Supply Chain Careers: Opportunities & Challenges

You're all adults, and my hope is that you're going to be sufficiently interested in what we talk about if you want to go up to this. I also recognize that you guys have—hi, Faria. Welcome. I'm going to give you a low five and give you a high five. I don't want to. That's okay. My hope is that you're going to be interested in what we're talking about and that you'll want to be here. I also recognize that you guys have a lot of stuff going on in your lives.

If you have an issue, sometimes you have an interview for an important internship or a job or you have a family matter, shoot us an e-mail, let us know that you're not going to be able to make it. Advance notice is really all I have to look at. If your grandmother is sick, like seven classes in a row, you're going to have a discussion about it. But otherwise, feel free to let us go if you can't make it. It's just a little bit of communication. It's exactly how we can do you guys on the job. And speaking about on the job, today I'm going to share with you...

an overview of the supply chain space from the perspective of the people who work in it and I'm going to ask you at different points during the discussion to imagine yourself in the role of some of these people okay so let's start how many people know what Indeed is okay I'm going to use Indeed in search for internships or jobs and stuff okay so I spent some time in Indeed and I said hey here's some information about supply chain jobs that I think will be

interesting to you guys as students. Most of you have other majors, a handful of you are already declared as supply chain majors, so if you are a supply chain major, you're most interested in this. If you're thinking about switching or adding majors, maybe you'll find this interesting. In the U.S., 67,000 jobs available in the supply chain space. I told you guys that one of the big issues in the field right now, I'll wrap up with this as well at the end of our discussion today, is trying to find the next group of people to come in and take the reins from people like me. I've retired and...

Let's see, I was 52, I retired, and the beginning of 2019, I left a position open, somebody had to fill that position, right? So those are opportunities that you guys can jump into. 20,000 of those jobs are defined as entry level, meaning you have an undergraduate degree or a graduate degree, and you step into a pretty good paying job in the supply chain. Half of, or 10,000 of the 67,000 jobs pay.

over $110,000 a year. So I know from meeting with students over the years that there's kind of a magic to having a six-figure income, although increasingly students are following their goals of seven-figure income, which I think is awesome, and we can get you there. But in terms of 110,000 or greater, 10,000 jobs are being served for right now. So imagine these companies desperately trying to find talent to fill supply chain rules and offering lots of cash to bring you on board.

Many of them are offering signing bonuses. Do you guys know about signing bonuses? $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 cash up front to get you in the door, to get you to start, right? 2,000 of these positions are in Florida. Let's say you decide you like Florida, maybe you grew up here, or maybe you go to school here from another state, you'd like it, you wanna stick around. 2,000 open positions. 700 in the Tampa general area alone. And the companies are big, high profile companies. Lots of small companies, because almost every company has supply chain operations.

But if you're interested in working for a big brand where maybe they give you awesome discounts on whatever their product is. Let's say you want to travel the world. So the idea of working for an airline is attractive to you. You're going to get flight benefits. So you can, on a weekend, you can pop off to Paris to have lunch with friends in Europe, right? Maybe that's attractive. Maybe you're a Disney file. You want to go spend your time at Disney. So the idea of working for the Walt Disney Company in the supply chain will put you into discount territory, get into the parks for free.

have a lot of fun. Or you want a discount on cars, so the idea of working for Fords so that you can get that tractor truck that you've always had your heart set on, right? All sorts of benefits of working with companies because you have an incredible number of options to choose from. I picked three companies. I could have done this with any companies, but these are three companies I like. Apple, I love their products. I think they're a really cool company. My friends who have worked there, they believe that he's got Apple as an employer.

And last time I checked, 346 supply chain jobs. Most of them are either in California or in Texas, right? But great jobs if you're interested in working for a company like Apple. I'll skip down to Amazon. I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon. You know, there are times that I want to hate them, but for the most part, I'm a loyal customer. We spend a lot of money on Amazon. They're making deliveries to our house pretty much every day. And they have over 500 positions.

around the US, all over the US. And when I was working at Ryder up in New Jersey, I placed a ton of people into an Amazon. Some of them just kind of got their stamp in the past book, if you will. They got the credential of having worked at Amazon, and then they moved up into another job at a different company from there. And some of them are building their careers with Amazon. And then I stuck J&J in the middle. You may not have any passion for J&J, but they're an awesome health care company. They have a lot of great products. It's a really well-run business, and they treat their employees beautifully. It was a client of mine. I have a lot of friends who work there.

And so 387 supply chain jobs, they're all in the world. Go anywhere you want, do anything you want. But you guys are not like regular candidates from these worlds. Maybe early in your career you're stepping into that $110,000 job, $150,000 job, $200,000 job. But I see you guys setting your sights higher. I see you guys looking at the tops of the mountains, right? Okay, so I want to take a minute, and I just want you to think about...

achieving a high position against you. So you work hard, maybe catch a lucky break or two along the way, and you arrive. You get to the top of the supply chain pyramid with your company. So what kind of compensation comes along with that? You guys establish your 10-year vision for what you thought might be like. I don't think many of you thought in these terms. Sami Khan at Apple, senior vice president of operations, $27 million in compensation last year.

