Supply Chain Strategies with Alaska MEP

Live with Alaska MEP

Join us and Dyci Sfregola as we discuss supply chain strategies, improving processes and how to grow as a manufacturer.

Live Summary

Join Sami Jo Lewis from the Alaska MEP and eCommerce Evangelist for Manufacturers Curt Anderson - Founder of B2Btail as Dyci Sfregola from New Gen Architects shares supply chain strategies, improving processes, and how to grow as a manufacturer. Learn how to choose the right technology and common missteps that companies make with technology implementation.

To learn more about how the Alaska MEP can assist your business, connect with us online: https://alaska-mep.com

Key Highlights

• How manufacturers choose the right supply chain technology. 3:02

• How to know if a company is a good fit. 7:03

• What market are we looking to enter? 8:31

• The importance of repeating the objective. 12:45

• Data Governance is a business function. 17:24

• The difference between modernization projects and transformational projects. 24:00

• Common missteps that companies make with tech implementation. 26:49

Transcription

Sami Jo Lewis 0:01

Hi, everybody, thank you so much for joining us today. We're super excited. We have such a great day to dive into supply chain strategies for manufacturers. I have my wonderful co-host and partner Curt Anderson. Hi, first. Thanks for being here today.

Curt Anderson 0:21

Yeah, Sami Jo. Thank you. Happy Thursday. We're coming into a wonderful holiday weekend and what a celebration because like we're, I think we're in a new house today. Right? It looks like a new background and this year you and your husband have a brand new home so congratulations to you. Super exciting to hear and so I am just thrilled beyond belief to introduce my dear friend. She is a supply chain extraordinaire in oils. You've been living under a rock for the past three years. I think supply chain has been a little bit in the news, if you will. So Dyci man I've been we've been friends for a long time but it still takes me awhile to practice this Lessing spray goal that I get that from my close I remember your day

Dyci Sfregola 1:04

there but it's also a lot of confidence and you have to roll the arm so

Curt Anderson 1:13

there you go. You know what I remember when I'd say your dad was in the background and he was laughing at me.

Dyci Sfregola 1:20

He still gets it wrong.

Curt Anderson 1:23

Dyci we're moving forward we're gonna go with Dyci Founder CEO and again, supply chain and ordinary new gen architects, DC. Welcome to the program. How

Dyci Sfregola 1:32

are you? I'm great. I forgot it was a holiday weekend. So that made me really happy about that. And I think I forgot it was a holiday weekend because I have meetings on Monday and Tuesday.

Curt Anderson 1:47

Oh no. Do you really okay. Well, I have been

Dyci Sfregola 1:50

practicing, being mindful of not just running myself into the ground which is very easy to do. And when you're when your mommy and your golfing and all of that and moving we also just moved standards so congratulations. And I know you guys have a lot of stuff that you still have to do we too are living in that and at some point I'll have a nice background like, like we have in our other house. But until then the doors closed so you can't see the mess behind.

Curt Anderson 2:29

Absolutely perfect and I'm on the road today so we got a lot to unpack in Dyci your longtime friend. You we've done multiple lives together. You're a friend of the MEP network manufacturing center. Partnerships. We're here with the Alaska MEP today. Sami, Jo, I know like you and I've been geeking out on just we've been looking so forward to this conversation. So let's just roll up our sleeves and dive right in and supply chain stret strategies and solutions for our last manufacturers want to kick off our first question for us.

Sami Jo Lewis 2:59

Wonderful thanks for and thanks for being here Dyci. So I wanted to start off with in a world where there are hundreds of supply chain and manufacturing technologies. How as a manufacturer do they choose right one

