Supply Chain Pioneer: An interview with Ken Ackerman (WERC Founder).

Speaker A: So, Ken, I understand you have a very long and distinguished career in warehousing. And it dates all the way back before supply chain management was even a term. Can you take us back to your beginning and kind of how you got into warehousing and supply chain management?

Speaker B: Just a family business. My dad had purchased a small town trucking and storage business in. He got out of the trucking side of it and was building the warehousing side. I was a little squeamish about getting into a family business situation. I didn't like the idea, but I was persuaded to get 100 miles away from where my dad was and to try it. So, uh, I came to Columbus after army duty and started managing a branch of my dad's company gradually. Then my dad wanted to phase out and I phased in. That simple.

Speaker A: And you were in the army. And that's interesting because I think a lot of logistics and supply chain obviously originates from the army. The history there.

Speaker B: There were quite a few decades when military service was not an option. If you were physically fit, you were in. I didn't really want to be in. I think most people didn't. But I ended up having a wonderful time. I just had two years, most of that time in Washington.

Speaker A: You've got an interesting academic background for supply chain. My research is correct. You went to Princeton undergrad and then Harvard mba, which is fairly high level for a typical supply chain person. How did you get into supply chain from that background?

Speaker B: Because, uh, well, as you say, we didn't have supply chain. I got into warehousing because my dad persuaded me to go to work in the business that he had acquired. Uh, that's how it happened. And I could say that the biggest reason that I wanted to go to get an MBA was to not be trapped into a family business, to have the option of either going into it or not going into it.

Speaker A: So you went basically to be kind of groomed as the leader of the family business. Because those are business schools, right? Princeton and.

Speaker B: Well, no, Princeton's not a business school. Princeton is very much a liberal arts school. I can't give you any good reason why I went to Princeton. Say that it's got a very beautiful campus and it would be very prestigious to get there. But like most high school kids, uh, the decision was haphazard.

Speaker A: It's a good guess anyhow. Nobody did wrong for going to Princeton for sure. Isn't that where, uh, Jeff Bezos, he went to Princeton as well?

Speaker B: Yes, he did. Yes. He's now been voted the most outstanding living Alumnus.

Speaker A: Between you and Jeff, you've got the market cornered on logisticians from, uh, from Princeton. How about that? So he's. He's had a big influence. So. So what I saw you, you ran, or you're the CEO or president of Distribution Centers Incorporated. Was that your family business or. That was a different business.

Speaker B: No, that was the family business. Yes.

Speaker A: Okay, so that's where you started. You went to school, you came back, and then you eventually ran that organization.

Speaker B: Went school, went to the army, which.

Speaker A: Oh, the army, the army.

Speaker B: Everybody did. Coming out of school in those years and then coming out of the army in Washington, I moved to Columbus, which was actually a branch of the family business. We then made Columbus the headquarters of it, and we grew it.

Speaker A: And Columbus, that's where you're from. So that comes back, uh, in a couple more questions. So then after that, I guess you sold the business.

Speaker B: It's a complicated thing, but somewhere in my early 40s, I formed the opinion that I wanted to get out of corporate life before age 50. We had an outside board. You have to be very careful how you do this. I told my board members that, confidentially, I would like to sell the company and go do something else. We did not actually sell the company. We liquidated the company and reincorporated it. Sold all of the real estate to, uh, insurance companies and other investors, and then liquidated, which gave me the money to go do something else. Then several years after was liquidated, the new Distribution Centers, Inc. Was purchased by Excel, which is now Deutsche Post.

Speaker A: That's a big evolution. XL was very popular for a long time. What'd you do after that part?

Speaker B: I made the decision. After thinking about various options, I made the decision that what I wanted to do was to get into management consulting. And within a month or two after, uh, the liquidation was pretty well underway, I got hired by what was then called Coopers and Lybrand, which is now PwC, Price Waterhouse. Uh, but at that time, it was Coopers and Lybrand, and they had almost no talent anywhere in the logistics area. They wanted me because they knew that I had some talent in this area. So I went straight to work for them.