$27 million. Pause on that. Maybe close your eyes and envision what your life is like. That's not a career, earning $27 million. That's one year, right? Salary, bonus, stock options. Huge, huge income. There's a lot of things you can do with that. In terms of taking care of your family, who are friends, if you're that generous. Getting involved, whatever charity you care about, wherever you want to make a difference in the world. Oh my God, you can really move now.

Something like that, right? Small fish in this pond. BMS, Crystal Meyer Squires, is a pharmaceutical company. Karen Chan paid $6.6 million in 2025 in compensation. Imagine you're in Karen's shoes, right? How many of you guys have earned $6.6 million in a year of your life so far without getting hit by a car and having a great settlement through Morgan and Morgan? No, right? But imagine yourself in that position.

Imagine having a good career, working hard, being rewarded and recognized for that, and achieving the highest position at your company. And there are thousands and thousands of companies, thousands and thousands of people who are achieving this kind of compensation in these positions and companies. These are my friends. The people, the men and women that I graduated with from Syracuse University. Average school. You know, not as good as USF when I was there, certainly.

You know, achieving great things. They're all senior vice presidents, CEOs of companies. They started their own businesses. One of my buddies, Steve in Syracuse, got into the air freight industry and started his own company, doing import-export management. He built up the company. He sold it for $50 million. Big payday, young guy, modern writer. Retired early, living life enjoyable. The company that bought his company started to mismanage it.

wasn't going well the employees started calling him saying is there anything he can do to help so he ended up coming out of retirement to buy his own company back for 20 million dollars the company that he yeah did he have government contracts all private clients all private companies um he bought it back for 20 million dollars and built the company back he hasn't sold it again yeah but it's now worth over 100 million dollars right same company twice

Is he a genius? No. We were in the same class. We were partying together. We were having a really good time. We were trying to balance work and life and all the fun stuff, right? Just made some good moves and good decisions. Took the initiative when everyone else took a step back in their careers and said, I'll do what I'm told. He took a step forward and said, I'm going to start something. I'm going to take a little risk. He did it at a time when he could afford to take the risk because it wasn't really risky much, right? He just jumped in and started a business.

I want you guys to understand this, this is not the only field where you can make a lot of money. I have friends who went to Wall Street Investment Banking, they're making great money. I have friends who started other businesses completely related to the supply chain and made a lot of money. My friend started as an accountant, I told you I think accounting is the most boring profession in the world, and he morphed his business from accounting for clients into wealth management, and just sold his business.

you know, made a fortune doing that. There are a lot of different ways to make money, but I'm here to tell you that this field, blockchain management, is a great fun one that needs a lot of talented people like you to get involved and to build their careers here, okay? So, you do these things, right? You make it funny, I'm telling you the fun part of it, but there's actually some hard work involved in the career, and there are some challenges that you have to deal with. So, I'm gonna start in describing the challenges by taking a look at the...

The part of the supply chain that you guys touch, that we touch every day, that's the retail side of the supply chain. That's the stores that we go into. It's Chick-fil-A. One of the things I've pulled in Chick-fil-A. Shouldn't that be? Those are raw on campus. That was my go-to for lunch. You know, right on campus here? And they have the table, the chairs up on the tables. I don't get it. But, you know, that's retail. That's the front end of the supply chain. It touches you guys. Customers go in, place your Grubhub order, and put your credit card in. However you do, you can place your order.

That's the front end, you walk into a Walmart store, you go online during class because you're bored of listening to me, and you start ordering stuff. What's your favorite, where do you order things online? What's your favorite place? Don't look away, I caught your eye. Yeah, you do. What's your favorite place to order things online? I've heard people order directly through TikTok, I didn't even know you could do that, but. Do you have one? Do you want to ask the question to someone home? No, I'm trying, she doesn't, she doesn't want to go home.

Do you want to pass the question on you? I do order things on Target. Target, okay, good. So thank you for that, that's all I was looking for. So you go on to Target, you place your orders. You're touching the finance in the supply chain, right? Arguably, you're part of, we're all part of the supply chain, but you're touching the first commercial enterprises in the supply chain, retail, right? Whether it's Target in the store or Target online, you're touching this. This is a picture of the retail industry over time, right? The front end of the supply chain, businesses that are touching us as consumers.

back 26 years to 2000. This was the top ten US retailers in existence at the time. Walmart number one, no question, and Walmart has stayed number one all through this. Great operating, incredibly disciplined, right? Kmart, how many people regularly shop in Kmart? I don't know what Kmart is. Where do you shop in Kmart? Wow.

It's really right next to what Kmart is, that's where we usually get out of our complications. The brand is still used in certain parts of the world, in certain locations in the U.S. where it's being used. This entire retail chain with thousands of stores is gone. JCPenney, how many people shop at JCPenney? Where do you shop at JCPenney? Well, I used to shop at the Countryside Mall. I think they still have it. Right, there's a handful of JCPenney left. They used to have a thousand plus stores. They're gone from this list as you look down here.

Best Buy. I'm not going to tell you Best Buy is closed because they're still in operations in many locations. And it's still a good job. They're not a top-ten retailer anymore. They lost their power. They lost their strength. Sears. You guys know what Sears was and where it is now? Sears was the shit. That was the retail empire. When I was growing up, we used to get the Sears catalog mailed to the house when I was a kid. And I would do my Christmas shopping in the Sears catalog.

