --> 00:36:49.950
So you can send them to our website, pennycdash labs.com.
00:36:50.110 --> 00:36:52.910
Uh, I'll send you the link so you can include it with them.
00:36:53.070 --> 00:36:56.590
Yeah, I'm very happy if if someone wants to try and contact me.
00:36:56.829 --> 00:36:58.110
I love this area.
00:36:58.269 --> 00:37:03.789
As I mentioned at the very beginning, good research is only done with the scrutiny of good problems.
00:37:04.030 --> 00:37:10.829
And, you know, it's very easy to get caught up in your research and think, you know, if I solve this, that's gonna be everything.
00:37:11.070 --> 00:37:16.670
Where someone who has more knowledge or different knowledge can come in and say, no, you're not really aiming in the right direction.
00:37:16.750 --> 00:37:20.110
If you move to the left just a little bit, you're really gonna hit the real problem.
00:37:20.349 --> 00:37:24.670
So yeah, very happy to have conversations with folks around these things.
00:37:24.829 --> 00:37:31.789
I I think it's important, and I think that the more ideas and more context we bring into it, I think the better it'll be.
00:37:32.110 --> 00:37:32.829
Phenomenal.
00:37:32.990 --> 00:37:33.389
Phenomenal.
00:37:33.630 --> 00:37:34.670
Chris, that's been awesome.
00:37:34.750 --> 00:37:36.990
Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.
00:37:37.550 --> 00:37:38.510
Thanks for having me.
00:37:38.670 --> 00:37:40.670
Always enjoy these kinds of conversations.
00:37:41.070 --> 00:37:43.070
Okay, we've come to the end of the show.
00:37:43.230 --> 00:37:44.750
Thanks everyone for listening.
00:37:44.990 --> 00:37:53.470
If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, simply drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook.com.
00:37:54.349 --> 00:38:02.990
If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to be sure to get new episodes as soon as they're published.
00:38:03.230 --> 00:38:06.430
Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast.
00:38:06.590 --> 00:38:09.869
It really does help new people to find the show.
00:38:10.190 --> 00:38:10.990
Thanks.
00:38:11.230 --> 00:38:12.829
Catch you all next time.
00:00:03.279 --> 00:00:10.320
It's clear we need to have a supply chain that is overall as efficient from a cost perspective as possible.
00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:22.960
But it's been made even more clear in the last, you know, six months, year, that we need to have one that is robust with respect to things like COVID or with respect to global geopolitical changes.
00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:37.920
How we do that optimization that's not just lowest cost just in time, but it's lowest cost, most robust, just in time, highest quality, makes that problem harder and makes automation more key to making that the reality that we have.
00:00:41.679 --> 00:00:45.759
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you are in the world.
00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:51.759
This is the Digital Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain.
00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:54.320
And I'm your host, Tom Raftery.
00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:59.600
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 317 of the Digital Supply Chain Podcast.
00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:06.799
My name is Tom Raftery, and I am excited to be here with you today sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain.
00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:12.799
Before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters.
00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:19.599
Your support for this podcast has been instrumental in keeping it going, and I'm truly grateful for each and every one of you.
00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:28.319
If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about supply chain.
00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:34.640
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00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:50.640
To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode, or simply visit tinyurl.com slash dsc pod.
00:01:51.599 --> 00:01:55.760
Now, without further ado, I'd like to introduce my special guest today, Chris.
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Chris, welcome to the podcast.
00:01:57.439 --> 00:01:59.040
Would you like to introduce yourself?
00:01:59.439 --> 00:02:00.640
Yes, thank you, Tom.
00:02:00.879 --> 00:02:02.079
My name is Chris White.
00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:08.240
I'm the president of NEC Labs America, uh, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.
00:02:08.560 --> 00:02:12.159
Okay, Chris, what is NEC Labs America?
00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:22.000
So NEC Labs America is the US lab of the industrial labs that NEC Corporation has globally.
00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:28.319
So NEC has labs in Japan, obviously, Israel, India, Europe, Singapore.
00:02:28.960 --> 00:02:31.439
So we're the piece that's inside the US.
00:02:31.599 --> 00:02:36.319
Uh, we have a site in Princeton, New Jersey, as well as a site in San Jose.
00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:40.960
And what we do is sort of forward-looking disruptive research for the company.
00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:47.120
The key to doing good research is always that you want to be inspired by good problems.
00:02:47.360 --> 00:02:55.520
So our parent, NEC, has a broad range of customers and very interesting challenges that those customers have.
00:02:55.840 --> 00:03:10.960
We work on trying to build new solutions to those problems, not just in an incremental manner of trying to make our products 10 or 15% better, but in a manner of saying, can we actually create entirely new markets?
00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:13.039
Can we solve factors of 10?
00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:20.639
And that's the difference between sort of an industrial lab like NEC Labs America and the sort of conventional business unit research.
00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:40.319
From my perspective, it's the most fun place to be because it's always enormously inspiring problems coming from real customers, very, very smart, hardworking people drawn from across all different ranges of domains from optical hardware, wireless hardware, machine learning, statistics, mathematics.
00:03:40.479 --> 00:03:44.159
And you take hard problems plus smart people and you get magic.
00:03:44.319 --> 00:03:48.479
So it's a great place to work and a fun place to sort of be.
00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:49.360
Nice.
00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:59.280
And so this is like Xerox Park or Bell Labs or any of these kind of basic research institutions, many of which have since shut down.
00:03:59.439 --> 00:04:03.120
Why has NEC maintained NEC Labs?
