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From natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes to pandemics, cyberattacks, and labor strikes, companies have to navigate so many complexities to get goods where they need to go.
What's their secret weapon to operating within the unknown?
It’s the people.
Welcome to Supply Chain Champions, the show that showcases the stories of those who keep supply chains running smoothly. We're here to highlight their untold stories and share lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Join us as we peel back the curtain on the people who make supply chains work and enhance your own career in the process.
Tune in. Get smart. Move forward.
Bart De Muynck [00:00:00]:
When I was still at Gartner, a lot of our conferences were about going from analog to digital supply chains. Reality is we're maybe not even one third of the way there or one third of companies that are really at a certain level of digital maturity. So that's the thing is like, we got to do a lot more and we could do it faster.
Eric Fullerton [00:00:20]:
Welcome to Supply Chain Champions, the show brought to you by project44, where we're talking to the people who make supply chains work.
Eric Fullerton [00:00:29]:
Hello and welcome to Supply Chain Champions. I'm your host, Eric Fullerton. I am joined today by the father of the real-time transportation visibility platforms, Magic Quadrant, a long time supply chain professional and industry thought leader, Mr. Bart De Muynck. Now, Bart, I want to start with a question and I want to take us back to kind of that time at Gartner and this inflection point. What was that point when you realized, hey, visibility is something that's here to stay and it needs its own Magic Quadrant?
Bart De Muynck [00:01:04]:
Yeah, it's a good question, Eric, and thanks for having me on your show. But I would say visibility has always been important. Right. Right off the bat. When I started in logistics, I think back then in the 90s, it was hard to imagine we would get to a point where we are today. But then, you know, 2000s, we're starting to see more and more telematics, more and more feeds, obviously the 2010s. And so it was really around 2015. I joined Gartner in 2014 where a lot more discussion started happening around visibility.
Bart De Muynck [00:01:36]:
I think it was in the beginning, more broadly around supply chain visibility. I had those discussions with my colleague at the time at Gartner with Christian Titze, and we said, you know, this transportation part is really important because I knew it from my background in operations, you know, whether I was running the three PL and in operations there on the asset based side, as well as with PepsiCo. So we started writing some specific material around transportation visibility, so regular nodes. And that started picking up very, very quickly. So we said, you know, we probably need to do some more. There's some established vendors out there. And that evolved into a new market guide. And so we had the market guide for real time transportation visibility.
Bart De Muynck [00:02:16]:
And then guess what, after a few years of that, there was so much readership of that, we had so many inquiry calls around it, that interest in the market coming from the customer base kind of elevated it to the need in growing into a market, into a Magic Quadrant. And then we launched that Magic Quadrant, which obviously became the first new Magic Quadrant in over 20 years in logistics because we had TMS and WMS for a long time. So it was cool to see that we had a new era and a new kind of area of research that was good enough to be a Magic Quadrant. And then it all took off from there.
Eric Fullerton [00:02:52]:
We'll get back to that in terms of where we're at now and part of where we're headed. Let's rewind a little bit. You know, I think that the pre career path for, you know, being a Gartner analyst and then obviously some of the stuff you're doing now is really interesting. If we start at the beginning, you know, how did you actually get your start as a supply chain professional?
Bart De Muynck [00:03:13]:
I started college in 1987. Supply chain was definitely not a well known word. Supply chain beginning even then, you had to explain what it was. But 1987, definitely no studies around it. So I studied business economics, I got a master's in strategy and business management, really went into the world, started working for multiple companies, started working with Ernst and Young where I got exposed to a lot of different industry, a lot of different processes. And then after that I joined GE Capital Mergers and Acquisition. And that was to me, kind of where it all started. Because at the time they were forming a brand new company, a logistics company.
Bart De Muynck [00:03:50]:
The goal was to provide logistics services to all the GE manufacturing businesses in Europe. Again, my background is from Belgium, so I started my career in Europe and so really got into the merger and acquisition of logistics companies. And then once we did the acquisitions, they said, okay, we need someone to help with the finance for these companies. Start in finance. But then very quickly after that started running operations. And it was really there that I saw kind of more in detail what happened in logistics at the same time. Again, this is the mid to late 90s. We started investing heavily in technology and that was kind of where the light bulb went off for me.
