Flexibility for the Future - How Disruption Fosters Innovation

Narrator:
Welcome to MIT Supply Chain Frontiers, from the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. Each episode features center researchers and staff who welcome experts from the field for in-depth conversations about business education and beyond. On today's episode, Center Director, Professor Yossi Sheffi speaks with two seasoned supply chain professionals about some of the business and leadership innovations that the disruptions in 2020 brought about for them and their organizations. And he asks some compelling questions as we look toward the future. Take it away, Yossi.

Yossi Sheffi:
Hello everybody., I'm Yossi Sheffi. First of all, thank you Lynn and Dave for joining me today. Let me quickly introduce the two of them to our audience. I'll start with Lynn, Chief Procurement and Supply Chain Officer at Flex. Flex is the company that used to be called Flextronics, many of you remember Flextronics started at 51 years ago in Silicon Valley, then moved their headquarters to Singapore. And later changed its name to Flex.

Yossi Sheffi:
It's a contract manufacturing, which does and can do almost anything. Many of the things that brands are selling are actually made by Flex. The company has 24 billion dollars in revenue and 160,000 employees, and very complex, actually multiple supply chains. It's hard to talk about Flex and think about their supply chain. They have so many, now Lynn Torrel is responsible for this multitude of supply chain. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with an MBA from the Carey School of Business, in Arizona state. Hi Lynn, thank you for joining us.

Lynn Torrel:
Hi Yossi.

Yossi Sheffi:
Let me introduce Dave Wheeler, from New Balance. New Balance was founded in 1906. So, it's a old company in Boston as an art support company by William Riley, who actually, I don't know if it's true or not, but the urban legend is that he followed the way chicken balance on their gate and decided this is the perfect way to balance once. And they say that he had chicken leg on his desk for many years.

Yossi Sheffi:
By now, of course, the company sell athletic wear in 120 countries, five and a half billion dollars in revenue, 8000 associates. It is a private corporation, Dave Wheeler is the Chief Operating Officer for New Balance, he studied in Merrimack College, he is an engineer. And has an MBA from Miami University. I should say that both Dave and Lynn were generous with their time in the middle of the pandemic, which takes every supply chain executive.

Yossi Sheffi:
They both allow me to interview them about what was going on during the pandemic around them, around the world, providing material for my book that came out in October this year, The New Abnormal, reshaping business and supply chain strategy beyond COVID-19. Both have operation in China, it's interesting because, Flex of course, is a B2B operation, while New Balance is B2C operation, serving consumer directly.

Yossi Sheffi:
So there, comes from one private company, one public company, coming from two sides of the supply chain. So what I'd like to do now, is start with the few questions. We just went through an amazing and tough period, what's the biggest insight or hard moment that came out of this for you and for your organization?

Lynn Torrel:
Well, I think one of the most interesting dynamics, is that 10 months ago, nobody was really talking about supply chains. People just expected them to work and deliver the products. Now supply chain is a topic on everyone's mind, and it is very progressive in the industry today, the importance of supply chain and supply chain resiliency. I also believe that digitalization tools provided great information, to allow our organization to address the supply chain challenges throughout the pandemic.

Lynn Torrel:
But it also highlighted to me the importance of supply chain professionals, making smart decisions with imperfect information throughout this challenge. And I also believe that it validated the investments that Flex has made over the past years in our digitalization tools, to be able to stay as quick as we could in our decision-making, as we addressed all of the challenges that we were faced on a daily basis throughout the pandemic.

Yossi Sheffi:
Thank you, Lynn. Dave, what was it for you? The insight and a hard moment that came out of the pandemic.

Dave Wheeler:
Good morning Yossi, and thanks for having me on here, good to share some stories, it's certainly been a challenging 2020 for sure, a combination of loss and chaos and, certainly some opportunity as well. And , I think maybe two parts I'd share. One is, I guess I'm not too surprised that having a burning platform brings people together, if I think back to the earthquakes in Haiti, we rallied around our suppliers to make sure that they were supported.

Dave Wheeler:
And we also figured out ways to get back up on our feet, in fairly short order. So, seeing a team come together for a common cause, certainly was the story of this year for us. I also think, we all surprised ourselves around the ability to come together in a virtual way, using tools that have been available, but certainly have come together for the masses, which enabled us to work together, really in a more seamless way.

Dave Wheeler:
And in many cases, more effectively to get to conclusions, make decisions and take action in a way that hadn't happened in the past. So, that for me, the ability to work virtually, essentially was the big aha moment for me in 2020.

Yossi Sheffi:
Thank you, Dave. And we will come to this point, because we really... will be interesting to know later, how much of this will stay after the pandemic, including working and venturing anything. But, Lynn you mentioned before that supply chain became, people used to ask my wife, "What's your husband doing?" And say, "He's doing research in supply chain?" And they say, "What is it?" Nobody ask what is it not, they say, "That's important." But, within the company, what happen to you and your function, as a result of this?