00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:09.919
Yeah, so I will say that maybe it's Japanese planning that that allowed it to stay.
00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:13.280
I've only been at NEC Labs for about three years.
00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:16.000
Prior to that, I was at Bell Labs for 22 years.
00:04:16.079 --> 00:04:19.839
So I spent my entire career in the industrial lab space.
00:04:20.160 --> 00:04:35.519
I think unfortunately, what happened in the US is that the push for short-term results hurt many of the industrial labs because industrial labs, by very definition, uh are really here to do this sort of big disruptive research, right?
00:04:35.680 --> 00:04:39.279
Open new markets, create new, entirely new spaces.
00:04:39.439 --> 00:04:40.959
And that's not a one-year thing.
00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:42.399
And it's not a one-quarter thing.
00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:45.600
That's a 10-year thing, you get a really big advance.
00:04:45.839 --> 00:04:55.759
And I think in many cases, the industrial labs were sort of pulled closer to the business, asked to do things that were a little bit more incremental.
00:04:55.920 --> 00:05:03.120
And then once you're doing incremental research, you might as well be integrated with the business rather than as in a separate sort of industrial lab.
00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:13.279
So I think what NEC has done, and I really do value their forethought here, is they have these global labs, which allows us to get a global perspective.
00:05:13.439 --> 00:05:29.120
They they give us the ability to sort of be inspired by the real problems that our business and customers have, um, but build solutions that are not just improving our current product, but creating this new environment.
00:05:29.279 --> 00:05:32.079
And I think that they value that.
00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:44.800
And I think that's why we're around, because we're we're really delivering lots of interesting value into the company and at the same time straddling this sort of frontier of academic pursuits.
00:05:44.959 --> 00:05:47.279
So we publish as much as we transfer.
00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:57.600
And I think that that's where the industrial lab has always been great of that balancing between real-world productization of customer problems and advancing the state of the art.
00:05:57.839 --> 00:06:12.560
And my hope is that as we succeed, many other companies might actually have this sort of pendulum swing back where they start understanding that that just advancing the current product doesn't solve the big world problems that we have now.
00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:20.720
Um, that we need to have this sort of balance between problem and solution that is a little bit decoupled from the business.
00:06:20.879 --> 00:06:24.079
And I think that decoupling is what industrial labs did really well.
00:06:24.240 --> 00:06:29.360
And I suspect we'll see sort of the the pendulum swing back in the near future.
00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:30.959
I hope so anyway.
00:06:31.279 --> 00:06:32.959
Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully.
00:06:33.199 --> 00:06:37.120
And this is the digital supply chain podcast, Chris.
00:06:37.360 --> 00:06:39.199
So what are you doing here?
00:06:42.959 --> 00:06:46.160
Tell me, tell me, tell me about work you're doing on supply chain.
00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:50.319
What can we, what can we, what what what where does our Venn diagram intersect?
00:06:51.199 --> 00:06:56.160
Yeah, yeah, and and first I I I will apologize that I'm not a supply chain expert, right?
00:06:56.319 --> 00:06:58.720
So I haven't done 25 years in supply chain.
00:06:58.879 --> 00:07:07.040
Um, what I've done is 25 years in modeling, simulation, communication, networking.
00:07:07.279 --> 00:07:16.800
And what I would argue is that the modern supply chain, right, where we're going, is less about the sort of coordination of things, right?
00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:29.680
We're we're doing a pretty good job of that coordination, but more about how we're going to take that coordination at scale and reduce the timescale over which we actually make decisions.
00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:36.399
So in my mind, the modern supply chain is really one about collaborative decision making.
00:07:36.560 --> 00:07:43.759
And the second that you go to collaborative decision making, it lands in the heart of the things that we're doing at the labs, right?
00:07:43.839 --> 00:07:52.480
We do a lot of stuff around machine learning, we do a lot of stuff around optimization, we do a lot of stuff around networking and a lot of stuff around simulation.
00:07:52.720 --> 00:08:01.920
So we're building uh what I would say is the sort of next generation platform that allows for supply chain optimization.
00:08:02.160 --> 00:08:19.199
And that means, as I I mentioned, more intelligent decisions, more well-informed decisions, and faster decisions that allow us to sort of match this efficiency of everything else that we've been driving and transferring that into what we see in the supply chain.
00:08:19.519 --> 00:08:33.840
So it's you know, why why we think it's important is is a bit that it's fairly clear that on a global scale, the big problem that we need to solve is supply chain.
00:08:34.240 --> 00:08:41.759
And that the digitization efforts and the networking efforts that we've done in the past, we think are key to actually making that work.
00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:56.799
So at some level, we're here because it's an interesting problem, but at the other level, it's because I think we have solutions which can be applied globally that that might actually help dramatically the overall efficiency of the global supply chain.
00:08:57.440 --> 00:09:01.360
And how how do you what what are some of those solutions?
00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:05.200
What is it that you can do to help solve supply chains?
00:09:35.069 --> 00:09:43.470
Yeah, so so one of the things that we're building, which I think is fairly interesting, is is a project that actually combines three sort of fundamental engines.
00:09:43.709 --> 00:09:46.829
One of those engines is a negotiation engine, right?
00:09:46.990 --> 00:10:02.110
Which is essentially a way of taking many pairwise interactions and turning it into a marketplace of interaction between suppliers and the folks that need different components in different times.
00:10:02.269 --> 00:10:12.829
And what that allows us to do is to specify a mechanism by which even microcontracts can be done on a very, very efficient timescale.