Speaker A: And that's interesting. I know the late 90s, early 2000s, Coopers and Lyburn, they had a very good logistics consulting company. I don't know if it was called Systacon or. They had some great.

Speaker B: Systacon. Yes. Sisticon was in Atlanta. Well, you're from Atlanta.

Speaker A: Yes, sir.

Speaker B: It was a business started by a bunch of Atlanta guys. And then they sold their practice to Coopers and Lybrand. And that happened here either while I was there or shortly after I left. Those guys who started it, uh, some of them are still good friends of mine. But Cooper's was in the logistics business before they acquired Systacon. But Systacon greatly raised their capabilities because they got some real talent with Cysticon

Speaker A: company Gar g A R R. I don't know if you know them, but they had some affiliations there as well. Big into the retail consulting.

Speaker B: Ah, that's ringing a bell faintly. But I. Jim apple. There were two Jim apples. Jim Apple Jr. Was one of the founders of Cysticon, who I've stayed very close to. We've done a lot of work together.

Speaker A: So I know you. Not just through random occurrence. I was active in work werc for many years. Um, and then obviously you were very much an icon in that organization.

Speaker B: So I called the meeting to talk about starting it.

Speaker A: Well, let me, Let me. So I'll talk about that. Let me just give a little bit of. I did some research here on work. So it's. It tells me the first organizational meeting was held in June 1977. And again, I said I'd come back to this in Columbus, Ohio. So that's why I was interested to hear you're from Columbus, and then it said there was some surveys were mailed out, those types of things. And then in August 1977, there was a meeting held in Chicago. Goes on from there, which kind of explains why they're based in Chicago now. But, ah, then it goes to say work was incorporated on September 19, 1977 in Illinois by Paul Solomon Burhup, Bob Delaney, Lynn Combs, Lyman Combs, and, uh, yours truly, Ken Ackerman. So why. That's an interesting story. I didn't realize that. As I said, I'm a past president of work locally. It looks like you were very obviously you're the reason it's around.

Speaker B: Let's talk about this guy, Burr Hupp. Uh, Burr Hupp was, uh, a consultant company called Drake Sheehan. His name was in there, too. Very prominent in what was then called ncpdm. He was a charter member, a founder of ncpdm, which is what morphed into cscmp. And I had been noodling over breakfast meetings with two Ohio State professors about why don't we have a professional society for warehousing? We have one for what was then called physical distribution. Why not have one for warehousing? And I was at a conference With Burr in New England, in New Hampshire. And I think over cocktails or something, I told him about the breakfast we'd had. Burr was a very forceful guy, and he kind of poked his index finger in my chest and said, ken, it's never going to happen over breakfast with professors. Here's how it's got to happen. He just sort of laid it out. He said, you better find at least a dozen guys or more who are willing to come and sit down in an airport hotel and talk about starting a group. That's what happened in the summer of 77. I found enough guys to create sort of a quorum, and we went ahead and I was just coming off having gone through the chairs of what's now cscmp, so I knew something about the process of organizations.

Speaker A: Okay, so you were involved with. Well, I guess you mentioned before ncpdm, which is now CSCMP before work.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I. I was the, uh, chief elected officer of NCPDM in 73. I think it was 73. It was, you know, it's a few years before that. So I knew about doing this. I'd done it before.

Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't realize that piece of it.

Speaker B: So that's one reason why I never went through the chairs of work. I really didn't particularly want to.

Speaker A: So you did all.

Speaker B: Another guy who's not even may know there, uh, Bruce Abels, who we joked Bruce called him president for life because he was actually the chief elected officer of work for several years.

Speaker A: And wasn't he the CEO at Saddle Creek for a long time or.

Speaker B: That's correct.