Dyci Sfregola 3:15

fucking feeding me I always start with process. So a lot of people as we know have been talking about AI, the AI could go down the the key terms AI with Blockchain, machine learning. Throw it all in there and they very often ask this like, which of these should I be using? And I always say, if I asked three people what the process is, will I get one answer or will I get five? Because maybe someone will say Well, it depends on who the supervisor is. or It depends on if it's live day or if it's Friday or depends on if it's a slow day or a busy day. So I would say the first thing to figure out what technology is right for you is to definitely make sure that the process is defined, documented and standardized, whatever that process might be and stayed the process. What we focus on a lot of the time because most of the time that you talk to small medium manufacturers, businesses in general, it's it's a lot of people wearing a lot of different hats. You don't really have you know, one person doing one role, always doing that same thing all the time. So very often the process of just understanding order to cash and procure to pay. Those are the two big processes that you definitely want to have identify, standardized, documented and defined, because that will help you understand where there is opportunity for technology. To actually provide value. A lot of times companies just start with, you know what the CEO heard on the podcast. You know what the CEO read in a blog article, what the VP saw at a conference what my friend's company is doing, and it's a lot of almost FOMO like, oh, we should be doing something with AI everyone. Everyone's everyone's doing procurement. So it's a lot of shiny object before you get whoever's yelling. So if the sales department is really really really loud and complaining about needing some sort of automation to help make their lives easier, that might be really hard to go. Where as if maybe the shop floor, you know, is really loud and complaining about how we're stuck in you know, digital manufacturing or starving or smart manufacturing. That might be where the attention goes. But we always say what technology so based off of the sweat, trust that you were trying to improve at where you're trying to act out that childhood for when you're out, it relieves you down. So if you look at any supply chain or manufacturing technology, map or graphic, I mean there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and at least helps you narrow down to say like we're going to focus on procurement. We're going to focus on demand planning. You know whatever supply chain option it is because supply chain so logistics transportation, product innovation, product design, packaging, demand planning, strategy, etc network design. So, at least understanding where you have gaps in your processes, or a part of your process that can really be you'll get a lot of impact and return that can help you figure out where to start. And then it once you have that process documented. If you ask the right questions, vendors, they can also you know, sell I don't want to say shelf eliminate. But but at least you know if it's a good fit if it's not a good fit of course you'll have to do that. For us, to help

Curt Anderson 7:18

us to talk first off pure gold that was a gold Dyci I'm already

is your seat

is one of those companies that just don't get the technology where they have any advice there?

Dyci Sfregola 8:08

They have a belief so having

even a 10 year on the world trying to go where we go on to sales. Our ideal buyer

what market are we looking to acquire or enter into in five years, six years. Maybe there's an immediate need, but they really know who they are. They know who they serve, and they know what they're trying to accomplish. Not everyone wants to you know, grow to next over the next five years. You know, not everyone is looking to be the best of the best leader in their market. Some people are just looking to, you know, continuing to stay profitable businesses. And I think that so much time we get caught up in Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And I will say that also, I am a contributor to that. You know, we I always say and I always preach the focus on working with companies who are looking to grow and who are looking to scale but I also don't like this pressure to five actions. You know if that is if that's what's happening but it's not an objective and I've talked to CEOs who said you know what, I just want to I want I was positive isn't in here. That's it. You know if I can get out of the red that is a success. Or you know, right now we are looking to another site. We need to get up and running so we need to make sure that whatever out right now. We are now to where

you go to a plant and when you want them to see different types of minutes. Because because the operations are so just really a short answer. Companies that do this well, shiny object syndrome, exactly know exactly where they're going. They know who they're serving, they know who they are. And anything that does not align with that. It's very easy to have the blinders on for that. And then anything that does align with that, and might seem like it could support that vision. Those are the tools those are the the shiny objects that get some sort of attention. And then they have very clear plans of what that looks like. level of effort, the impact, what is the ROI that we would expect from it? Okay, all right, this

Curt Anderson 11:20

is just fire Sammi, what's next on your plate?

Sami Jo Lewis 11:23

We're moving on. I love the way that you're like, they have to ask the right questions because I really do believe that when you're talking to vendors, if you don't know what you're asking that's a great thing to go back on is making sure that you know exactly what to ask to really choose the right one.