00:10:13.069 --> 00:10:28.750
So what we've done is taken what used to be isolated interactions between pairs and turn it into a global interaction between multiple parties and a timescale which might have been weeks or months before, and turns it into minutes or seconds.
00:10:28.829 --> 00:10:35.949
And that allows us to drive for efficiency in these systems that we couldn't get via this sort of conventional methodology.
00:10:36.350 --> 00:10:38.429
That's one, the sort of negotiation engine.
00:10:38.590 --> 00:10:42.269
The second piece that we're looking at is what we call a policy engine.
00:10:42.429 --> 00:10:56.669
And where that becomes important is uh as you start evolving the supply chain and you start including government entities, which are trying to drive some overall behavior, they often put policies in place.
00:10:56.750 --> 00:11:08.110
And a policy might be, you know, a tax rebate for an electric car or a tax rebate for solar, or it might be a charge for using more than a certain amount of energy in a certain period of time.
00:11:08.269 --> 00:11:15.549
Um, those policies guide the overall, they they sort of modify the metric of optimization for supply chain.
00:11:15.709 --> 00:11:22.029
But in many cases, unfortunately, the impact of the policy is not necessarily what they thought it was going to be.
00:11:22.189 --> 00:11:24.590
And the question is, how do you combine all those policies?
00:11:25.149 --> 00:11:25.389
Yeah.
00:11:25.549 --> 00:11:30.909
And you combine all those policies in a way that actually ensures that you're getting to the thing that you want.
00:11:31.069 --> 00:11:34.189
So we have negotiation, which is the sort of action.
00:11:34.429 --> 00:11:41.549
We have policy, which goes on top of monetary robustness and the other optimization metrics.
00:11:41.709 --> 00:12:01.870
And then the last one that we have is some very interesting agent-based simulation tools that allow us to actually predict the income or the outcome of a given policy combined with the negotiation that we're seeing in order to see what the future impact is going to be rather than just the local impact.
00:12:02.110 --> 00:12:16.590
And that idea of creating this sort of triangle of negotiation, policy, and simulation becomes a platform that we believe might actually allow us to, again, optimize in a local sense, right?
00:12:16.829 --> 00:12:25.470
Because almost any optimization problem, even inside of a company, can benefit from this sort of policy, negotiation, and simulation.
00:12:25.789 --> 00:12:35.230
But more than that, we see it as a key component for this sort of global optimization where you have multiple parties that want to interact to achieve a greater goal, right?
00:12:35.389 --> 00:12:45.230
Carbon neutrality or reduce overall energy usage or any of the sort of global metrics that companies want to go after.
00:12:45.389 --> 00:12:56.509
But instead of them trying to do it individually, working in the context of a platform like this to allow the global optimization uh to happen in a in a sort of autonomous fashion.
00:12:56.750 --> 00:13:05.149
The control is still there for the companies, but to the extent that they can say, this is what I need, this is what I can deliver, here are the time frames.
00:13:05.309 --> 00:13:12.110
The system tries to build the sort of optimal matching in this sort of global environment.
00:13:12.350 --> 00:13:14.669
So that's what we're building as a tool.
00:13:14.750 --> 00:13:25.549
And the long-term goal, right, would be that at some level we know uh there needs to be a, I'll I'll sort of say an internet of supply chain, right?
00:13:25.789 --> 00:13:34.750
A communication method between companies with standardized interfaces and standardized models that allow them to say exactly what I said.
00:13:34.909 --> 00:13:43.470
This is what I need, this is what I'm willing to pay, this is the time frame, and this is what I can produce, and this is what I charge, and this is the time frame.
00:13:43.870 --> 00:13:57.949
And that sort of global matching, not on a week, month, or year timescale, but on a second, millisecond, microsecond timescale becomes the sort of platform that I think gets us to the next stage of supply chain.
00:13:58.110 --> 00:13:58.350
Right?
00:13:58.509 --> 00:14:05.629
It's it's clear we need to have a supply chain that is overall as efficient from a cost perspective as possible.
00:14:05.870 --> 00:14:18.189
But it's been made even more clear in the last, you know, six months, year that we need to have one that is robust with respect to things like COVID or with respect to global geopolitical changes.
00:14:18.429 --> 00:14:33.230
How we do that optimization that's not just lowest cost just in time, but it's lowest cost, most robust, just in time, highest quality, makes that problem harder and makes automation more key to making that the reality that we have.
00:14:33.789 --> 00:14:34.110
Sure.
00:14:34.350 --> 00:14:38.990
And how do you envisage something like that being rolled out?
00:14:39.149 --> 00:14:43.149
Is it are you are you thinking, I I I don't think you are, but correct me if I'm wrong.
00:14:43.309 --> 00:14:49.470
Are you thinking that you know NEC puts up its NEC supply chain platform and everyone gets an account on it?
00:14:49.629 --> 00:14:56.669
Or is it more a series of standards, or how how does it how does it roll out in practical terms?
00:14:57.149 --> 00:14:57.389
Yeah.
00:14:57.629 --> 00:15:08.590
So I I I mean, NEC would love for everybody to sign on and have NEC be the global supply chain management system, but I I think we have reality that comes in.
00:15:08.750 --> 00:15:13.789
I I think it actually needs to look very much like the way the internet has been created.
00:15:14.029 --> 00:15:21.149
So I think there has to be a a set of standards around what is how you communicate with this kind of platform.
00:15:21.389 --> 00:15:32.029
I think there has to be the opportunity for companies to put in um their own kind of optimization, negotiation engine, policy engine simulation, right?