Speaker A: I thought the name rung a bell. I didn't realize you had a long history with CSCMP as well. NCPDM as well. So that explains a lot there. So they're really not competitive organizations. I remember looking at some of the bylaws when you guys started that basically said, we realized we're not going to compete.

Speaker B: We didn't want to be competitive. The guy who ran NCPDM at the time, uh, long retired, George Jackowitz, was a personal friend. He'd been one of my coaches in the whole process. He's one of the guys I called and said, hey, George, we're thinking about doing this. What do you think? And he said, I think it's a marvelous idea. I would really support it. And he said, most of the work members will probably be guys who report to our members. I said, well, I don't have any problem with that. The last thing we wanted to do was to be positioned As a competitor to ncpdm.

Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that in the initial discussions. You know, it was almost like you guys were writing the Declaration of Independence or something you were trying to frame.

Speaker B: Absolutely. We stole all their bylaws. We stole all, everything we could learn from them. But we did not want to be positioned as competing with them.

Speaker A: The first meeting was in Columbus and that happens to be where you are. So now it all kind of comes clearer to me.

Speaker B: No, no, there's another reason.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: See, one of the people that airport hotel was Bud lalonde of um, Ohio State University. And Bud, as you know, is one of the three for best known professors in this field at the time with an international reputation. So we wanted to try to have a conference and we didn't know whether we'd have 100 people at the conference or 1,000 people. You know, we had no background. So Bud had enough clout at Ohio State University to get their conference center to book the conference with absolutely no knowledge of how big it would be. Most conference centers would, uh, kick you out the door if you came to them with a requirement like that. So that's why it was at Ohio State. I didn't have anything to do with it. It was all about lalotte.

Speaker A: But that's where your network was probably. So that makes a lot of sense. I was looking at the work website. Their first annual conference was held at Ohio University.

Speaker B: Ohio State University.

Speaker A: Ohio State University. Okay, so they have.

Speaker B: Ohio University is a much older school in Athens, Ohio. Uh, yeah, I did State in Columbus.

Speaker A: So then I also noticed which is near and dear to my heart. 1981, the first work had its first seminar in Atlanta and Dallas. And it kind of goes back to what you said. It was called Warehousing Productivity Management. Whenever I see Atlanta, I get excited. 83. It said that Atlanta and Boston, Northern California, Southern California Work Councils were formed. That's where I got involved with as a work council person, ironically enough. I also know, I don't know if you know Leslie Hansen Harps.

Speaker B: Yes, I do.

Speaker A: She was the first female president of work I worked with. Huh. I wrote a publication for work not realizing, you know, her history. And she was my editor. I'm friends with her, but I didn't even know she was president until I started researching this interview for you. Isn't that ironic?

Speaker B: And I haven't heard her name for ages. Is she still working? Stand with her. I don't know.

Speaker A: Yeah, she's uh, yeah, she lives in uh, in the Washington D.C. area. I think she's Retired, think.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, she always was in Washington,

Speaker A: but I didn't realize that she. You know, there's a lot of names and then a lot of history with work, but I didn't realize her name was right there on their website. So that's interesting. You. You weren't president or anything of work ever.

Speaker B: I could have been, yeah. Said I knew that Bruce wanted to be, and. And I didn't have any burning desire to be because I had just done that. So I didn't have Bruce do it.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I saw you. And speaking of Bruce, I saw you and he are both lifetime members.

Speaker B: I don't know how that happens. That was. I didn't have anything to do with that.

Speaker A: Hopefully that means you don't have to pay dues anymore. I'm not sure what that is.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: No, that's good. That's. It's a good organization. It's part of community, you know, that's really what a lot of this is about. That's what I try to promote through. Through the podcasts and everything else. In the 70s, you were involved with, uh, NCPDM. And then. Which is now. Which was CLM when I knew it. And then now it's CSCMP. And you also have Distinguished Service Award from them as well. So you're well honored.