Bart De Muynck [00:04:29]:
Maybe funnily enough, when I saw kind of logistics, processes and technology combined, that's where my passion was, I said, this is what I want to do. So it wasn't necessarily premeditated. It kind of came to me in a little bit of an adventurous way and I knew this is what I want to do with the rest of my professional career. And then from there I kind of continued on. Worked for several tech startups in early 2000, meantime had moved from mainland Europe to England where I was living for several years with the startups, then had met my wife and moved to the US where I'm still residing after 21 years in Texas. Started working for Pexico here in the. In the Texas office. Did that for 10 years.
Bart De Muynck [00:05:10]:
Kind of viewed the world from the shipper side. Completely different as a CPG manufacturing company with a lot of different, very complex supply chains. And then from there, I was a Gartner client. And then one day I got a call from Gartner saying, hey, we need a guy that can run our transportation research. And kind of said, you know what? I'm up for the challenge. Let's see how that goes. And ended up there. So was able to really see kind of, I would say, both the world, but also the world of supply chain from a lot of different angles.
Eric Fullerton [00:05:41]:
Yeah, it makes sense. I think one of the most common things we hear when we talk about people in their career path and whether it's supply chain or logistics, it's usually not a. When I was a kid, I wanted to blank. It's more. You see something. You see the industry, you see some challenges, you see how it all comes together, and then at some point that that light bulb does go off. So it's. It's not surprising that.
Eric Fullerton [00:06:09]:
That you had a similar experience. So, you know, you mentioned a lot of experience, a lot of time in the industry. So I've known you for a little while, so I know you're. I know you're a passionate guy. So I wanted to ask, you know, what is it about the industry today that keeps you excited? How is it still interesting? What is it that's driving you to keep pushing the industry forward and to get better?
Bart De Muynck [00:06:34]:
When COVID started, people finally started understanding supply chain. People started understanding the importance of logistics. You know, when I started, people said, you know, this logistics thing or transportation, it's what you do at the end of it. And it's not that important now. It's almost the opposite. It's because of e-commerce, where the delivery is such a big part of the customer experience, but also on the business side with all the disruptions we have. So I would say my excitement even increased because one finally, instead of this kind of unknown thing, we've become a very known thing from a consumer and a business perspective. But there's so many challenges and so many new technologies that really make it a lot more interesting.
Bart De Muynck [00:07:13]:
30 years ago, and you talk about technology and transportation was like, okay, well, we've got vehicle routing and we've got TMS now. I mean, look at today, right? You see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different solutions out there, some obviously with more value than others. And then the other part of it is the world has become so much more global, it's become so much more complex that, you know, that makes it fun. That doesn't make it like, oh, I've been doing this for 30 years, been accounting. Accounting hasn't developed very much. And that gets boring. No, because the world changes. Like, I feel like every morning I wake up to almost a new world because there's a new disruption, there's a new storm, there's a new geopolitical event.
Bart De Muynck [00:07:53]:
You have to react to it, but the reaction is often very different. And so that makes it all fresh and new. No one, including people, have been doing this for 30, 40, 50 years. Completely solve for the complexity. So it's an ongoing thing and a never ending thing. And that makes it fun. Right. You continue to work.
Bart De Muynck [00:08:13]:
And then the last part that I would add to it, supply chains are very networked. So it's still a very human centric function. Right. Although we see technologies that are trying to automate certain parts. But that also means that it's working with people in networks. And I will say in supply chain, specifically in logistics. I just love working with logistics people. It's when you go to conferences or you work with companies, there's just something about it that makes people stick together.
Bart De Muynck [00:08:41]:
And that's where I have my passion.
Eric Fullerton [00:08:43]:
You have a good finger, I think, on kind of like the pulse of the industry. You have a good network, talking to lots of people. You're out there at events. We were just chatting about how your travel schedule is pretty packed up. You kind of zoom back out and look at the logistics, technology, industry, even really freight as a whole. It's at a interesting, in some ways challenging spot right now. I would like to get your take on where is the industry at today and what are some things we can maybe look out for in the future, even the next year, year and a half.