00:15:32.189 --> 00:15:45.629
The clearly the the negotiation that's necessary for pharmaceuticals is different than the negotiation for oil, is different than the negotiation for very specific customized entities.
00:15:45.870 --> 00:15:50.269
So the idea here is that we're trying to build a platform, right?
00:15:50.429 --> 00:15:58.990
On the research side, we're opening new markets, we're trying to create a new environment to point at something and say, this is what we think it needs to look like.
00:15:59.230 --> 00:16:02.029
And then, of course, we start building pieces.
00:16:02.509 --> 00:16:08.269
I would imagine that the first user for the tool that we're building is going to be NEC, right?
00:16:08.429 --> 00:16:17.230
Internally, we have our own supply chain management, we have access to our own data, we can do the things that we're doing here and see if it helps our company.
00:16:17.309 --> 00:16:17.549
Right.
00:16:17.629 --> 00:16:24.429
And to the extent that it starts helping us, then the partners that we have, we try to get them to sign on to the same thing.
00:16:24.509 --> 00:16:24.750
Right.
00:16:24.909 --> 00:16:28.269
And we will certainly sell them the digital platform that does that.
00:16:28.590 --> 00:16:37.069
Or so long as they're using the right kinds of APIs and the right kind of standardized methods, we don't care what they're using for their optimization, right?
00:16:37.149 --> 00:16:38.590
They can build something similar.
00:16:38.829 --> 00:16:41.949
But it's clear that there needs to be some level of automation, right?
00:16:42.029 --> 00:16:42.750
And there already is.
00:16:42.909 --> 00:16:46.189
And in many of these industries, there are already these kinds of markets.
00:16:46.429 --> 00:17:04.990
The question is, how do we actually bring it to this sort of larger scale where the smallest company can sign on because they know how to make a standardized message and actually have negotiations done with the largest company that would be impossible now because they're not even going to answer their phone.
00:17:05.150 --> 00:17:11.470
But if there's an automated way for this to happen, all of a sudden we get to a much greater efficiency overall.
00:17:11.630 --> 00:17:14.430
So I think that's sort of the way the path goes.
00:17:14.670 --> 00:17:18.509
The thing that's interesting for us is I mentioned these sort of three pieces, right?
00:17:18.829 --> 00:17:21.549
Negotiation engine, policy engine, and simulation.
00:17:21.710 --> 00:17:27.309
Um, NEC is actually pursuing each of those independently as products that we might sell into the marketplace as well.
00:17:27.549 --> 00:17:31.069
So the simulation piece can be used for supply chain.
00:17:31.150 --> 00:17:33.230
We've been using it for carbon neutrality, right?
00:17:33.390 --> 00:17:39.390
Energy utilization, but it can also be used for traffic optimization and a wide variety of other types of things.
00:17:39.630 --> 00:17:47.230
The negotiation engine is being used in the context of optimizing scheduling for shipping, for example, right?
00:17:47.310 --> 00:17:50.269
So you have multiple parties that might be shipping to the same person.
00:17:50.350 --> 00:17:55.630
How do they work together in order to say, well, let's put both of our products in the same box?
00:17:56.030 --> 00:17:59.710
That's a hard problem to negotiate if it's a pairwise interaction.
00:17:59.950 --> 00:18:07.150
But if people sign on to a platform that does that optimization, it's kind of an easy thing to solve.
00:18:07.390 --> 00:18:11.310
So I think this is not something that's going to happen tomorrow, right?
00:18:11.790 --> 00:18:18.509
Just like NEC is not going to vote all of supply chain, we're not going to get everybody to sign on to this standardized way of doing things.
00:18:18.750 --> 00:18:35.070
But I think that the idea of building this kind of platform, building the interfaces into this that allow companies to optimize their both supply and demand sides of their equation, I think makes a lot of sense.
00:18:35.150 --> 00:18:36.750
And we're testing those ideas.
00:18:36.910 --> 00:18:41.550
And to the extent that it starts to work, I hope it grows into something much, much larger.
00:18:42.190 --> 00:18:42.509
Okay.
00:18:42.670 --> 00:18:50.830
And would the likes of licensing some of that software or open sourcing it or creating standards around it?
00:18:50.990 --> 00:19:00.670
You know, I'm just thinking, how do you push that out beyond NEC's borders, apart from just having partners and suppliers use it?
00:19:01.310 --> 00:19:01.630
Yeah.
00:19:01.790 --> 00:19:02.030
Yeah.
00:19:02.110 --> 00:19:06.269
So I think there's a broader business model here at some level.
00:19:06.430 --> 00:19:13.790
And the nice piece about being labs, I don't have to worry as much about the business model if I'm doing, if I'm opening a new market.
00:19:13.950 --> 00:19:22.030
From an NEC perspective, we certainly are going to have a core simulation engine, a core negotiation engine, and a core policy engine.
00:19:22.190 --> 00:19:26.269
And as I said, we're going to use that as products across the a wide variety of different areas.
00:19:26.509 --> 00:19:33.230
So for us, that could be enough, right, at some level, because because we can do that, that could be a great business.
00:19:33.390 --> 00:19:38.110
But we view this as a piece of a much larger construct, right?
00:19:38.269 --> 00:19:43.790
So all of this started because we were doing work in this sort of carbon neutrality space, right?
00:19:43.870 --> 00:19:51.310
Where NEC, and you know, I mentioned that NEC did a great job of keeping industrial labs.