Speaker B: That is correct. Well, I think I got the DSA in 76. It was at about the same time we were starting work, maybe 77. It was at about the same time that I got the DSA award. It wasn't looking for any of those. I didn't lobby to get it right.

Speaker A: Well, Ken, when you start talking about the 70s that we're talking, uh, 50 years ago, that's a long. That's a long history.

Speaker B: That's again, I was just a child then, of course.

Speaker A: That's again back before supply chain management was even a term. And you were also involved with organization. I'm not familiar with American Warehouse Association.

Speaker B: Well, that's, uh, now iwla. International Warehouse Logistics association, based in Chicago. It used to be called AWA. I served as a board member of AWA. I also resigned from AWA in 76. Before that I was chair of the state trade association, which you darn near had to duck to not be. It was so tiny that if you stayed in it, you were sooner than later going to be president of it. So IWLA and AWA are the same thing. It just changed its name.

Speaker A: I got it. Yeah, a lot of name changes there. You're instrumental in getting them started. As well or.

Speaker B: No, no, no. AWA was founded in the 1890s. It's one of the oldest associations in the country.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And when they went international, that's when they changed their name and put the I in.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I've done some things with iwla. They're a bit smaller for an organization, but you've also got a distinguished Service and Leadership award from them. IWLA.

Speaker B: Yes, I did.

Speaker A: You're Mr. Distinguished from Everywhere.

Speaker B: Well, I would my bio, since I would have probably one of the few guys that got all three of those. I was not looking for any of them.

Speaker A: Yeah. I'm curious how many people there are with all three. That's interesting. I guess it comes from longevity. Longevity and stick to itiveness. So you also do some writing? You've done some writing?

Speaker B: Oh, I've done writing all my life. Perhaps one of my most time consuming activities today is continuing to produce a newsletter that's called Warehousing Forum. Uh, it's a subscription newsletter. You have to pay to get it. So if it isn't good, people won't pay. We're in the middle of I think 35, 36 years of life that started back in the 80s, so I do a lot of writing.

Speaker A: Ken, what is, how would people find the, the articles or they wanted to subscribe?

Speaker B: If you go to the website Warehousing Forum, there are probably six or eight back issues available there.

Speaker A: I'll provide the specifics in the post production, but it's Warehousing Hyphen Foreman Forum,

Speaker B: I believe the newsletter does not have a hyphen.

Speaker A: And what types of things do you write about?

Speaker B: We write about a little of everything. Our November issue, uh, the lead story was called it's the Capacity Stupid and it talks about the critical nature of measuring capacity. The March issue is called In Praise of Disruptive Innovation. And it's sort of a tribute to Professor Clayton Christensen, who kind of invented the concept of disruptive innovation. February issue is about micro farming and how does that have to do with warehousing? It's basically these micro farms can be put on scrap land, extra land that's in an industrial site and can't be used.

Speaker A: I see that happening in places like Detroit where they're trying to take a lot of the houses and turn them into farmland.

Speaker B: One that uh, we studied was done by Ohio State at Mansfield, Ohio. Mansfield is a post industrial town with a lot of empty land. It's a little Detroit sort of. January issue is called what does the Customer Want? And the basis of it was some literature we got from what they now call it gcca. Uh, the old name is iarw, the trade association for cold Storage. Uh, our December issue was, uh, Accountability in the Warehouse Workplace. These are just the lead stories. The lead story is about half of the issue. Then we have three other sections. One is called Ken's Comments, which is editorials. The other part is called Warehousing Tips. And these are just short takes on, uh, things that you can use to run your warehouse better. And then the back page, it's a four page newsletter called Warehousing Digest. And that's. We do, ah, a Reader's Digest type thing on, um, articles that come from other publications. We often do an article from Harvard Business Review. I see this one has an article from Inbound Logistics and an article from Logistics Management. So I go through probably 10 magazines every month. Uh, you know, all the logistics magazines that you can get. I get Parcel Trade Group, Supply Chain Management Review, DC Velocity, Modern Materials Handling, all those things. I go through them and if I see an article that looks like it belongs in this newsletter, I do one or two paragraphs that tell what it's about. When we're trying to sell this publication, we say, first, we don't accept any advertising, so we're not biased. And second, you don't have to read these magazines. We'll read them for you and tell you what's worth reading in them.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, that's an interesting model. It's almost. Well, it's been a few years since I've been in college, but Cliff Notes were the thing back then.