Dyci Sfregola 11:36

You have to you know what I have found is really, really good practice for that. Talk to a toddler. toddler, and like you were speaking with toddlers you have to be so intentional with the words you have to ask exactly the question that is not ambiguous that cannot be you know, interpreted in any other way in order to get the answer that you want from a four year old.

Curt Anderson 12:11

In your in your speaking with experience right.

Dyci Sfregola 12:14

Thank you very much. For that I talked to my toddler and I say, I wonder if people feel this way when I was what was left for interpretation.

Curt Anderson 12:28

You know, when it comes to technology, I'd say you know, don't talk to me like I'm a four year old talk to me like I'm a 54 year old because like you really need to bring it down to be very, very simple. So anyway, let's laser focus, you know, just the sheer discipline being focused on the goals. I just love.

Dyci Sfregola 12:47

Also, not repeating it, repeating the objective repeat. I think that a lot of and I can speak from experience, you know, having started my own company, we're still very much I would say in the startup phase from like the age wise, this tenure. And I think it's very important and I read this and I was like, oh, no, but you have to almost like as the leader be communicating that vision, those objectives till you're blue in the face. Like it seems like you've just repeated so much so much. And I was like, I don't know, that's a little overkill. But now as we're bringing on more people and you know looking to grow the company, I find myself like really repeating it all. And it's not like every every that lead lives sit down and have an all hands meeting to sleep everybody they're really objective. But just as we're having conversations as we're talking through, whether our like we're as we're qualifying new customers or new leads, as we're kicking off new things, as we are making recommendations for new clients. I always tell everyone, remember this is what the goal is. So whatever you're doing right now needs to fit into that long term vision and that long term goal. So always reiterating that from leadership down and having that really be the fiber of who you are. That's sort of my marketing days also a little bit. A lot of time in sales and marketing before moving into supply chain. So every once in a while, the budget the branding and storytelling

Curt Anderson 14:28

about as you can, you know because a lot of people in supply chain might be a little bit introverted and I don't know if introverted and DC don't go in the same sentence, right.

Dyci Sfregola 14:38

I'm an introvert by plane extrovert. You play an extrovert I do have to hype myself up for conferences. I should have I shouldn't like the hotel bathroom but I'm like, trying to get yourself fired up while I'm telling you. I go to the conference and then after like three hours, we're gonna hide. We're gonna hide too many people.

Curt Anderson 14:56

While you are a gifted speaker and just our house will get back on track. Same me Joe, what's what's next?

Sami Jo Lewis 15:03

Hey, so how can a manufacturer determine if they need to improve processes, kind of like where you're just talking about and get their data implement technology to improve efficiency for growth? They always need to do that. Every day, always.

Dyci Sfregola 15:23

So how do we factors need to know are you in business? Like do you have customers? Do you want to continue to be a business? Because that's where the continuous improvement you know, what were the key word, whatever you want to call it, but that's where continuous improvement comes in. Especially as it relates to technology because I think that a lot of people even okay, we we documented the process. Yay. We did that Dyci. Okay, we cleaned our data. Yay. We did that. We figured out exactly who's gonna do what Yay, we did that. And we picked the tool. They're definitely the right person in the right vendor, and now we implement all right, but no, it doesn't stop there. Because then you're probably going to have to do all of that again. Every six months. Every month, every year, whatever whatever that the cadence is that you find that makes sense because we've seen I was actually just reading this morning. We've seen technology very quickly outpaced skill set and technology. isn't slowing down. And I don't know we partner with a lot of software companies. Our we have a partnership. We just solidified a new partnership with a company that does go to market and sales strategy, because I got tired of talking about sales. And operations planning and only talking about operations. So now we can do sales and operations planning together. And we do a lot of work within tech ops with software companies and developers and the technology features are not going to slow down. The features are going to continue to be enhanced. Companies are going to continue to push out upgrades for software. And what you don't want to do is find yourself in 2023 with a 2007 version of that new software, because you're not going to be getting your value out of it. And at that point, it's it's almost a sunk cost. So when it comes to the process, the data the people thinking of reorganization thinking about even just from a job description perspective. What does it look like for someone to earn a promotion? What does it look like for someone to become a supervisor? how proficient are they with the technology? You know, what does that look like from a digital aspect as new technologies are implemented as upgrades and features get pushed out? People might have to shift as you grow as you add or we mentioned new plan as you have new employees processes will change and your tech stack has to grow with you. So you your tech stack your people your data, all of that has to go with you. Data Governance is business function. data cleansing is not a one time exercise. It's like if you if you need someone to clean up your books, you clean up the books but then you hire a bookkeeper to maintain it. So it's the same thing with data it's the same thing with systems people processes it's very much a like that the cycle I mean I hate to get textbook but Plan Do Check. You know, you do it over and over and over. You reiterate you evaluate you keep going through this cycle, as as long as you're in business. If you're in business, you need to have a regular plan of monitoring processes the health of your technology systems are things integrate and that doesn't always mean like do we have the latest and greatest? You know there's there is a happy medium between having the latest and greatest and having the 15 year old version. You know, I'm not saying like upgrade your iPhone, every you know, every time they push it, you don't have to do that. But if you're not doing that it needs to be to have a very clear, concerted strategic reason as to why that's not happening. Not that Oh, we got behind and we looked up before we knew it six years past and we had it pushing upgrades to the system, or we hadn't looked at our organizational structure or anything like that.