Sears are gone, bankrupt, right, out of business. Safeway, this is another thing that happens in supply chain industry. Safeway's not gone. Safeway is a regional grocery chain. I don't know if any of you have shopped at a Safeway before, mostly West Coast based. They got acquired by Albertsons. So a bunch of supply chain people were involved in making that acquisition, merging those operations together to make that into a more efficient, larger company. So Albertsons made it from obscurity up into the top 10 in 2016.

and they've kept the top 10 position in 2025. All during this time period, Amazon quietly went from nothing, nothing, a bookseller online, to the number two retailer in the U.S. They have a lot of business, $300 billion in retail business. They have a lot of other business as well, but just the stuff that we work from now, they're starting to catch Walmart. They have a lot of room to go. Walmart is now at about $700 billion in sales.

That is a massive retail market. We are spending a lot of money there, right? Why do I tell you all this? This is the front end of the supply chain, the companies that we interact with, and they're getting to shake it down. It's hard. It is hard to operate those businesses. It's hard to operate that actually in the supply chain. A bunch of you, if you decide to study supply chain management, graduate with a degree in supply chain, maybe you marry up with finance or accounting or marketing or some other discipline. Analytics, great combination.

and you jump into one of these major retail companies, you're gonna have to work hard. They've got some challenges, right? Is it too much for you to handle? Absolutely not. People are doing it all the time. They're working through it. Walmart, you know, they stay at the top of the list. You know what they spend most of their time worried about and thinking about? One word, if you have a guess. Starts with an A, ends with a Amazon. Amazon, they think about it all the time. Well, do you guys know, so for business students, you should know we are.

Walmart is headquartered. Anyone know? Arkansas? Arkansas, Bentonville, Arkansas. How many people vacation in Bentonville, Arkansas? Nobody, nobody. I know the answer to that question. I've been there, I've been with clients before to headquarters for Walmart. Walmart is afraid of Amazon. Walmart recognizes that they have to be better at quick delivery, online ordering. So they have to catch Amazon for that part of the business. They're really good at brick and mortar. They're good at clients into the stores and have

all the products we need, having great prices, and rolling back prices, and doing all that. But they're trying to catch up with Amazon when it comes to online. Where do you think their team for online, for that online portion of their business, works? Where do you think they reside? Bentonville, Arkansas, which is headquarters for Walmart? You're saying, no, you're shaking your head no, you're thinking about this. If you have to name another place, somewhere in the United States, maybe a valley of sorts.

Where might you guess they're located? Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley. Think about it for a second. Walmart said we need talent. We need the right kind of talent, the right kind of people to develop our online presence to compete with Amazon. Let's go where all that tech is. Let's go where all those people hang out. Let's raid Stanford University. Let's build that operation here. Okay? So, not for the faint of heart, this is top stuff, but you guys are very well equipped to jump in and help out.

In the field, in supply chain management, we spend a lot of time thinking about the performance of the companies. So I showed you the relative performance of retailers, but we do it across all segments of supply chain. Suppliers to the industry, contract manufacturers, manufacturers, wholesale consumers, and retailers. This is from an organization called Gartner. Gartner is something, whatever your major is, you have to become aware of Gartner. Does anyone know about Gartner?

Have you come across that? How do you do a partner? Okay, I'm using some of the partners. So, Gartner is a publicly traded company. They're about 6.5 billion in revenue. And they're kind of like a consulting firm in the way that they operate. They have clients. Most major businesses will have a Gartner contract. And they're pulling ratings information and benchmark information from them. Benchmarking is very critical, particularly in supply chain, to understand...

at how good your performance is or how bad your performance is relative to other companies. One of the things that Gartner publishes every year is a rating or ranking of supply chain operators across all industries, right? This is the pyramid from 2025, and some of these companies you'll recognize. We talked about Walmart, you know, they're a top 25 supply chain operator. So if you left here and got a job with Walmart, you'd feel pretty good about yourself, and they pay you well, and you'd be working with a great team doing that.

L'Oreal, Colgate, Palmolive, you know, NVIDIA, you guys know NVIDIA from the technology space. Some of the companies you might not have heard of, Schneider. That little box in the upper right-hand corner, these are supply chain masters. So this is companies that have had repeat top performance year after year. Amazon, Apple, Unilever, Procter & Gamble. These are really award-winning supply chain authors, top, top players. So we rank these guys, and we learn from them, and if you find yourself in a career in this field...

I'm going to talk to you about the issues that you're trying to deal with, but you're also trying to catch your competitors. So Walmart is looking at the other retail, looking at Target, really it's Target and being at Walmart, saying, what's Walmart doing that we're not doing? How efficient are they? How cost-effective are they? Where have they made investments in things like drone technology or robotics or warehouse automation or autonomous trucking? Things that we should also pursue. They're learning a lot of this stuff with Partner and other benchmarking agencies. Thank you.

How you guys doing with this so far? Makes sense, right? Not, like, shocking stuff. Okay. Upper left-hand picture, elements on your deck. Do not try this at home. This is not a real picture. I show you this because I want you to feel the weight of the challenges that are faced, not coming out of the gate, not here for a $75,000 job when you graduate from here, but a little bit down the road, when you start to have more responsibility, you're making $150,000 or $200,000 or $250,000 a year.