00:19:51.470 --> 00:20:00.990
One of the things that I've also learned is that that NEC, uh, more than other companies that I may have been interacted with in the past, actually believes what it says.
00:20:01.230 --> 00:20:04.910
So they want to actually drive for carbon neutrality.
00:20:05.070 --> 00:20:10.190
They want to try and provide the framework that allows the world to do that.
00:20:10.269 --> 00:20:10.430
Right.
00:20:10.590 --> 00:20:19.950
We're not an oil company, we're not a solar company, we can't directly impact energy utilization or creation of carbon dioxide.
00:20:20.110 --> 00:20:27.870
But indirectly, the platforms that are used to optimize the way the world interacts, that is our core competence, right?
00:20:28.030 --> 00:20:32.670
So at some level, we started going down this path of what can we do in the carbon neutral space.
00:20:32.830 --> 00:20:38.110
And it was clear that there were many, many systems that were inefficient, right?
00:20:38.269 --> 00:20:52.190
And inefficient systems are systems that you typically create where the demand that you have fluctuates, but you fix your supply because you don't have the ability to have the two matched.
00:20:52.509 --> 00:20:56.509
And that's this sort of static way that leads to a large amount of waste.
00:20:56.750 --> 00:21:02.910
So you start asking the question well, how do I actually drive the time scale down so I can match supply and demand better?
00:21:03.150 --> 00:21:09.790
And and when you do that, you start seeing this idea of, well, you need to know who needs what and when, right?
00:21:09.870 --> 00:21:11.310
That's the negotiation piece.
00:21:11.470 --> 00:21:13.470
You need to know what you're driving for, right?
00:21:13.630 --> 00:21:20.990
So maybe there's certain times of the day where I don't care about how much energy I use because I'm I have more than enough, right?
00:21:21.070 --> 00:21:22.590
The sun is working really well.
00:21:22.910 --> 00:21:25.470
So tell me the metric that I need to use.
00:21:25.710 --> 00:21:34.269
And and then the simulation piece, and again, just to be very specific, this is not a digital twin kind of thing that people are pushing, right?
00:21:34.350 --> 00:21:43.070
I I worry about digital twins where the amount of effort that you put into simulating something is more than the amount of effort that it would be to just measure something.
00:21:43.390 --> 00:21:47.390
So we're not trying to simulate all the details of the entire world supply chain.
00:21:47.550 --> 00:21:52.350
It's about applying the right level of simulation just to understand how the pieces fit together.
00:21:52.670 --> 00:22:03.710
So when we we saw those things come in place, it became natural that we would take the efforts that we were doing, the commercial pieces, and say, let's push this model a bit further.
00:22:03.950 --> 00:22:21.630
And that's where you start getting into this idea of let's standardize it, let's you know, license where we can if we want to make money on this piece, but let's interact openly with others because this kind of a system, very much like you know, if we look at the internet, only works if people sign on, right?
00:22:21.710 --> 00:22:25.710
And people don't sign on to proprietary systems, it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:22:25.870 --> 00:22:42.269
So having an open standard that people can use to do Do this negotiation will benefit the world in a level that I think NEC views as a very positive outcome, even if we're not getting every penny of every transaction that happens inside of that house.
00:22:43.390 --> 00:22:44.110
Okay, interesting.
00:22:44.350 --> 00:22:52.190
In the in that energy example you mentioned there, you didn't talk about the possibility of demand side management.
00:22:52.269 --> 00:22:53.630
Is that something you've considered?
00:22:54.990 --> 00:23:00.350
So yes, but not not so much in the context of this tool, right?
00:23:00.910 --> 00:23:11.150
So certainly if if you look at the way things go, the most efficient systems are the systems that on a very, very fine timescale match supply and demand.
00:23:11.550 --> 00:23:12.750
And you can do two things.
00:23:12.910 --> 00:23:20.990
One, you can actually adjust your supply to match the demand, or you can actually adjust your demand in order to match the supply.
00:23:21.470 --> 00:23:40.670
You know, I I often have one of these, you know, the broader discussion around carbon neutrality, you know, there are there's an old supply chain thing that I that I do know which uh says that you don't want to store dead fish because dead fish will eventually not be fish.
00:23:40.910 --> 00:23:43.630
It's not a good product if it sits and goes away.
00:23:43.870 --> 00:23:51.630
Um but in certain things like perhaps steel, an ingot of steel is actually something that's fine to store.
00:23:51.790 --> 00:23:59.790
And if you look at the amount of electricity that goes into creating an ingot of steel, you realize it's a tremendous way of saving electricity.
00:24:00.350 --> 00:24:11.390
So there is a broader idea in the negotiation side of this, which might say, say I have an industry that is very elastic with respect to its electricity, right?
00:24:11.550 --> 00:24:14.190
As much electricity as you give them, they can use it.
00:24:14.430 --> 00:24:16.110
As little as you give them, they can use it.
00:24:16.269 --> 00:24:17.870
So they have lots of flexibility.
00:24:18.030 --> 00:24:24.830
And then you have another industry where the amount of electricity that they can use is completely inelastic, right?
00:24:24.910 --> 00:24:27.710
They don't have the ability to turn it up or down, it is fixed.
00:24:28.030 --> 00:24:40.590
So one question you might ask is how do I get the elastic company and the inelastic company to collaborate so that they actually drive for an overall good with respect to their energy?
00:24:40.830 --> 00:24:47.070
So, you know, middle of the day, hottest day of the summer, the inelastic company is stuck.
00:24:47.230 --> 00:24:49.790
They have to use as much as they they can.