Curt Anderson 19:35

Okay, so much. I love everything you're saying there. You know, I have I have a 16 year old she's starting to drive. And so now I'm looking at my car a little bit differently. Like you know, I just drive this car. I mean, I'm like, You know what, I probably want to upgrade the car because like, you know, safety features are not a lot different because my precious 16 year old is driving the you know what I mean? So I love what you're seeing as far as like the technology because I you know, I just had a call with a client through the Purdue MEP in Indiana and like they're like, you know, I have a Ferrari of technology. And they're so frustrated because they don't have the keys. They don't know how to drive the Ferrari. And they're like, You know what, I probably couldn't use a Chevy. Chevy would have gotten me

Dyci Sfregola 20:17

I use that car analogy all the time with people when people come to me and you know, I always say you can but should you like maybe you got the budget for it. Maybe you got the approval for it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it just because you can. And then also going back to those strategic objectives. What are you actually trying to accomplish? like I would a Ferrari maybe makes plenty of sense in certain situations. But if you just need to drive three miles in the city to get to and from work, maybe you should get a Prius you know. Maybe you don't need a frog. Yes, Ferraris are wonderful, you can afford a Ferrari but you don't need a Ferrari in a Prius to drive three miles in the city to and from work. I use that car analogy all the time because a lot of companies find themselves with with that same problem. In that they, they got something they didn't really need that or they didn't need it, but they didn't think about the people process data piece of it so they couldn't turn on that feature they wanted to

Curt Anderson 21:31

you know, and that's okay, first off, you're just getting a little taste of how amazing Dyci is if you want to take this conversation deeper, you can certainly reach out to Alaska MEP and they will get you connected with Dyci and take this conversation to a much higher level because you're you know you're saying DC you know the briary exists for a customer and if you can afford it and maybe that cut maybe that Ferrari can take you to a higher level maybe that for Ferrari will give you a distinct competitive advantage. But it's really understanding how we started off in conversation goals you know, and everything else that you just that you just sit here so tons and tons of accurate there. Guys, I strongly encourage you like hit the rewind button just listen to that over and over Easter just dropping golden nuggets. Sami, Jo, what's next on your plate?

Sami Jo Lewis 22:17

All right, so we recently saw a podcast episode where you talked about the concept of digital modernization versus digital transformation. Can you dive a little deeper and tell me about that? Oh, yeah.

