Supply Chain Impact Alliance's Douglas Kent Details the Importance of Reaching All the Learners: Pros to Know Award

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Hello, my name is Marina Mayer, Editor-in-Chief of Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive, and I am here with Douglas Kent, former Executive Vice President of the Association for Supply Chain Management.

Douglas is a recipient of this year's Pros to Know Award in the Leaders in Excellence category. Douglas, thank you so much for joining me today.

Let's talk about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey, and how you got to this current stage in your career.

Douglas Kent: Well, I guess people at my tenure did it all by accident because it wasn't really a conscious choice to join this unknown industry sector called supply chain management at the time.

During my university studies, I had the opportunity to do an internship, and it happened to be in a procurement department at a brand called RCA, if it goes back that far, which later became GE, and later became Thompson. And then I just kind of fell in love with it. I loved the excitement of it, and then I had the opportunity to progress both at that company in procurement, but then got to move into things like product management and managing a factory, and running teams of people who make stuff, and then working in the electronics distribution business, etc. And I think that's what just kept me in the game, and so interested. I think unlike some other professions where, you know, I'm going be an accountant, and therefore I'm going to study audit or tax in the world of supply chain. You get such a myriad of choices with so many experiences, and then taking that to the global stage was even that much more exciting. You kind of fall into it, and then you fall in love with it. That's kind of why we're all here, and the passion combined with just having that sort of intellectual curiosity keeps you in the game for a while.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: One of the things outlined in your submission is your omnichannel approach, your subject matter expertise, and strategic thinking to ensure you reach every learner in every community across the globe. Why is reaching every learner so important?

Douglas Kent: Because of the interconnectivity of supply chains, we have a huge amount of dependency of every portion, every node, every person, in the ecosystem, and if one of those nodes or individuals or organizations fail, then the end-to-end performance is what suffers.

And it is a fast-moving space, so I would say, organizations today, even the ones who make the proper investments in learning and development and training and education and investing in the talent, they're still at risk. They're at risk of technology outpacing talent.

So, reaching all the learners is important, just for the sheer nature of keeping the pace and the perfection that needs to occur in supply chain. That's one part of it.

The other part of it is, I've had the luxury of working a lot in areas where we have some communities that really need access to medicines and vaccines and medical care and things of that sort. And, you know, you're really starting with foundational learning at that point, and you have global health dependencies on a pharmacist learning inventory management and understanding these types of things become super important. I think for having effective and efficient supply chains, for sure. Looking out for any potential risks that could occur because learning isn't there, and the right training and education isn't available.

But on the sort of social community basis, I think it's important, you gotta get the job done. You gotta make sure that a patient has medicine, for example. And that means you really have to take a look at teaching people at the very foundational level about supply chain all the way through the executives who also continue to learn and transform these supply chain operating models to take advantage of technology and build future state capabilities that perhaps wouldn't exist otherwise.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Also in your nomination form is how you co-authored Sustainable Supply Chain Orchestration. You're a long-standing steward of the SCOR model, which is the Supply Chain Operations Reference, and you've contributed to the creation of the KPMG Supply Chain Stability Index. Walk us through what each of these are and their importance to the community of supply chain.

Douglas Kent: Starting with the first one because that book was co-authored by a mutual friend of ours, Deborah Dull. And, Debra and I just to be global stewards of sustainability and what that means and circularity and its importance. And what we found was, there are executives who need to, what we refer to in the book as, sort of unlearn. You know, those of us who have been in the industry for a while are so used to these more tactical, if you will, very linear supply chains, and circularity and sustainability kind of disrupt all of that. So the first thing with the book was to really try to teach executives that what they learned was important for the time, but the times have indeed changed. And that sustainability responsibility, which is a little bit schizophrenic in many organizations in terms of where the accountability lies, the responsibility for managing a lot of the sustainability aspects actually sit within the supply chain. So the goal with that book was to educate executives, take what you know, turn it on its head, unlearn to make a better tomorrow and really embed these supply chain sustainability tactics into what you do every day. Redefine your job roles, recreate operating models, force the connectivity between design chain and supply chain.

Connecting that to the other part of that is then the SCOR model is a massive contribution to that because that's how we look to develop that new future state operating model and make those new designs, and take advantage of the application of sustainability, the technology that exists, etc. So, the SCOR model, and you're right, I really like the way you said it, because you didn't say, oh, you're so old, you worked on version 1.

But that kind of is the reality. Having been around the model and probably trained more individuals than anybody else on the planet on the utilization of SCOR, it's really fun to see how we continue to utilize and leverage that model to do what it was initially intended to do, which is to create a common language around supply chain, so that functions could talk to each other, and they could understand what each other was saying, that everybody had the same definition and calculation of metrics, and we weren't kidding ourselves with respect to their performance, and things of that sort. So utilizing the SCOR model became super important.