Bart De Muynck [00:09:24]:
Yeah. With all the evolutions that I was talking about, all the disruptions and with COVID Right. We thought we had kind of solidified functions like logistics. But then you see these events that are happening, whether it's the recent storms, Helene and Milton, or even what we saw a little bit longer ago at the port of Baltimore, Right. With the bridge being hit there. And it does show that our supply chains and certain parts of logistics was still very vulnerable. I think that's the biggest learning and that's why we continuously have to figure out how do we do things differently, how do we do things a lot more, I would say predictive rather than reactive. And that's big change, I would say, in the world of logistics and transportation because we've always been very conservative, a little backwards when it comes to doing things very manual, not always the most use of technology.
Bart De Muynck [00:10:14]:
And so I think we're right now, I would say at a point where we are looking at completely changing the way we do things, using more technology, not being afraid of automation also because there's a lack of people. We already see that on the warehouse side where there's a lack of labor, there's, you know, very high attrition rates. But even transportation, we still see there's a war for talent. And so if we want to continue being at the forefront, being able to hire people that would have an interest in supply chain and specifically in logistics, we need to do things in a different way. So I think there's a huge opportunity for us right now to kind of change our mindset to how can we do these more complex, more global, more disruptive things, but do it kind of different? And again, I'm not saying we're going to switch over kind of 180 degrees overnight. It's going to be a continued journey. For example, with project44 and how people have gone from visibility as kind of where's that truck? To how do we use all this data to predictively make certain decisions, even in planning, we're starting to see that. And so I think there's so much opportunity, a lot of it starts with the data to do things differently and to really become a lot better at how we're running supply chains.
Bart De Muynck [00:11:32]:
And in the end that's going to make it a lot more interesting and that's also going to attract more people to the industry. And like you said, I travel a lot, but I also do quite a bit with different universities and speak in universities. And I will say there is such a great enthusiasm of these students, people picking supply chain, but there's people that going to study this because they're so excited about it. Now we see these younger people coming in and they have that mindset of, you know, what technology first let's change this. Let's get it, get this box, you know, dusted off, give it a new coat and let's get going.
Eric Fullerton [00:12:06]:
You know, one of the things we talk about as you're very familiar with that at project44 is the concept of a high velocity supply chain. And like the simple definition is, hey, it's one that gets inventory where it needs to go faster, more efficiently and cost effectively. It sounds simple, but There's a lot of complexity required in achieving that ultimate goal. So if you're a supply chain leader, if you're a logistics professional, what are some of the things that you need? Not just from the technology perspective, but you talked about that change management and process to actually make that a reality.
Bart De Muynck [00:12:45]:
Yeah, again, right. When you talk about velocity, when we started with COVID for example. Right. And we saw a lot of changes and people were talking about resilience, agility. But that resilience came at an incredible cost because we saw inventories go up because we knew things were changing. Longer lead times, places, manufacturing locations were closing. So it's like buy all the inventory we can get. And then all of a sudden we saw these, the US business logistics cost go up, you know, tremendously.
Bart De Muynck [00:13:12]:
We can't do that because, yeah, it's good to keep operating our supply chains, but we still have to make money or are we going to go out of business? So now it's like, well, you got to do it in a way that's smarter. And velocity doesn't always mean to go faster. It means you got to be able to go fast when you need to, but also understand you have to slow down when you need to. And I would say before you had a gas pedal but no brake. The other part, which we didn't really have, is a good steering wheel. Maybe we had that steering wheel that we had in cars 40, 50 years ago. I know, Eric, you're too young, but you know, when you have to park and that's really light, really turn the wheel. Now we got these, all this modern technology, actually a lot of cars now, you just push a button and it parks itself.
Bart De Muynck [00:13:55]:
So that ability to be agile and almost change course direction on a moment's notice, that's more important. And so I think companies are starting to understand that. But what they haven't quite understood yet is how do we actually use the technology to drive that. So that's still where I see a disconnect of where companies understand, hey, we got the data, we got the insights, we even know what decision to make. But then they don't immediately push the decision through either, maybe because they don't trust that new process or they don't trust the technology. So as humans, we're kind of the roadblock to advancing at the speed that we want. And maybe we'll get to that topic. But I would say that's why, for example, with AI, we're not ready for it, because most people aren't ready to make that complete change.