Lynn Torrel:
Well, supply chain within the Flex organization has always been a critical aspect of our business. So, it was always highlighted as a strategic importance within the Flex organization. But I do think in many companies, supply chain became more prominent in the discussions, and direction, and decisions that companies were making.

Yossi Sheffi:
Dave, you used to be the head of supply chain and now you're running the whole operations.

Dave Wheeler:
Great, I think New Balance is a little bit different, right? So we're a consumer facing brand. So, when we think about the most prominent functions in the company, it's about marketing, and merchandising, and those types of functions. Supply chain is there to support those efforts.

Dave Wheeler:
And, in the early parts of the pandemic and actually throughout 2020, supply chain has been thrust into the forefront a lot further, very visible, often having discussions with ownership, and the CEO, and the CFO. And really trying to make sure that our efforts are headed down the right path to support the demand, which has really fluctuated both down and up in a significant way. So the V for us has been real, we'll still end the year on the negative side versus 2019, but certainly in the latter half of this year, volume is up significantly. So, we're actually chasing the supply at the moment.

Yossi Sheffi:
Let me follow up on this with you Dave, to do this, of course, the supplies chain is to be not sidelined, but work together with every other function in the organization. Can talk more about the cooperation with other functions?

Dave Wheeler:
Yeah, sure thing, we found in 2020 that the working in an agile way really helped us accelerate change. And, in the past we had run projects in a more traditional, longer term, get to get a chart, really have key milestones. We created in the March, April timeframe, a series of what we call pods, agile pods, that were very cross-functional, had a 90 day time limit, and had key deliverables along the way.

Dave Wheeler:
And so, every other day that team was together in a cross-functional way. And that synergy was really game changing for us, because we couldn't pivot a lot quicker given all the inputs from the various functions. So that was significant for us this year, for sure.

Yossi Sheffi:
Lynn...

Lynn Torrel:
Well, when the pandemic first started in January, we were getting information out of our Chinese operations. And one of the things I did is, we created a daily call with my leadership team and other areas of cross-functional business leadership, from our resiliency team, our legal team, our tax team. And we had a daily call at 5:30 in the morning, my time, for months. And, I think that was incredibly important in how we address the challenges we were facing.

Lynn Torrel:
We would have a very structured agenda for the daily call, we would hear from our regional leaders what they were hearing from customers, what they were hearing from suppliers, what they were hearing from the media or local governments, we'd look at the information we had from our suppliers and our customers forecast to understand where we may have supply chain risk. And then we'd employed tiger teams to address the significant challenges we had. In that, daily rigor of the calls and our ability to move very quickly and readjust our teams to focus on the most critical aspects that we were working on, provided a great deal of resiliency in our supply chain.

Lynn Torrel:
We cover a great number of industries at Flex. So, we had instances where some of our customers forecasts were going through the roof and we were chasing our medical supply, medical business for instance, drop in lead time, demands, shortages that we were chasing. And we had other parts of our business where the forecasts were declining rapidly.

Lynn Torrel:
So, having that daily rigor, being able to deploy the vast resources that we have within the supply chain organization, to both expedite orders, and cancel orders, and understand what other challenges we might be facing such as, sourcing PPE equipment, or freight and logistics challenges. And making the decisions based on the discussions we were having on a daily basis was very critical.

Yossi Sheffi:
Just to follow up on the comment that Dave made, do you see the business that was down, do you see it started to go back up?

Lynn Torrel:
Yes. In many cases, the rebound has been dramatic in the increase in... Dave, we are chasing supply right now, because the demand is high. And now, we're certainly seeing some shortages that we're working on to make sure we clear, to recognize revenue and support our customers.

Lynn Torrel:
And, I do think throughout the entire pandemic with the forecast going up or down, we really with our customers closely to validate their forecast. And I wanted to ensure when we were working with our suppliers, we were giving true demand signals and prioritizing appropriately. So they would be able to work within their organizations, which were also challenged because of the pandemic. And we worked very closely, and collaboratively, and compassionately with our partners to try and ensure we could meet the demand.

Yossi Sheffi:
Dave, could you just comment on working with your suppliers?

Dave Wheeler:
Sure, certainly was challenging in that April and May timeframe as we went in and put a hold on production, but we also wanted to make sure that we had really strong relationships with our tier ones. And also, respecting the tier twos and tier threes, as they tried to stay financially solvent.

Dave Wheeler:
And so, it was a real delicate balance actually. And, we put a lot of emphasis, a lot of resources around understanding the data at a very detailed level, so that we could repurpose the certain materials that were already purchased by the tier one into the tier twos, rather than leave them holding the financial liability. And so, fortunately we were able to work down a material liability of over 10 million dollars.

Dave Wheeler:
So, essentially down to zero, by just really using the data. Again, respecting the suppliers, because we need them for the long run and I think those relationships are so critical. And I would also maybe tag on there the, living in this virtual world that does certainly become challenging to maintain those relationships at the level that we have had in the past, in person really does make a big difference.