Speaker B: You're right.

Speaker A: That's interesting model. Well, at least you enjoy doing it.

Speaker B: Well, I do. Well, see, when I knew Leslie Harp, she was involved in another newsletter that I edited for a number of years. And I, uh, can't remember the name of it. Now, her boss was a guy named Warren Blanding, who was one of the 13 people who started NCPDM. So I knew a lot about newsletters when I started this one. I had been editing one and I decided I like to do my own thing. So, uh, I went to Mr. Blanding, who was a friend for as long as he lived, and said, uh, would you sell me your newsletter? And he said, no, I would not. And I said, well, then you can't be disappointed if I get into the business. He said, no, I guess I can't be. That was that. But I started by offering to buy his newsletter. He was a friend, a wonderful guy. I thought that was the ethical way to do it. And I told him, I said, if you don't want to sell me one, I. I want to start one.

Speaker A: Uh, well, it's interesting. This is on my radar. You mentioned the name along with a couple other topics. Clayton Christensen. He's somebody that I, I enjoy listening to. He's one of the best TED Talks that I've seen.

Speaker B: You know, I'm not sure I have ever seen that TED Talk. If you can tell me how to find it. Uh, I don't remember ever seeing him. I've only been a great fan of his writing and he certainly. I compared him to Drucker because, uh, I think that Clay Christensen changed the game and he died very suddenly, much too young. Drucker lived to be, I think 100 or something.

Speaker A: I don't mention, didn't tell you this, but I teach, uh, Apex Content, you know, to people. They want to make better supply chain careers. And one of the videos I show in class is a video by Clayton Christensen. He made a presentation and he talks about disruption and how companies can outsource too much. And the next thing you know, they outsource their whole company. So I.

Speaker B: One of the things that, uh, I'm sort of proud of is that Lalonde and I did an article on improving warehouse productivity that was published in Harvard Business Review. Bylined and published. And it's a very, They're a very tough outfit to get published in. Uh, I'm proud of that. One of the things that happened in that process is they took our manuscript and they turned it upside down. They edited it very aggressively and they improved. Same experience with New York Times. I had a bylined article in the Sunday New York Times. That one was really done by a PR firm. I think the fact that I got published in the Times was not because I was worth publishing. Uh, it's at that PR firm had clout. They persuaded the Times to take an interest.

Speaker A: A PR firm. It's a company as well, and they like to work with good content.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: When they find people like you, it's easier for them.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sure. I couldn't have gotten published if the article was no good. I wouldn't have known how to place an article in the New York Times. Sure, there's an art to it. And I didn't know how to do it.

Speaker A: You did or you still do seminars, professional training seminars or.

Speaker B: Uh, I do not do open enrollment seminars. I. Not only do I not do it, I don't know anybody who is doing it. The risk is, uh, I think unbearable. Jim Tompkins, who's a friend by admire, was the last guy I knew who was still doing open seminars in this field. And I think he bowed out, too. You know, the problem is that if you don't sell, you end up with a fee from a hotel that you booked with. The cost of not selling is unbearable. So, uh, I am still doing training workshops, but I do them only by committed. You know, uh, last one I did a couple years ago was for a major European logistics service provider that has a lot of operations here. They committed to me that they would do it. I mean, I didn't have to worry about filling the room. So I still love to do it, but I want to do it where I don't have to bear the marketing risk. For some nine years in, uh, Lombard, Illinois, for cscmp, two of us did kind of an introductory course, uh, Fundamentals of Supply Chain Management. And again, it was. CSCMP had the problem of filling the room. Uh, all we had to do was to deliver the workshop. So I enjoy delivering the workshops. I don't want to run the risk of filling the room.