Bart De Muynck [00:14:46]:
Yet to giving up control and just saying, you know what, there's a lot more efficient ways of doing it, but are we ready for it? So again with the car analogy is I can have a car, maybe I have a Tesla. It can drive itself. But do I really feel comfortable to push that button and sit back and just let the car take control? I think the first time people do that, they go, oh, we're going into a corner, we're going into a turn. Is it really going to turn? From a business and professional perspective, we still have that fear of, we don't know. We think that maybe if we let go, that thing is going to go straight ahead into another car or into a wall.
Eric Fullerton [00:15:25]:
We're starting to get into kind of the. This interesting tech conversation. So I wanted to want to play a little game with you. It's called over hyped or underhyped. I want to get your, your take on, you know, one trend technology that you think is overhyped and then maybe a little bit why? And then one that is underappreciated and why you think that that might be.
Bart De Muynck [00:15:50]:
Yeah, I'll start maybe with a little bit of a more contentious answer to the. The first one, AI, to me, it's both overhyped and underhyped. And the reason is that it's overhyped because people think like, oh, AI is this thing on its own is going to solve every problem. But on the other side, AI is already doing so many things for us that people don't even are aware of. And I would say again, as a compliment to AI is you're using it, it's helping you. You don't even know that it's AI that's doing it. Right. There's a lot of stuff that we do every single day on the Internet, on our iPhone that is AI powered.
Bart De Muynck [00:16:26]:
We don't realize that it's AI, so it's overhyped because people always think AI, AI. But on the other side, we're using the AI, although we might be afraid of it and we're not even knowing it, and that's where it's underhyped. So what's really important in that case is trying to understand where does the real value come from AI. And I would say in areas like visibility. One of the first use cases we saw for AI was data quality. Right. It's kind of all the way at the beginning, the data comes in. They're not data aggregators.
Bart De Muynck [00:16:59]:
They actually create sometimes a source of the data, go pull it from there. But Aggregating just means you're collecting it. No, what it does is actually looks at all the data, make sure it's the highest quality and then even if there's missing data says, how do we use e.g. aI to generate some of the data? And why is that so important? Well, I always refer to, well, when we used to do business intelligence, we used to do just regular reporting. Who cares if the data was wrong? Because it already happened in the past. But like I said, now we're on that road of predicting and prescribing and automating things. What's going to happen if that data that you based everything on was wrong? Your prediction is going to be completely off. So things are completely different.
Bart De Muynck [00:17:41]:
So I would say that's one part, I would say another one that's definitely fairly understood is vision automation. I think we're seeing a lot more. Again, the best example would be your phone looks at you, recognizes your face and opens it up for you. We're starting to see more and more of that in supply chain. Whether it's recognizing a truck on the road and finding it, it's recognizing a truck at a gate and automating the access to it. Similar to what you have like at the clear at the airport where you put in your fingerprints or it looks like you're your readiness. The same inside of the warehouse where a truck can offload and the camera can see what gets offloaded, what the product is, if it's damaged or not, all of those different things. So I would say that's one that we're starting to see more and more companies using, but it's still a bit lower on the radar.
Bart De Muynck [00:18:30]:
From a use case perspective, I would say there's a lot of things out there. I see a lot of companies investing in AI, all kinds of use cases. Some of them are like a little far fetched and some of them, to be honest, people just aren't ready to adopt. So there has to be a balance of what makes sense from the technology perspective and can create value. But also how much of that change are we able to absorb that makes sense?
Eric Fullerton [00:18:55]:
It's interesting when you think about the vision stuff and identifying trucks in the road has value. But when you start to think about those traditional transfer points, those yards, those warehouses, those ports that can often create significant delays in the way that goods are moved, that starts to get really interesting. And as you know, you probably go to more, more events than I do. I get my fair share. But the overuse of the terminology around AI, but the underutilization of talking about, like, the specific ways it drives value. That's where, like, there's really, I think, an opportunity of, like, you can just say AI, or you could say these four things and then they're powered in this way to help you achieve this outcome. And I think that's where maybe the industry has a little bit of growth opportunity, shall we say?