And you get the nice house, you get the nice car, you get your 10-year vision, it's starting to come together. But to earn that, you have some responsibility, you have some weight on your shoulders. And what supply chain managers are feeling, what that weight is, is a bunch of forces that are working on their feet, forces that are impacting what they do every day. So we're going to talk through those. I want to give you a cautionary tale, though. So if you go into it, you say, I'm just going to punch the clock, I'm not going to worry about things that are going on outside of my company.

I'm not going to pick my head up and think about what's going on. The kind of mistakes that you can make. Everyone knows Netflix, right? If anyone does, you can come see me after your class. We have a lot of catching up to do. Blockbuster Video, does anyone know Blockbuster Video? What is Blockbuster Video? Blockbuster Video is basically a place where you could go and rent DVDs or VHSs and rent them for maybe a week, a weekend, and then you have to return them back. Okay, you're good. So, brick and mortar store. This was a real store that you could go to when you decide you want to watch a movie over the weekend with your friends or your family.

You'd go pick up a VHS tape or a DVD, and you wouldn't rent it. You might buy a bag of microwave popcorn while you were there, and you might have a membership with Blockbuster. Blockbuster became a huge company, a very big company. At their peak, they had 84,000 employees, 9,000 stores, 6 billion in revenue. It was a success story. The management team there, they drove Porsches to work. Someone had Ferraris, they were their fun weekend cars, they all had two houses minimum.

Because life was good if you were an executive at Lockhearts and you were kicking ass, right? In 1997, Reed Hastings and a team started work developing Netflix as an alternative. The Netflix that we know and love is not the same as the Netflix that exists today. What was the beginning of Netflix? How did that model work? Does anyone know? Anyone else? Go ahead. It wasn't the red box. It wasn't exactly red box. Yep.

It was an online rental. The President.: Online rental. See, you would go — it wasn't — it wasn't — it was DVDs that were mail didn't. Right. So you would say, sign up for a subscription, and you'd say, I want to have two out at any one time. Or three, or four. Now, did — you paid different tiers of pricing, and they would mail you the DVDs. You'd watch them, and when you were done, whenever you decided you wanted to return and they'd give you an envelope and put it in the mailbox, U.S. mail, and send it documents. And when they received that, they would treat up your account with whatever you want.

That was their original model. 1997, they pioneered this. In 2000, they were kind of starving for cash. It was tough. They're trying to raise money in the dot-com bubble. You guys know that history? So, kind of a tough time. Netflix, Reed Hastings and his team, went to Blockbuster to make a big pitch. And they went in and they said, we, Netflix, are the future of...

movies at home. Right? Your business is a dinosaur. And they said it as politely as they could, but they really believed their vision of the future. And the guys from Blockbuster, their reaction was, you don't know what you're talking about. Did you see the cars out in the parking lot, executive row where we drove in to work today? Do you see the building that you're in right now? We're blocked by it. We're not going anywhere. And you guys have wasted our time.

So they sent the package. And the offer that Reed Hastings and his team made was for Blockbuster to buy the business for $50 million. They gave themselves a value of $50 million. They probably would have negotiated and accepted $30 million. It would have been fine, right? Fast forward, Blockbuster. How many people went to Blockbuster this past weekend to rent a VHS tape? Nobody. It's gone. Blockbuster's getting one left, I think, or two locations left.

the country. It's individually owned, right? Netflix, market cap, $340 billion. So I put the elephant on your back. I showed you the pressure. I showed you the forces that are at work. The management team at Blockbuster, this could be you someday, right? So what I'm telling you is, pick your head up. Really think about what you're hearing or reading or being told. And think about whether it's a Blockbuster moment, a Netflix moment.

where what you're hearing about is real and concerning and it's something you should take action on, right? Because if Blockbuster had made the decision, we wouldn't be doing Netflix and chill. We'd be doing Blockbuster and chill. Doesn't have to say anything, right? But they could have bought this company for 30, 40, or 50 million dollars and created $340 billion of market cap for themselves. So think about how pivotal those decisions are. As we go into the pressures that supply chain managers are...

facing every day. First, big one, globalization. Everything is global. We aren't individual countries that take care of ourselves. Those days are long gone. I spent the majority of my career pursuing and helping clients pursue globalization. Why? Why would companies want to go open? Well, simply from a market standpoint, you go where the money is.

You're sitting, you guys are being educated in the U.S., but many of you come from countries outside of the U.S. If you are anywhere else in the world and you're looking at where the people are with money, right, this data on the right-hand side is household final consumption expenditure, how much money people in each household are able to spend, add it up across all the people in the country. The U.S. is at the top of that with about $17 trillion. The next closest is...

is at 8 trillion, and that's the entirety of the European Union, all of the countries in the European Union. So if you're anywhere else in the world and you want to sell something, you have your sports nutrition business that you're building, you have a clothing, apparel business that you want to get started, you have a new design for a skateboard that you think is really cool, wherever you are in the world, you want to sell it to the U.S. That's your goal. Bidding market. And not just the U.S., you want to get it to Europe, you want to get it to China, you want to get it to Japan.

because these are big markets that pursuit of a market pursuit of a place of customers to buy your products is a major reason forcing companies to go global right another is supply if you guys think about the laptops on your desk the clothes that you're wearing the components that went into your iPhone very little of that stuff came from the US most of it came from

elsewhere in the world. And we pursue those sources of supply. Why? Sometimes it's the only places that are available, so we have to go get them there. Sometimes it's the cheapest place to go. Why did we manufacture so many goods in China over the last 40 years? Because it was cheap labor. It was an inexpensive place for us to manufacture goods. Right? So these are very real, very compelling reasons for us to globalize. And most businesses have done that.