00:24:50.030 --> 00:24:53.790
But the elastic company might be able to trade some of their elasticity, right?
00:24:53.950 --> 00:25:03.230
I'll I'll make less steel right now, and I'll let you use my electricity so that globally our sum lands below the caps of industry.
00:25:03.470 --> 00:25:05.790
So you look at something like that and you go, okay, that makes sense.
00:25:05.870 --> 00:25:07.710
That that's a great collaboration.
00:25:08.030 --> 00:25:17.550
But the second that you say, well, you know, all the steel companies should be calling all of the malls and airports to try and negotiate that deal, all bets are off.
00:25:17.630 --> 00:25:26.430
It doesn't make any sense at all because it's, you know, it's it's too small, it's too detailed in time for them to want to go out and pursue something.
00:25:26.990 --> 00:25:27.230
Okay.
00:25:27.470 --> 00:25:35.470
But if they had a platform that says, you know, I have elastic energy usage between the hours of 8 and you know, 8 a.m.
00:25:35.630 --> 00:25:36.350
and 8 p.m.
00:25:36.670 --> 00:26:02.269
After 8 p.m., you know, maybe I'm a little bit more fixed because some things are offline, and then another company that says, I need power between these different ranges, an intelligent system that knows the requirements and the capabilities and knows the policy positions in place can solve that and can do that in a way that, again, doesn't require any manual intervention between the companies.
00:26:02.590 --> 00:26:24.430
So that's the supply chain that that I think we get to, where you can you can start trading things between companies to achieve a greater whole that would be very difficult to even recognize that the trade makes sense if it were just individuals on a phone or lawyers sitting behind agreements and contracting things between companies.
00:26:26.990 --> 00:26:31.470
And how do we get to where we are today to that being a reality?
00:26:34.750 --> 00:26:36.350
I I'm not sure I know.
00:26:36.750 --> 00:26:40.430
So so I I think we I I will tell you what we're doing, right?
00:26:40.509 --> 00:26:47.150
So from the lab side, we're working with some partners in this space who have these kinds of challenges.
00:26:47.550 --> 00:26:53.950
We are applying these tools with them to see if we can show that there is some significant value.
00:26:54.430 --> 00:26:57.070
So I think that's the first step of doing it.
00:26:57.710 --> 00:27:02.670
I think the next step is, as we mentioned, the standardization and propagation.
00:27:03.310 --> 00:27:03.630
Right.
00:27:03.710 --> 00:27:11.550
So we ask for, you know, maybe a couple of companies to work together to see if this kind of negotiation works for them.
00:27:11.790 --> 00:27:17.150
As it starts to work, it grows, having some conversations with governments, right?
00:27:17.230 --> 00:27:20.430
So that I think the government is a is a strong piece.
00:27:20.750 --> 00:27:28.670
I I won't say we're really pushing it yet, but clearly most government policy doesn't work well.
00:27:28.990 --> 00:27:35.550
That's my maybe my opinion, maybe that, but I think most of the government folks we've talked about say the same thing, right?
00:27:35.630 --> 00:27:45.790
Every time that they institute a big plan, they worry that it's gonna drive the exact opposite result because there's so many interrelated things that that they need to do it.
00:27:45.870 --> 00:27:52.110
So so I think some kind of policy management engine is gonna be critical for them.
00:27:52.430 --> 00:28:32.269
And I think once they start getting involved, then this sort of broader internet of supply chain that I I manage, I think also might have internet of compliance or an internet of, I don't want to say regulation because that that feels bad, but you know, at some level, if if there are tax credits being done because you as a company are achieving some goal or not using energy at a certain time or something like that, uh, this is the ideal mechanism for which you can basically sign on and ensure that you're actually getting the results that you're supposed to get, right?
00:28:32.350 --> 00:28:48.670
That the reporting goes up through this system, that you know, the fact that you've traded your elasticity to some other company, and if if the government is driving for that, so there's there's a way of managing overall compliance to those government pieces that I think is also important.
00:28:49.150 --> 00:28:57.230
So my thought would be that the way we'll see this happen is individual companies will start using things like this, right?
00:28:57.390 --> 00:28:59.710
The automated negotiation will go up, right?
00:28:59.790 --> 00:29:01.070
So we'll see that happening.
00:29:01.310 --> 00:29:11.790
But on the government side, I think governments are going to have to figure out how to manage policy from the local to the global to the, you know, even broader kind of management system.
00:29:11.950 --> 00:29:18.670
And I think that will also grow and those will coalesce into this sort of broader framework of standardization.
00:29:18.910 --> 00:29:22.190
That that would be my, I mean, I'm a technology guy.
00:29:22.430 --> 00:29:33.870
I'm naive when it comes to business, I'm naive when it comes to social change, but uh, from a technology perspective, the nice piece about this is that there's a driving force, there's a need.
00:29:34.190 --> 00:29:39.230
And and the thing that I found is that you can never push technology into a situation.
00:29:39.470 --> 00:29:44.670
Technology always gets pulled into a situation because it satisfies a specific need.
00:29:44.830 --> 00:29:48.590
And I think we have a need here, and I think it's getting recognized on a global scale.
00:29:48.750 --> 00:29:55.310
So I think that as we build these technologies, they're going to get pulled in and hopefully integrated into something that is good.
00:29:56.509 --> 00:29:58.030
Okay, great, great.
00:29:58.269 --> 00:30:01.150
We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Chris.
00:30:01.230 --> 00:30:09.710
Is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?