And then, of course, then you start to get into what's working and what's not working, and what we found, of course, no surprise to anybody, is that we, over the past few years, have been in this state of unprecedented disruption. We've had more demand and supply shocks to our system than ever in history. And that really led to the ideation with our colleagues at KPMG to say, what does risk look like? How bad is the situation? And there was no really predictive index that said, okay, let's take a look at all these macro variables that are happening. What's happening with trade and tariffs, and what's happening with the cost of transport, and what's happening with sound ability to get something through the Panama Canal, or now we can move from canals to straits, right? But the reality of it is, there's a lot of variables that are necessary to really take a look at the instability of the supply chain, and give us an indication of what we might be needing to do differently. And that ideation led to the collaboration with KPMG, where we were able to identify key variables, put them in their machine learning and analytics capabilities, and come out with an index. And in the first release of that, it was clear that we were two times more fragile than at pre-pandemic levels. So, that kind of is the conversation starter that gets organizations to say, okay, well, if we are at risk within our supply chain for disruption, what are we strategically going do about it? And then that's when you see the goodness coming out of this massive amount of disruption. That's where you see more strategic investments in things like strategic sourcing, where you see more investment in inventory across complex nodes of the supply chain. That's where you see these investments reacting to get us in a position where disruption, even if ongoing, reduces the impact, and that's super important. We understand the predictability of a risk event happening, and trying to lessen the impact. The more macro those events are, the more difficult it is to de-risk it, and you can't afford to mitigate all risk because we all know that's a recipe for bankruptcy. So, that was really the creation of the index. Those things kind of all tied together, and I think we are seeing now the ability in the most recent SCOR release, which is essentially version 14.

We saw sustainability, and risk, and these kinds of orchestration, big circularity, and ESG responsibility, they all started to intertwine together into the model, which makes it even that much more useful.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Since we announced the winners, it's now my understanding that you're no longer with the Association for Supply Chain Management. So kind of give us an update on what you're doing now.

Douglas Kent: It was a great 5 years. I mean, I'm still very much working with ASCM in the context of partnerships and lending some subject matter expertise back to the organization in various ways.

Really, it's two things. Thanks for asking, by the way. I'm excited about the future.

On the for-profit side, so traditional helping to advise some of the complexities with leaders in supply chain, that's going back to my roots, and that's an organization called Chainovation.

But the more exciting thing is really keeping on the non-profit side, is the build-out of an organization called Supply Chain Impact Alliance, and this is really focused on a community of practice with 3 main pillars of focus. That's global health, because again, super important and very complex from funding to patient delivery is a very complex process, so doing some wonderful work with the Global Fund in Africa and the Ministries of Health there to try to structure more capable models within the health system to reach patients more effectively. So, global health, sustainability, no surprise, we already talked about the passion of that, making sure that we do have equal trade-offs between people, profit, and planet, and we are acting responsibly. And then the third is equity. And that's everything from diversity, which continues to be a hot topic of discussion, and women in supply chain, but also things like living wages, making sure some of the work that I've assisted or been a participant in assisting with the United Nations Global Compact has been around things like living wages and making sure that as we construct supply chains, and we select new suppliers, or our suppliers select new suppliers, that they're doing business with people who are concerned about some of the social aspects and making sure that the people who work within the supply chain are making enough money to live, right? And I think global health, sustainability and also equity, those are the three focuses of the new NGO called the Supply Chain Impact Alliance, which I hope many people will become part of that community in the future.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: The Leaders in Excellence category honors company leaders who've made outstanding contributions to the supply chain space. What advice do you have for other professionals in supply chain?

Douglas Kent: Stick with it. It's the goodness of our profession. I mean, I think 10 years ago would have a conversation with their family members and friends, and we're still trying to explain what supply chain is and what does it mean. But it really does make the world go round, and I think just the recognition, the contribution that supply chain can make, not just for the success of a company, but for the success of the community. I think that's super important.

The other things I would recommend is, take advantage of every opportunity, whether you're working in planning or sourcing or some of the transformation activities, take advantage to experience the end-to-end and gain that expertise because I think it just makes you a stronger contributor to your organization or a better consultant or advisor, etc. I think just having that end-to-end picture is critically important. The other thing I would just say is, I've worked half of my life outside of the country.

And I think just having that global experience and understanding things don't work the same way in every country. What we see here in the U.S, I was in Brazil last week, and I was in Kenya two weeks before that, and I can tell you, these environments don't look the same. And really gaining, not only the breadth of experience across the end-to-end supply chain, but also the globality and the opportunities to work, live in different countries, I think I would advise to anybody. I know it's made me a better contributor, I know it's opened up my perspective on things, it helps me understand challenges better, and regardless of some degree of nationalization that's happening, we aren't going to not have global supply chains in the future. You can talk to me in 10 more years, and I'll still stand by my statement, is that it's good to still be a global supply chain for quite some time to come. So, those are some advice that I would have. It's such a great field of work, I can't imagine having fallen into it as we started this conversation, falling into it, but I can't imagine never leaving it.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: What is something that we haven't discussed so far that would be a good takeaway for our audience?

Douglas Kent: I guess the other thing is just recognizing that the profession's going to require new, energized leadership. And so I always think about what can I give back to the academic community, and what can we do to contribute better to, let's just say, learning systems, whether that's university structures or otherwise. How can we give back to make sure that the people that are coming through and now do get the conscious choice to work in a field called supply chain management, that when they come out, they're already prepared to give back to their employer or their organization that they're going to be working with. And so I spent a lot of time helping with the universities, and giving them advice to say, what are the practical needs? What do students need to learn? If you ask me to go speak at the university, I'm the guy who never says no, right? I love the academic side of it, and I think that's something all professionals, regardless of the stage in your career, should take advantage of making sure to give back.

I was the first person in my family to go to university, and so maybe my passion for returning back to the academic institutions and working with students, and I just judged a student competition on sustainable supply chain the other day for one of the universities, and I just love to be able to do that, give back to the students, be a mentor to those who need it. And let them take advantage of the experience that you and I and others have gained along our journeys.