The biggest companies that you guys invest in, if you're playing around your Robinhood account, are global companies. They're doing sales as globally as they can, right, to reach scale. What comes along with that globalization is some challenges. We're dealing with communication issues. They can be communication issues as simple as language barriers, cultural barriers, right, time zone issues. If you have friends in other parts of the country or other parts of the world where they're on different time zones, just try to sync up to have a telephone conversation.

during reasonable hours can be a challenge, right? We have different currencies that we do business in, and those currencies fluctuate, so we have to manage that. We can deal with exchange rates and the timing of it. Unfortunately, there's a ton of political instability around the world. You know, just pick up any newspaper or watch the news, go to YouTube and say what's going on in the world, right? You're gonna see there's a lot of crap happening in different parts of the world that affects our ability to be doing business.

parts of the world. Simple thing, longer lead times. The goods, the shirts that you guys are wearing or sweatshirts that came from Asian manufacturing sites, they have to travel to the U.S. They don't come by airplane, right? They're going to come by ship and they're going to take three weeks, four weeks, five weeks to get into the U.S. market to find a way into a store or find a way into a ship to get to you. So, and then the last point here is particularly since COVID,

We've gone from having most of the major countries in the world believing that globalization was a good thing despite the challenges, to being a little bit concerned and to start to think more about their national interests, sovereign interests, and pulling back a little bit from globalization. And that's been a challenge for global businesses. In the U.S., we said, boy, we think we're a little bit exposed because our masks in 95, the COVID masks that everyone was trying to get, we weren't manufacturing in the U.S., that's a challenge. We really should be manufacturing those in the U.S.

We should be manufacturing those in the U.S. We started to look at our global supply chains differently and had a nationalist backlash to globalization that had gone on the court. So this is a major force. You guys would be reading the Wall Street Journal, or you'd be watching the news, you'd be listening to CNBC, business news. I listen to it on the radio as I'm driving into work. You'd start to care about that, and you'd be thinking about, how does that story affect my job and my business?

What do I have to do differently this week, based on what I'm hearing and learning about? Okay, same is true with technology. On Tuesday, I told you guys that there's a tremendous amount of innovation in the supply chain, because we're constantly trying to figure out how to be more efficient to do more with our supply chain. So, there's a tremendous amount of technology that's been deployed. We talked about the retail picture, and you saw Amazon climbing up the ranks in terms of U.S. retail sales, right? What enabled that was...

simply internet-based sales, right? That's part of the magic of Amazon's business model. So the internet has connected companies and people with companies in ways that we never envisioned. When I was in your shoes, about to start my career. Social networks, right? You guys probably for the most part think of it as fun. If you're a marketing student, you're starting to think about how you leverage those tools to market more effectively. In supply chain operations, we use it all the time because we're capturing data with our customers.

When you're on social media expressing interest in a product or complaining about a product or a company, we're learning from that. And sometimes we'll interject. Have you guys had that experience where you or a friend might be bitching about a product or a company and you get a representative of the company to comment and they apologize for your bad experience and they encourage you to call the customer service line and they'll replace whatever the product is that you're trying to do to answer or whatever. Big time for us in the supply chain, because supply chains are big and complex, is optimization capabilities.

Math is a big component of fixing and improving supply chain operations. The ability to compute more quickly and effectively has been a game changer in this field. When I started in consulting in the early 90s, I remember being in the UK on a global assignment, and my job was to run models of different supply chains, to basically envision what the company's supply chain might look like. This was a global farmer company, but I was working with a team in the UK.

And I would construct a model in software, and I had a laptop, back then we'd call it a luggable because it was about 40 pounds. Imagine a 40 pound laptop, and it had the compute power of there's nothing that you guys have anymore, like a calculator, basically. It was that level of sophistication. I would set up scenarios, press go, and I'd have to wait until the next day for the computer to process that, and hope that it went okay, and hope that I didn't get a failure.

Now we run those models 10 times the complexity in seconds. Robotics, you think about the products that you guys are wearing or carrying or enjoying at home. Those products have to be manufactured and delivered. There's a lot of hands-on that goes along with supply chain management. Manufacturing tends to be hands-on. We are applying robotics to every stage of that process.

automated manufacturing. On Tuesday, I showed you Tesla's factory, and I said, try to find a human in there, try to find a person in that factory. There are sounds for it, but there are tons of robots doing work. And so there's a tremendous amount of investment and innovation happening in robotics in our field. And then AI, you can feel whatever you want about AI. Some of you embrace it, some of you fear it, right? But the fact of the matter is, it is currently revolutionizing supply chain. And so, I'm in.