00:30:11.390 --> 00:30:14.190
Uh I think we've covered most of it.
00:30:14.350 --> 00:30:22.830
I I think one place that that might be an interesting one, but might be an entirely new podcast, is what happens at an individual level, right?
00:30:22.990 --> 00:30:30.750
So are we as individuals, the consumers at the end of the supply chain, um, going to participate in this system as well, right?
00:30:30.830 --> 00:30:33.390
Where we can actually have requests in due timeframe.
00:30:33.550 --> 00:30:44.670
I I I will say my my rough answer is I think that's a bit further off, but I wouldn't have anticipated Amazon's success in the just-in-time delivery, you know, next day kind of thing.
00:30:44.830 --> 00:30:49.390
So it may very well be that the third peg of what I mentioned, right?
00:30:49.550 --> 00:30:54.110
Industry, government, that this might be what consumers want, right?
00:30:54.190 --> 00:31:05.470
And and it might be the way that consumers actually ask for things and manage their overall costs inside of some kind of system that that is doing the negotiation for them, right?
00:31:05.550 --> 00:31:08.509
That is allowing them to say, I need this, this, this, and this.
00:31:08.590 --> 00:31:09.950
This is what I'm willing to pay.
00:31:10.110 --> 00:31:11.950
These are the constraints that I have.
00:31:12.269 --> 00:31:13.710
Go optimize my world.
00:31:13.870 --> 00:31:21.790
There's certainly inefficiencies in the consumer side that could be optimized that I think it would be very interesting to see how that that might evolve.
00:31:22.269 --> 00:31:24.830
Yeah, and I I get your point there.
00:31:24.990 --> 00:31:28.830
The the energy space is one that I've been working in for quite a while.
00:31:29.070 --> 00:31:35.070
And so when I mentioned that point about demand side management, it was I was that's kind of what I was thinking about.
00:31:35.310 --> 00:31:42.670
Both in the commercial world but also in the residential world, it's possible to roll out demand side management.
00:31:42.750 --> 00:31:44.830
Whether you can get take up is another matter.
00:31:44.990 --> 00:31:54.269
But the likes of fridge freezers, the likes of electric immersion water heaters, these are storage mechanisms.
00:31:54.509 --> 00:31:56.910
We don't think of them that way, but they are.
00:31:57.150 --> 00:32:08.750
If you have an electric water heater, an immersion water heater, for example, when electricity is cheap, you can have that ramp up the temperature of the water to 50, 60, 70, 80 degrees C.
00:32:09.230 --> 00:32:16.750
And then when electricity is expensive, let the temperature drift back down to 60, 50 degrees, whatever it is.
00:32:16.910 --> 00:32:20.110
As long as you've got hot water when you turn on the tap, you don't care.
00:32:20.269 --> 00:32:31.550
You know, as long as it's well insulated, well lagged, you don't care when it's actually heated unless you absolute unless it's unless it happens to have been drained and is absolutely cold and you need it right there and then.
00:32:31.630 --> 00:32:35.870
But for the majority of the time, you if you have a big tank and it's well lagged, you don't care when it's heated.
00:32:36.030 --> 00:32:48.030
And similarly, with cold products in your fridge, in your freezer, you know, you don't care if the stuff in your freezer is at minus 10 or minus 20 or minus 5, you know, as long as it's frozen, same kind of idea.
00:32:48.190 --> 00:32:57.310
You can suck in energy to bring it down to minus 10, minus 20, whatever it is, and then let it drift back up to minus 10, minus 5, as long as it stays frozen.
00:32:57.470 --> 00:32:59.070
Again, same kind of idea.
00:32:59.310 --> 00:33:02.269
And there are other movable loads in your household as well.
00:33:02.430 --> 00:33:15.550
So if we had smart devices in our home which listened to pricing signals or carbon signals on the grid and adjusted their behavior accordingly, which didn't impact on us.
00:33:15.710 --> 00:33:23.310
You know, we open the fridge, we open the freezer, stuff is cold, we turn on the hot water tap, stuff is hot, you know, but it's happened magically in the background.
00:33:23.470 --> 00:33:31.310
To your point, the negotiation takes place, it happens magically in the background, and our carbon footprint comes down, and we're doing demand side management.
00:33:31.470 --> 00:33:33.310
We are sucking in that extra energy.
00:33:33.550 --> 00:33:35.630
EVs are a phenomenal example of this.
00:33:35.790 --> 00:33:39.870
You know, you plug in your EV when you get home from work in the evening, next morning it's full.
00:33:40.030 --> 00:33:41.630
You don't care when that happens.
00:33:41.870 --> 00:33:45.470
You could do the same with dishwashers, clothes dryers, whatever.
00:33:45.710 --> 00:33:48.990
You you know, you fill the dishwasher at six o'clock in the evening after you've eaten.
00:33:49.150 --> 00:33:52.430
I live in Spain, we'd be doing it at 11 o'clock at night, but that's neither here nor there.
00:33:52.509 --> 00:33:53.550
But you know, you get the point.
00:33:53.790 --> 00:33:58.350
Long as it's, you know, long as the dishes are clean and dry the following morning at 7 a.m.
00:33:58.509 --> 00:34:00.269
when you get up, you don't care when it happens.
00:34:00.430 --> 00:34:02.910
You know, these are movable loads, eminently movable loads.
00:34:02.990 --> 00:34:03.390
So yeah.
00:34:03.550 --> 00:34:06.670
Anyway, get getting on it, that's a whole other podcast, as you said.