Bart De Muynck [00:19:47]:
No, you're absolutely right. The problem is it's become a board discussion, right? I've heard it from customers where they go, oh, we got a request from one of our customers that says, hey, we have a board meeting. We have to show where we're actually using AI, because it's almost like, oh, we need to be able to justify we're actually using AI or we're not a good company. But you have to look at it like you said, right? What's the use case? Where is it creating value? We don't want it to be like what we saw with blockchain, like, five, six years ago, where it's a solution, trying to look for a problem. We should really look at what's the problem or where do we create the opportunity and the value and then what's the right technology to use for it. And in a lot of cases, you're using AI, you're not even aware of it. You probably know by now, I'm a guy that uses analogies. I always use that analogy of Ferrari has very complex, very ingenious engine.
Bart De Muynck [00:20:39]:
But you really have to understand it to be able to drive a Ferrari and to enjoy driving it. It's a little bit the same with, with technology, right? AI can make it better, faster, easier to adapt. It can talk to you instead of you having to use a keyboard. A lot of those things. You don't necessarily need to understand all of that to be able to get value out of the system. So I think sometimes we're making it harder on ourselves by staring too much around. That thing is, does it have AI? Does it not have the AI? Hey, it's doing the thing and it's doing it better. Just use it.
Eric Fullerton [00:21:10]:
You know, you mentioned that you spent a lot of time in colleges. You've had a lot of industry experience, and now that there are people with, you know, either majors or minors in supply chain or in logistics, which is really an interesting trend that we're seeing. Any advice for young people coming in? I want to get into supply chain. This is what I feel like I want to do. What would you tell them?
Bart De Muynck [00:21:34]:
Yeah, I would say, don't be afraid to try something new. Right. I think it's always good to have different perspectives, different roles within supply chain so you get a broader vision around the different functions. So don't just say, I'm just going to do logistics or I'm just going to do supply chain planning or manufacturing or procurement. Try the different parts because you'll see one. You understand the intricacies of each, but you also understand the touch points because again, a lot of these functions today are still siloed. Think about how you can bring them together, closer together. And again, technology is kind of the common denominator that can connect the different disparate functions within the supply chain.
Bart De Muynck [00:22:14]:
And I would say also because supply chains, especially with larger companies, are so global. If you have international or opportunity to have international experience, don't be afraid of that. I've always been one of those people. Like when I had, you know, a particular opportunity that came to me, it's like, don't be afraid. Might be something completely different, completely out of your comfort zone. Learn from it and network with people. You know, you learn from people, you're going to learn from the machine, you're going to learn from people. When I see that, though, when I see the students, a lot of them have those capabilities.
Bart De Muynck [00:22:47]:
They're very open people. They're ready for a challenge, they're ready for an opportunity. So I think we're in pretty good hands because it's kind of a different type of person that's now coming into the industry, the younger people than what we had, the oldies that were a lot more set in our ways, that had different expectations when we came in. These young folks, right, it's like they're coming into the industry and they look at it completely different. They're not going to say, oh, we've been doing it like that, because we have been for a long time. They're immediately kind of questioning, why are we doing it like that? Why can't we do it differently? You know, in their daily lives, they're doing things differently. So why wouldn't we do it in a different way when it comes to business? So I think that's going to have a major impact. That's going to help accelerate the adoption of technology.
Bart De Muynck [00:23:32]:
That's also going to help accelerate that change in how we do things.
Eric Fullerton [00:23:36]:
Awesome. So I want to, I want to close on one. One last question. I want to try to get some hot takes. Bart, you know, some. When you think about supply chain logistics, could be current state, future. And we did kind of touch on some of this. But just to put a finer point on it, any hot takes, bold predictions about where the industry is headed, what the current state is.
Eric Fullerton [00:23:58]:
We want our podcast to go viral, so we need. We need your hot takes. What do you think one would be?