I'm investing in it, I'm finding applications for it. My friends who are still working are calling me saying, what should we do, right? Because you can't invest in everything, you can't buy everything, you have to pick your spots. So this is really changing the way things go. So again, if you are in a $250,000 a year supply chain rule, you get all the benefits that go along with that, and you're thinking about this stuff. You're thinking about globalization, you're thinking about technology, you're trying to make the right decisions for your business.

Can you guys picture yourselves dealing with problems like that? Does it seem overwhelming to anyone? I hope not. I know your kids are doing it, but right now you might be like, man, that sounds a lot better than 250K. We should be talking about a million a year without you. Okay. Organizational consolidation. Power in industry. You guys know this from your own lives, I'm sure, that there are certain people in your lives that have more power.

maybe than you do or others. It could be a parent who decides they're paying the bill and they want to push you around a little bit and make you do the things they want you to do, right? The same thing happens in business. And when I was starting out, we were in the 80s and in the early 90s, most of the power in the supply chain, so again, thinking from suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, most of the power was with big manufacturers. And retail was somewhat fragmented.

I told you guys about Sears. Sears was a big retailer back then. Walmart was just getting bigger back then in that time frame, just growing. But they didn't have the power. The manufacturers controlled the power. And they were pushing retailers around. They're their customers. They're selling the product to them. But because they were so big, they were dictating the terms. That shifted radically as Walmart grew and some of the big box retailers grew along with them. Best buyings in.

in the consumer technology space, Target, you know, these companies, they started to amass more power. So the front end of the supply chain, the guys that you talked to the retailers, started to get tough. And they would do things like say to their suppliers, to big manufacturers, if you don't do this, this, and this correctly, we're going to penalize you. And the way that they penalized them, let me just show you, stand up here.

The way that they penalize these companies is they would take a deduction off the invoice. So, you run a manufacturing business, you are manufacturing cool t-shirts, you're selling those to Walmart, right? And you're making a few million bucks a year, it's a pretty good business for you, you're excited about it. You send a load of them to Walmart, and Walmart gets a million dollars worth of the product. So, Walmart, someone...

in the supply chain form, receives it and they say, you didn't label the boxes properly. You didn't build the pallet correctly. Building a pallet means putting the boxes on the pallet the way that they wanted it, all right? So we're gonna take $50,000 off the million dollar and we're only gonna pay you $950,000. Tough. And they have that power. So part of my job as a consultant was working for the manufacturers to figure out how they could avoid the misdeduction.

how they could meet the requirements of the retailers. It was a brutal time. So you had this big power shift from manufacturers to retailers. What both parties eventually came to realize, and we helped them with this realization, is that it wasn't good to constantly be hands up in fight mode. That it was much better for them to work together to solve their problems. Much better for them to collaborate. Much better for them to share information with one another.

and that fortunately is the world that we live in today so if you guys find yourselves working for a Walmart or for Procter & Gamble you're going to be with big manufacturers right you're going to find that you're really close with your supply chain partners like the companies you do business with Procter & Gamble for example Procter & Gamble where is that company based this is like this should be common knowledge for business students there's world headquarters at Procter & Gamble

Cincinnati. So if I told you that you were going to have a job working for Procker & Gamble in support of their relationship with Walmart, you might think I'm working in Cincinnati. That whole team works in Nashville, Arkansas, close to Walmart. Deeply enmeshed, deeply, closely working together all the time. It's a much better place for us to be in business. So this is something you have to be aware of. You're constantly thinking of power dynamics in your supply chain.

when you're working in these roles. Understand who has the power, whether you're working together collaboratively, and in fact, okay, the empowered consumer. This is you guys. This is a big force. Right now, you guys are this force. When you work in supply chain, you will continue to be a part of that. You'll probably spend more money than when you're making $150,000, $200,000 a year than you're spending now, because you'll have more money. You'll be part of this consumer movement that drives the rest of the supply chain. You guys are a force.

That's supply chain managers that I had to deal with when I was working. Why? Because you guys have demands. You want stuff. I want this product. I want it when I want it, packaged how I want it. How many of you guys have ordered something through Amazon or through another retailer, and you get an oversized box, and the product that you wanted is swimming around in a gigantic box? Does that bother you a little bit? What a waste. Where they pack it in peanuts, the styrofoam peanuts, and the dog eats them, the dog gets sick, or you try to put them in the garbage, and the static, they cling to everything, so you can't even get them all in the garbage, right?

If anything that you guys experience as consumers that pisses you off, you send that message into the supply chain and they have to respond. The whole supply chain is geared around you and what you want and what you need. Amazon is constantly trying to follow your needs and wants. Faster, better, cheaper. Sometimes they're creating solutions that you didn't even know you wanted, drone delivery. It's not like 10 years ago, people were running out and saying, I wish we had a drone delivery.

That's okay, they're pushing on that line. Walmart's doing the same. I see them buying over 75 every time I come to campus. Walmart's in four locations in Florida right now. Question.

I don't think it's all or nothing. So I think there's going to be a mix of everything that we're seeing right now. You're going to continue to have people driving up to houses, delivering product. But you're going to see the increased use of technologies like drugs. It won't replace everything. Generally speaking, in supply chain, there are going to be activities that are replaced by technology.