Speaker A: When they put a name like yours on the marquee, it seems to be easier to sell.

Speaker B: I love doing the content. One of the hallmarks of what we do is we always have management cases, problem solving, and we divide the group up into groups of three or four people, and they have to solve the case. I write the cases. They are simplified versions of the kind of case material that you might see at Harvard, but much simpler because our audience is not Harvard students. They're warehouse supervisors. And you can't throw, uh, a Harvard case at most warehouse supervisors. It's just not going to work.

Speaker A: Yeah. Different audience. You had mentioned Jim Tompkins. He's a staple in the warehousing industry. I actually work for him. That's where I got my start in warehousing. Really.

Speaker B: I admire Jim. Sounds to me, if I'm reading right, that he's stepping aside. He's appointed a new CEO, is that correct?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think Denny McKnight, he's the new CEO, but, uh, they're into robotics now, doing a lot of different things.

Speaker B: No, uh, I admire Jim. He's a very talented guy. He's a former engineering professor.

Speaker A: Yeah. Industrial engineer. Yeah, I think it was NC State. Or he had some affiliation with Ohio. I'm not sure.

Speaker B: Well, I associate him with Chicago for some reason.

Speaker A: Chicago. But, yeah, that's.

Speaker B: I don't know that he ever was here, but I know that. Well, I know this, he's from Chicago. He talks like Chicago. Okay.

Speaker A: The reason I it keyed on me when you said that is he had an influence obviously on me, hiring me into the profession that I love and enjoy today. And then also he was a big writer, he enjoyed writing. And that's kind of where I picked up some of that, my affinity for writing as well.

Speaker B: Well, I have some of his work. He is a very capable guy and he's built a giant consulting firm.

Speaker A: Uh, a lot of people in the warehousing space have crossed through his organization. You're pretty active as well in the community. I mean, I was looking at your website and your LinkedIn profile and you don't stop just with supply chains. You're pretty involved everywhere.

Speaker B: Well, sometimes I just didn't duck when trying to draft somebody. Um, of the community activities that you'll see see, uh, on my bio, I guess the one that I have the greatest pride is that we started a new school. And that's a horrible undertaking. You can understand why not many new schools are started when you find out how hard it is to start one. It's a Pre K through 12 independent preparatory school was at the Wellington School. Yes. And when we decided to try to start it, there was a monopoly. There was an all boys school called Columbus Academy that was started 1910 and there was Columbus School for Girls started in the 1890s. They were entrenched and they were a monopoly. If you wanted to go to an independent school, you went to one of those too. But of the non religious independent prep schools, there were just two. And one of them at that time was very badly run. Um, that's what stimulated this.

Speaker A: Well, I guess anything if you're making the community better, you're making it better for everybody yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah, we broke a monopoly and we created it. We were the first co ed because we started out being co ed. Then Columbus Academy went co ed. We didn't like that. But it's a free country and Columbus School for Girls continues to be single sex.

Speaker A: You had some affinity for performing arts. You were involved with Columbus association for Performing Arts and Opera Columbus or something.

Speaker B: I was the first business executive on the board of capa. The Columbus association, which was really formed for one purpose, to try to save a 1928 movie theater that was going to be torn down. So the real purpose was just to save a building. And that was 51 years ago. When we did that, Capa's gone way, way beyond what we ever thought it could do when we started it. Uh, but I Did not stay active in that. I was on that board for maybe its first five years. I don't believe in staying on boards. You come in and you do your thing and get out.

Speaker A: Well, did you have an artistic background or your kids were in the arts or.

Speaker B: I've been a good spectator.