Bart De Muynck [00:24:03]:
You know, we're not as far advanced when it comes to digital innovation and digitization as we think we are. I know we've been talking about this for forever, right? When I was still at Gartner, a lot of our conferences were about going from analog to digital supply chains. Reality is, we're maybe not even one third of the way there or one third of companies that are really at a certain level of digital maturity. So that's the thing. It's like we got to do a lot more, and we could do it faster. And then the second part of it, if you don't, you might not be around in a few years. Because what we're seeing as well is that, yes, we're seeing more and more new businesses coming into existence. Look at retail, right? Retail has completely changed over the last, I would say even 10 years that recent.
Bart De Muynck [00:24:48]:
But now we're also seeing no competition within the US From US companies, But we're seeing even coming from China, right, with some huge retailers that have become very, very large in a matter of a couple of years. So we cannot just sit and wait for things to come. We have to very proactively change things or the company is not going to be around in the next two years. So that would be one thing I definitely see. And then the other part is, you know, when we look at other parts outside of the pure operational, that would be things like sustainability or be talent. It's a big issue for company, but are they really doing the right things to be able to attract the best talent? I always say technology plays a huge part of that. You might be the best company in the world, but if you don't use the right technology, people are not going to be interested to come and work for you. And I hear that from students all the time.
Bart De Muynck [00:25:36]:
But then go into the real world and they've learned everything about visibility and APIs and artificial intelligence. They come to a company and it's all access databases and spreadsheets, and they're like, I don't think so. And they're just going somewhere else, right? I mean, that's the problem. Kids today all want to go and work for the Ubers of the world and the Googles of the world. And when I was, you know, going from college, we all wanted to go to the big manufacturing companies, the GEs of the world or the big consulting companies. World has changed. So people have to change, and I think we have to do it a much faster pace. And then the other part is things like sustainability.
Bart De Muynck [00:26:15]:
We've already seen that in Europe. We've got some laws and regulations in place there. And again, people that haven't thought about it, they're going to be running behind now. It's going to, you know, have a huge impact because they're going to be fine. Their legacy is going to go down because they're going to get a bad name. And we're already seeing that. Even when companies don't always understand that a lot of supply chain, a lot of that trade is being funded by credit, your interest rate is going to be a lot higher if you're kind of from an ESG perspective. And again, that's not just environmental, that is your social, that is your governance.
Bart De Muynck [00:26:48]:
You're going to pay a lot more for those loans. And also your valuation is going to go down compared to if you're someone that, from that perspective is viewed a lot better. So I think we need to refocus truly on how we run the company to stay competitive and how we need to run the company to be able to be positioned in the right way. Whether you're a public company for your shareholders or whether you're a smaller company and you're competing to just get customers, or you're competing to get the right talent, it's a different world out there. Those things are only going to accelerate quicker. And sometimes people say, well, Bart, what's the future look like? Right? What are your supply chains from 10 years going to look like? And it's very scary to think about it, because if I just look back at the last five years, I would say the last five years, things have accelerated much faster than I would say in the first 25 to 30 years of my career. So it's hard to imagine where we'll be in 10 years. Although I will say for people like myself and even older folks that grew up with the Jetsons, they probably all thought, or if you looked at Back to the Future, they all thought that we'd be driving flying cars by now, which.
Bart De Muynck [00:27:57]:
Which we're not, right? So there are things that aren't going as fast as what we think. But then there's a lot of other things that have to go fast. And if not, you know what, there's going to be a new generation of companies that are going to come by and they're going to take your place.
Eric Fullerton [00:28:13]:
Awesome Bart. With that, you know, I just wanted to thank you for coming on the podcast today. More importantly though, throughout your multi decade career, thank you for being a Supply Chain Champion. I think you embody that title particularly well. It's always great talking to you and thanks for taking the time and spending some of us today.
Bart De Muynck [00:28:34]:
Thanks for giving me the platform. There is good to be interested about it, but it's more important that you share it. You share it with your colleagues and you share it with the next generation.
Eric Fullerton [00:28:46]:
Thank you for listening to Supply Chain Champions. To get connected and learn more, visit project44.com and click the link in the comments. To subscribe to project44's newsletter, tune in, get smart, and move forward.