Robots will do that. AI-based agents will do that. But the vast majority of the positions that we need your guys to fill are not going to be replaced. They're the supply chain management group. You will be harnessing the technology. You'll be making decisions about when to use robots, when to use AI agents, when to deploy artificial intelligence, how to deploy it, right? Those are the roles that we need you guys to move. So, again, with the consumer side of this, this is you guys. You drive a tremendous amount of...

of what goes on in supply chain. You probably have never thought about yourself in that light. You probably never have thought about the power that you hold, because it's not really an individual power, it's not what you decide on any given Thursday, what you want, it's what we collectively demand of our supply chains and how they respond to us, right? So if you're in one of these jobs, like I said I was, I'm constantly thinking, you would constantly be thinking, what do consumers want next? What can I create that would delight them and wow them and make them want to keep shopping at my store or keep shopping my products?

Okay. Governments. Sometimes governments help the supply chains. Sometimes they're your friends and good guys. And sometimes they hurt. The first three of the five points I'm going to make are good guys. This is where government help. And in these cases, government help are getting out of the way. This is U.S.-based, 1978-1980, the U.S. government deregulated transportation.

We went from a situation where we had countrywide tariffs where you had a price sheet for transportation, for rail, for trucking, right? And if you want to know the price that you'd pay, if a trucker wanted to know how much they could get for a load that they were going to carry, they'd look to that sheet and tell them how much they could get. The government controlled that, right? In 1978, if the airline said, no more, the government said, sure, you're on your own, compete.

Let's go into a world of competition. In 1980, the railroad industry and trucking both deregulated. Government said, right out of the way, you guys do what you have to do. It was an amazing change because all of a sudden, you had more companies entering and competing, and they could compete for price. Prior to that, what they competed was you'd have a salesperson go into the customer and take them out for a three martini lunch, give them gifts right under the table for some cash their way to get them to use you.

Now, we compete based on service. We can offer the best service at the lowest price, right? Much better place to be. We went through the same process in the banking industry, deregulation of banking, which freed up access to capital for us to invest and grow our supply chains. We went through the same process in communications, deregulation of the communications industry, which freed us up to do more from communications and technology standpoint, and provided a backbone for modern communication and supply chains.

is critical to how we operate today. So these three are good guys. This is the government getting out of the way and helping us. The next two were a little bit challenging. This fourth item here, the healthcare industry, particularly post-COVID, I mentioned to you before that some countries became a little bit more nationalistic following COVID. They started to close their borders a little bit. They started to worry more about whether they were entrusting too many of the products that they were buying from other countries.

whether they should be making those products in their own country, right? We went through this. We're going through this process now. So, government responses to COVID have curtailed some of the global trade that we were used to and we would. This, some businesses have sucked. Others have seen new opportunities. If you are decided to want to manufacture respirators in the U.S., that's good for you. Starting a business is great. That's a winner, right? The last point is trade conflicts, trade rules.

The last couple of years in particular, I teach international trade, international commerce, global commerce, and we've had a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about how it's impacted on products that we bring into countries. And we have had confidence all over the world in how we are doing that. And it's trying to follow the bouncing ball. The numbers are changing all the time. If you're in supply chain, you're dealing with that.

constantly thinking what's the latest tarot that applies to the products I'm trying to bring in or the products that I'm trying to ship out to other countries. Do I have to shift where I source my product to accommodate it? Do I have to shift the markets that I sell to based on that? Okay, lots of pressure. This stuff is heavy. The things that I talk to you about, they're real, right? So again, imagine yourself in one of these roles working in supply chains.

And instead of the fun stuff that you do on the weekend while you're on your way to work or in work, the reading that you do is about these issues. Picking your head up, understanding what's going on in the world around you, and trying to translate that into your business. How does it apply to what we're doing? How does it apply to the decisions that we're making? Tuesday I showed you the picture of Laverne Council inside of all those question bubbles, the thought bubbles. These kind of issues inform the questions that she has to answer.

If you guys are in her role and making big money, you have to be thinking about these issues and dealing with it, right? As you enter your career, you're at the bottom rung of working on these problems. You're part of a team. So your boss would call you into a conference room, there'd be three or four of you, and your boss would say, here's an issue that's happening in the Middle East. It's driving oil prices up, right? We have plastic.

which goes into our manufactured product. Plastic is a petroleum-based product. Our cost of supplies is going up because of that. We also ship our product around the world. And oil is used for diesel fuel, for aircraft fuel, right? So the commodities that we're using to move our supply chain and make our supply chain work are getting more expensive. You and your team might be tasked with what do we do in response?

How do we figure this out? What options should we consider? Do we reduce our reliance on air transportation, move more to ocean? Do we get out of trucks and move to rail because it's more fuel efficient, right? Those are the kinds of decisions that you guys would be involved with making. Is this making sense to you guys? Somebody give me a T-C, did someone say no? No? Yes? It's pretty straightforward, isn't it? If I can't talk like this, it makes sense, but it makes sense to me.

Okay, think of the supply chain roles within the company first. Logistics, operations, sourcing. Operations is like manufacturing. So think of those. And then marketing dovetails very closely in. We don't run marketing. Marketing is a distinct unit within companies, but we have so many touch points with marketing that I have to show it on the chart when I talk about what supply chains do. We are working with suppliers and customers.