Speaker A: Well, again, it kind of goes back to community. The better you can make your community, the better it's going to be for everybody, including yourself. So, Ken, what are you working on these days? Are you fully retired?

Speaker B: No, no, no.

Speaker A: You're doing the writing, um, we talked about.

Speaker B: Well, I'm doing the writing and then I also lead two peer groups and I still have a consulting business and I have one retainer client which is an overseas company. My job for them is to write a report on the state of the industry, uh, every quarter. And I've been doing that for them for maybe 20 years. When I started doing it, I thought, this has got about a three year life. They're going to discover that they sure as heck don't need me. But I'm still doing it. I don't do very much consulting now. And when I do, I always partner with a guy who's 20 years younger than me. So there's, there's four eyes looking at it, not two, but I am a group leader with an international company called Vistage, that's spelled V, I, S T a G E, based in San Diego and it's a peer group for executives. It does. The group that's much better known is Young Presidents Organization. That was sort of the premier and still is the premier peer group. And I am still a member of YPO. And in about 29 minutes, I gotta be on a zoom call with the YPO chapter here.

Speaker A: And Ken, YPO stands for Young Presidents Organization.

Speaker B: They kick you out at age 50. So I am part of the alumni group which they now call YPO Gold. I have greatly enjoyed the associations. The Columbus YPO chapter includes the guy who started Cardinal Health, which is the largest corporation in Ohio, as well as the guy who started L Brands. And if you saw the business news today, that guy just retired. He was the longest serving chief executive of any New York Stock Exchange company, Leslie Wexner. And one of the reasons he was the longest serving chief executive is there wasn't anybody had the power to fire. It basically had, uh, control of the company. But he's stepping aside. And that stepping aside announcement was made today.

Speaker A: Well, it sounds like you have a good, good company and a good network over the years.

Speaker B: Well, YPO in Columbus is a fabulous network, always has been. So getting into vistage, I did it from the perspective of knowing what peer groups can do. And when I recruit members to join Vistage, they are frequently the SOBs of YPO companies. SOB standing for Son of boss. And peer groups can be very healthy. Leading a company's a lonely job. It gives them a chance to have confidential interchange with people who are also running companies. They help each other.

Speaker A: Interesting. I'm taking notes here. Leading a company is a lonely job. I've never heard that.

Speaker B: YPO was started by a lonesome guy in Buffalo, New York. Vistage has its roots in Wisconsin, but they both had the same idea that young chief executives particularly will perform better if they've got a group of peers that they can share ideas with.

Speaker A: So you seem to have a good characteristic for what I encourage young people to do is networking, establishing a good network. So one of the things I like to conclude on my whenever I talk to somebody is get their perspective on maybe future of careers in supply chain. Whether it's guidance for new students going to university that maybe would should consider getting a supply chain management degree or even more experienced professionals that are considering a career change into supply chain management. Do you have any perspective or any guidance on anything like that?

Speaker B: Well, I think you can do both. There was no such thing as supply chain when I got into business. There weren't any courses, there wasn't. Physical distribution hadn't been invented yet. So I didn't study it. Uh, I took a transportation course at Harvard. That was as close as it got. Jim Heskett, who brought logistics to Harvard is now retired in Florida. Jim was teaching at Ohio State before Harvard and I knew him at Ohio State. The thing that's so fascinating about this field is that guys that are uh, my age couldn't have studied in this because there wasn't anything taught in it. So we jumped into it sort of mid career. I think the key thing about supply chain is it's a bridge building activity. It is the bridge between other disciplines. You can say it's the bridge between manufacturing and marketing. There was a guy who was very active with what was then called ncpdm. Um, this goes way back. He was at Kodak and he said it's my job to tell the guys in manufacturing how many cameras to assemble. It's my job to figure out what the marketing guys can sell. And knowing that marketing guys are all bullshit artists, I take what they tell me, go through various things that I have collected on uh, metrics and then I Go to manufacturing and say here's how many cameras you should really build or how much film you should make or something. But he was one of the people who taught me at that time. We called it physical distribution was a bridge, bridge between the older discipline. So I think success in this field means this is a job for good bridge builders. It's not a job for prima donnas.