00:34:07.870 --> 00:34:10.509
But but I think you you mentioned something really important here.
00:34:10.590 --> 00:34:21.469
Because I I think the whole smart grid push that happened maybe 10 years ago in the US was really around all of these kinds of demand response kind of optimization.
00:34:21.630 --> 00:34:28.269
Uh, and I think what hurt it was the fact that it wasn't standardized and open.
00:34:28.590 --> 00:34:32.190
It was closed and and walled gardens.
00:34:32.349 --> 00:34:40.190
So, you know, if you bought the right refrigerator, right microwave, right, you know, all those pieces, it would work, but it would only work inside of that context.
00:34:40.430 --> 00:34:46.349
And I I think that what has to happen here is a more global interaction.
00:34:46.510 --> 00:34:53.070
And if we get to that more global interaction, then yeah, I think the smart grid use cases all come back in very, very quickly.
00:34:53.309 --> 00:34:58.110
And people are are not gonna do this if they think it's cool technology.
00:34:58.349 --> 00:35:01.950
They're gonna do this if it actually becomes a problem or or something for them.
00:35:02.110 --> 00:35:05.150
And I think that also hurt the smart grid as as well.
00:35:05.389 --> 00:35:14.110
But I I think, you know, as people get more and more electric cars, right, and everybody tries to charge at five o'clock when they get home, we're gonna have to solve that problem.
00:35:14.269 --> 00:35:22.110
And I think this kind of negotiation solves that problem because it is a way of registering your intent, right?
00:35:22.269 --> 00:35:25.470
I work at night, I need the car to be charged by 6 p.m.
00:35:25.630 --> 00:35:31.150
or 8 p.m., or I work in the morning and it doesn't need to be there until, you know, 9 a.m.
00:35:31.710 --> 00:35:36.349
So I think there's important pieces of that that are going to come into this as well.
00:35:36.430 --> 00:35:49.309
And I think the open standardized model that could actually transcend from company to government to individual hopefully will help and have more success than maybe we had in the past.
00:35:49.710 --> 00:35:50.269
Yeah, yeah.
00:35:50.349 --> 00:35:51.550
No, you're you're absolutely right.
00:35:51.630 --> 00:35:59.230
I remember at the time it was, but the the whole smart grid push started around 2008, 2010, that kind of time frame.
00:35:59.389 --> 00:36:02.670
And I wrote several papers and gave several talks at the time about it.
00:36:02.750 --> 00:36:10.829
And I called it electricity 2.0, modeling it on web 2.0, and talked about it, you know, being like the internet.
00:36:11.150 --> 00:36:19.309
The electricity grids should be like the internet, it should be pretty much IP-based, where everything, to your point, was open standards and everything could talk to everything else.
00:36:19.389 --> 00:36:20.910
And it's the only way it'll work.
00:36:20.990 --> 00:36:22.590
And we need to expand the grids as well.
00:36:22.750 --> 00:36:30.349
I mean, it's not too bad here in Europe where many of the grids are interconnected, but where you've got island grids, you've got something like 500 grids in the US, it's ridiculous.
00:36:30.430 --> 00:36:32.030
Where and most of them are not talking to each other.
00:36:32.190 --> 00:36:32.910
Yeah, anyway.
00:36:33.230 --> 00:36:35.710
Whole nother podcast, as we said.
00:36:36.349 --> 00:36:45.630
Rust Chris, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the topics we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?
00:36:46.110 --> 00:36:49.950
So you can send them to our website, pennycdash labs.com.
00:36:50.110 --> 00:36:52.910
Uh, I'll send you the link so you can include it with them.
00:36:53.070 --> 00:36:56.590
Yeah, I'm very happy if if someone wants to try and contact me.
00:36:56.829 --> 00:36:58.110
I love this area.
00:36:58.269 --> 00:37:03.789
As I mentioned at the very beginning, good research is only done with the scrutiny of good problems.
00:37:04.030 --> 00:37:10.829
And, you know, it's very easy to get caught up in your research and think, you know, if I solve this, that's gonna be everything.
00:37:11.070 --> 00:37:16.670
Where someone who has more knowledge or different knowledge can come in and say, no, you're not really aiming in the right direction.
00:37:16.750 --> 00:37:20.110
If you move to the left just a little bit, you're really gonna hit the real problem.
00:37:20.349 --> 00:37:24.670
So yeah, very happy to have conversations with folks around these things.
00:37:24.829 --> 00:37:31.789
I I think it's important, and I think that the more ideas and more context we bring into it, I think the better it'll be.
00:37:32.110 --> 00:37:32.829
Phenomenal.
00:37:32.990 --> 00:37:33.389
Phenomenal.
00:37:33.630 --> 00:37:34.670
Chris, that's been awesome.
00:37:34.750 --> 00:37:36.990
Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.
00:37:37.550 --> 00:37:38.510
Thanks for having me.
00:37:38.670 --> 00:37:40.670
Always enjoy these kinds of conversations.
00:37:41.070 --> 00:37:43.070
Okay, we've come to the end of the show.
00:37:43.230 --> 00:37:44.750
Thanks everyone for listening.
00:37:44.990 --> 00:37:53.470
If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, simply drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook.com.
00:37:54.349 --> 00:38:02.990
If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to be sure to get new episodes as soon as they're published.
00:38:03.230 --> 00:38:06.430
Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast.
00:38:06.590 --> 00:38:09.869
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00:38:10.190 --> 00:38:10.990
Thanks.
00:38:11.230 --> 00:38:12.829
Catch you all next time.