Dyci Sfregola 22:28

Definitely. It was a podcast I did without Alicia, who is she's over at AWS and she's smarter than me. But she's actually the one who said you know what? What we've been what she's seen a lot of is digital modernization versus digital transformation. And I love that and I'm always gonna run with that and I'm always gonna use it. I will always give you credit. But it's especially in the size of company that we work with is probably 10 to 100 employees. So I mean, we're talking small companies, and every once in a while we hit a big market that is you know, running up on 200 to 300 employees but much more so 10 employees, employee 40 employees. So this idea of completely transforming you know, these three to five year initiatives that is going to just overhaul the entire organization, it's like, Dude, we're not doing that. Like, we're we're getting out of Smartsheet you know what I mean? Like, let's just be honest, we're getting out of Smartsheet we're maybe gonna like technology wise hardware like recommend that your scanners talk to your ERP system. You know, it's the little modernisations that again, low impact, high, low effort, high impact, that is ideally where you want to sit. Sometimes it's high effort, high impact, but either way you want it to have a lot of impact on the organization. And we're not doing these huge transformational efforts. That's like changing everything. I think that when, at least from my experience, the last few years, you know, running nga and talking to different leaders at these small businesses. Is that the transformation is it's daunting, because again, we're talking about companies that have limited resources. I'm not even I'm strictly talking people. I'm not talking finances. I mean, I've talked to companies who are like, yes, we have all the money we could ever hope for. But we don't have anyone internally that can even manage this initiative. And we all know manufacturing labor shortages, we all know it's hard to find people right now. So it's it's not easy, even if you want it to take on this entire transformation project. And because these are small company, what makes it if you're talking about a transformation for a company like Coca Cola, things go so slowly that like 2023 probably isn't gonna look bad. Maybe you're talking about a small company that's 10 employees now and has a really strong pipeline, and they could triple employees over the next two to three years. They'll also be fundamentally different ways of working, so embarking on a huge transformation project is might not be the right thing. But again, these little modernization KY bands, you know, almost thinking about it that way. What can we implement? Maybe it's dated afternoon. We're working with a company right now. I guess it was down to Smartsheet. Let's stop printing the production plan on my day and then posting it on the wall and hoping that it doesn't change on Wednesday. So you don't have to. Like, like there are there are dashboards that we can use to do that. You know, low effort, high impact again, so what are the modernization projects that we can do versus these huge transformational or transformational engagements that also tend to cause a lot of implementation fatigue. So when you have people already doing a lot, and then you're changing everything they're doing, it you you get into the point where you're like, okay, but when is this over when it's over when it's over? And in startup small business world? Bang, Let's do something for three years as the leader you know, okay, three years needs nothing in the grander scheme of whatever we're going to do. For the next 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, but as an employee from the other side of it, having to actually execute everything because let's just be honest, the CEO is not executing every single day. You know, they're not the ones boots on the ground, working with the developers working with the consultants work with implementation partners, doing the testing, having to parallel path, what they're already doing, plus test out whatever this new feature is, or this new technology is, if you're doing that all the time. That's the quickest way to tell somebody we actually don't like you here actually think

Curt Anderson 27:41

it's a subtle it's a very subtle

Dyci Sfregola 27:44

way to say you will always be in Project mode you will never actually

Curt Anderson 27:49

Wow, this is fantastic. See me we have time for one more question for Dyci. Why don't you let's let's hit her up. If you got one more question, we can fire off and then we'll take her home.

Sami Jo Lewis 28:00

Perfect. All right, so last question. What are some common missteps you see companies make with regard to tech implementations?

Dyci Sfregola 28:09

I mean, we've talked about a lot of them. The one thing that I talked about shiny object, we talked about not really considering what the plan is after implementation. That's a big one. And I think just in general, whether it's technology whether you're a service provider or partner overall is not really thinking through what the requirements are, and being very, very familiar with the requirements in order to be able to communicate them with the service provider. So you know, even if you're thinking and taking it out of technology. Manufacturers in Alaska have a very very a lot of within the 48.

Consideration by you know, your customer that within the US are not like a state over so there you have to really understand your requirements to be able to communicate that and work through that to understand that the service provider can then tell you what is the best way to approach this if you weren't to work with us. So I think that just a big misstep, whether it's technology, whether it's anything else, it's just not really truly understanding the full requirements of what you need to accomplish. And just going before you do that exercise in depth, and just looking for service providers.