Speaker A: There's my topic right there, my header, just job for bridge builders. I like that Ken. I can't go back 50 years. I can probably go back 25. But tell people when I was in university, logistics was a chapter in a marketing book.

Speaker B: Well the department in Ohio State is called Marketing and Logistics still today. And for most of the time the marketing guys dominated. Walter Zinn, who you may have heard of. Well first Bud was the first logistics guy. Bud Lalonde was the first logistics guy to chair that department. Zinn was the second and now I think it's back in the hands of the marketing guys again.

Speaker A: Well, it's a great place to be obviously in current environment with the COVID It's always on the news now it's a big government topic. So it's, it's a fun place to be. The supply chain. I'm glad I'm part of it.

Speaker B: I think this idea that the supply chain is breaking down, I don't believe any of that. The journalists, they get over excited through this peer group activity. I have a guy who's with one of the larger multi city, multi state public warehouses. His primary job is running cross docks for Walmart. And first they're busy as they can be and secondly it's running pretty smoothly. I don't know whether you saw the interview with uh, the chief executive of Walmart. He said this was on the Today show early morning. He said last week we handled enough toilet paper to provide roll of toilet paper for everybody in the United States. He said we got it done very smoothly. So I think the press likes to carry on about the supply chain is broken. I just don't believe it.

Speaker A: Well, it was interesting about six months ago, Ken. I used to tweet whenever I heard somebody on the news talk about supply chain, you know, whether it was a press release or uh, anything. And uh, I tweet about once every two weeks now. I could tweet two or three times a day when somebody says supply chain. So it's the hot topic.

Speaker B: I was interviewed by a journalist several years ago and he said wonderful journalist question, what's the difference between supply chain logistics and physical distribution? And I was kind of stumbling around trying to figure out the best way to answer him when he said, well, isn't it all about moving stuff? And I said, that's brilliant. Yeah, that's what it's about. I thought that was just absolutely brilliant.

Speaker A: When I used to travel on planes, I would tell people I'm in supply chain, they'd say, what's that? And I'd say, have you ever bought anything? And I would say, then you're part of the supply chain. If they said yes, uh, the function

Speaker B: has been done since the beginning of time. It took professors and consultants to figure out how to put language around it and to identify it as a separate task within corporate America. That's what changed. The function was always done. Try this next time you're sharing ideas, teaching the two words moving stuff are kind of simple words, but isn't that really what it is?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's why I worked for somebody once. They said that we're basically just moving boxes around. So that's the same thing as stuff. Yeah, keeping them, knowing where they are, keeping them protected.

Speaker B: Well, if you change it from boxes to stuff, then you can include moving oil through a pipeline.

Speaker A: Uh, you can use anything.

Speaker B: It isn't always boxes, but it's always some kind of stuff that has to be moved from where it is now to where it needs to be.

Speaker A: Well, Ken, I know you're, you're backing up against the clock. You got your YPO gold meeting coming up. Is there anything in conclusion you'd like to wrap up?

Speaker B: I have had fun working in this field. I intend to continue to have fun working in it. I think you're doing a service to explore with people.

Speaker A: It's always good to talk and learn. That's what I enjoy.

Speaker B: This was a good interview. Thank you for letting me be part of it and I hope that it was useful for you.

Speaker A: Thanks, Ken. The Supply Chain Doctor interviews thought leaders and visionaries who have had an impact on the field of supply chain management, shares professional development concepts for practitioners and investigates current and future trends in the industry. Interested in sponsoring show? To help you get your message out, Send a note to chriscdr.com we can also help with world class supply chain education and workshops for you and your team. Thanks for listening.