So wherever you want the supply chain, whatever business you're involved with, you're going to have suppliers, you're going to have customers, and part of your role is pulling all those pieces together in there. The overall ecosystem that you're involved with is a long supply chain. Am I tired? Okay. I wish I had something. Could you have a protein bar or something? A cup of coffee. Okay, so wherever you are, whatever company you work for, you're part of a longer supply chain. We talk about it in terms of upstream and downstream. So let's say you manufacture a product, a new business, a sweatshirt, or a USF bookstore, that's your thing. You do it for university bookstores around the country.

So you're a manufacturer of those goods. Upstream of you would be the sources of supply, where you get your cotton, where you get the thread, where you get your lettering, where you get your cargating material, your package, your products in. That's upstream of you, right? Downstream is your distributors, your customers, the retailers, and the consumer. Simple concept, I'm sorry. We talk about upstream because we're flowing stuff. I told you on Tuesday, we flow products, information, and money.

I'm reinforcing that because I'm definitely going to test you on it and you guys are going to know it. It's going to be great. Okay. How much time do we have? We have until 17 minutes. 17 minutes? Alright, this stuff you can read. I'm going to hit this. Okay. What I just skipped over is a bunch of specific issues. I talk about some of that when I do the forces, so you guys can do those. You'll be fine. But I want to hit these two quickly.

Supply chain security, the products that you guys enjoy that we all enjoy, if it's a shirt and I'm really worried about security, I guess if you manufacture it or distribute it and it gets stolen, it's money out of your pocket so you're not happy, but as a consumer, what are you guys most concerned with, the integrity and security of the supply chain? Anyone get sick eating at Chipotle? Remember when they were making people sick like crazy? I like Chipotle.

They get bad lettuce and stuff, and they couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Oh, my God, what a nightmare. Our food supply, very vulnerable. Water supply, you guys heard about recent cyber attacks on our water supply in the U.S., right? This is real stuff, and it's really scary. So part of our role in supply chain is to ensure the integrity and the security of these supplies, right? So we have to wrap our arms around it and figure out how to protect whatever it is that we're responsible for working.

If it's t-shirts coming from China, I'm not going to sweat that, I'm not going to worry too much about that. But again, things like food supply, medical supplies, right, the risk of tampering with medicines, ah, that means all those good. So security and integrity is a big deal for us. And we're exposed because our supply chains, by definition, are full. We're all over the place. A container of goods coming in from China, across the Pacific, to the west coast of the U.S., or to the east coast of the U.S.

It's long, right into a lot, so we have to secure that. The second big issue that you guys would, if you ended up in this field, you would find that you're pulled into the second issue, the talent management, the recruiting issue, right away. So one of my students went to work for IPG, graduated in May, got a good job at IPG, 70 plus thousand dollars a year. Two of them actually are working there right now. And.

Almost immediately, his manager came in and said, we should have hired one more of you. We need another one. Can you go reach out to USF and find us another full-time person, another supply planner, just like you. We pulled him in and said, like, go find someone that we can hire him, we can pay $70,000 a year to do this job. So you guys could find yourselves pulled into this recruiting challenge that we have in the field.

trying to find more people to get in. It's kind of fun, here's your reason to go back to USF. Your company will pay you to go back, will give you the time to go talk to students, to do some recruiting, to stand at a booth while students come up and ask you about your early career in supply chain at XYZ company, so it's kind of fun. The company side of this, the companies are investing heavily to find you, to get you on board, and once they get you, they've not let you go.

They want to train you, they're going to spend money on certifications, they're going to spend money on their further education. They're going to give you the time to do those things, right? At the same time, other companies are going to try to coach you. On Tuesday, we talked about headhunters, executive search firms coming after you. So this is a big challenge for the field, and we're doing our best to try to bring our people in to solve this problem.

Okay. So, what have you guys taken away from this so far? If you had to summarize this, someone after this class, your next class says, oh, how was your supply chain class? What did you learn about it? Somebody give me just a quick synopsis. And you can be sarcastic too. I welcome sarcasm. I actually want to do it. I will say when my first class was, well, the five major components of the global support.

such as the power that the individual or the consumer has today versus material class. Okay. I like to have something different that they would answer that. I spent a lot of time talking about careers. I'm trying to put you in there. Yeah, talk to me. I would say it's one of the most, like, core elements in an operating system. Yeah, say more about that. Why do you see it as a core element? Well, without, you know, it's just a single decision.

You can stop there. It's fundamental. Right? You guys are wearing stuff. You are glasses. You're a really cool jacket. I don't think it's quite cold enough if you're wearing that jacket in here, but that is a cool jacket. So, I get why you have it on. Like, that has to get to you, you know? And so, supply chain made that happen. Supply chain, you source the materials, you need it. Yeah? There's a lot of opportunity. Yes. Yes. I mean, the one thing I wanted to drive home was if I had a prize, I thought I'd bring the prize.

next time. Tremendous opportunities for you guys that this is something you want to pursue. If not you, if you're stuck, no, I said I was going to be an accountant, I was going to be an accountant for finance or whatever it is you're going to pursue, that's fine. But if someone else, if a friend comes to you and says, I don't like my major and I'm not sure what to do, tell them to check this out. Tell them to reach out and be happy to talk to them. You guys are great, thanks for your attention. Have a great week, guys.