Dave Wheeler:
So, we can get 90 percent there, but that extra 10 percent really does make for a much stronger supplier relationship. And we look forward to getting back to at least some level of travel in the near future, for sure.

Yossi Sheffi:
And interesting there, in the book I quote. And Lynn actually be able... Talks about the facts, how important is, to sit at the end of the day, face to face, have tough negotiations and then have dinner together. It's just, the way trust is being built. But, Lynn, from other discussion that we had before, there's a lot of focus on resilience from your customer, wants you to be resilient. What are the challenges here?

Lynn Torrel:
That's a great question. And it's actually a topic that I'm exploring in a series of blogs on the Flex website, everybody's talking about a resilient supply chain. And we believe that there are a number of ways in which you can work with your customers and suppliers to drive more resiliency. Visibility, is incredibly important, digitalization and collaboration.

Lynn Torrel:
So, when we're looking at driving a resilient supply chain, there's numerous ways you can do it. In some cases it's like an insurance policy, is that having additional inventory? And if so, who funds that additional inventory? Is it looking at alternative suppliers to de-risk the supply chain? And it's also from an internal standpoint, looking throughout your entire organization to find out where you may have resiliency risks and continuously improving, well, internally to drive improvements in that area.

Yossi Sheffi:
Thank you. And Dave, you face different challenges because you are not faced by huge customers. Each one is a large percent of your business who can exert pressure. I mean, you're facing consumers. I mean, you're facing some retention obviously more than others, but so you have... how do you deal with the move to e-commerce and online channels?

Dave Wheeler:
Sure. I mean, even prior to the pandemic, we had seen quite a shift from wholesale, into our wholesale retailers, over to direct to consumer e-com type sales. And, it's certainly accelerated in a big way in 2020, I think as many companies have found, as folks stay at home and can't get out to the retailers. So, we have seen an acceleration in that type of sales, that's launched us three years beyond where we expected to be.

Dave Wheeler:
And as you can imagine, that puts a lot of stress on the supply chain, from the way that we distribute the product, and then finally deliver it into the consumer's hands, versus a customer of wholesale, a completely different set of processes. So, we have quite an effort underway, within our warehouse network and that transportation capability, to make sure that we can catch up and also sustain what happens in 2021, which we expect will be continued growth in e-com.

Dave Wheeler:
And I think, on top of that, we are certainly getting into the omni-channel capability, utilizing our stores to ship smaller volumes of certain SK use that consumers want in a relatively short period of time. They're used to that Amazon, potentially same day, within two hour type delivery. And we are working down that path with a couple of pilot projects, utilizing our brick and mortar, which is super exciting for us.

Yossi Sheffi:
Thank you. Both of you have operations in China, both of you are also selling in China. But Lynn, let's go to you, are you going to move out of China?

Lynn Torrel:
No, Flex has a large.

Yossi Sheffi:
This is a set up.

Lynn Torrel:
Flex has a large footprint in China, we are committed to our employees and other stakeholders there. And we also have a diverse and global footprint, and depend on supply chain from China to support our customers. China is unparalleled in their electronics manufacturing and supply chain capabilities.

Lynn Torrel:
And, the hubs, the technology hubs that have been built have been decades in the making. And, so we will continue to work with our valuable suppliers from China to support our customers. I think at the same time, we need to look at resiliency and de-risking the supply chain. So, I anticipate change, but not in the short-term, we'll continue to value our suppliers and our production in China.

Yossi Sheffi:
Dave...

Dave Wheeler:
I think some of our domains are prospective, and certainly New Balance has a strong consumer base in China. So, producing in China for consumer consumption in China makes a lot of sense to us in the apparel and footwear business in general. It's not as high of a value add, as electronics, for example. And so, across the industry, we've seen migration generally away from China, but still some volume remains there, especially for, let's say high-performance technical running.

Dave Wheeler:
And certain capabilities that China has built up over the decades are outstanding. That, businesses like new balance want to stay there in particular, but China certainly has and brings a lot of great production capability to the table that, we're certainly proud of, for a lot of different reasons. And we source globally, we're proud that we're the only major athletic brand that produces right here in the United States with five factories in New England. So, we're very diversified on our supply chain base.

Yossi Sheffi:
Thank you. There's another related question before we go to the technology, lots of technology questions, about the Trump administration and others talking about region desertion and moving to insourcing instead of outsourcing. See, I did not see much of this, but do you see it in your company, do you have part of the strategy to bring more stuff in?

Lynn Torrel:
Well, Flex has the benefit of a large global presence, large global footprint. You wrote in your book about, China Plus One. Flex can offer China plus 50, options for manufacturing. So, I do believe that talking about resiliency and regionalization, it means different things to different companies and to different industries.

Lynn Torrel:
We believe that there's an opportunity to look at, partnering with customers who potentially have done their own manufacturing and want to look at, maybe de-risking by using a partner like Flex to take on a portion of their production, to provide that resiliency and risk mitigation strategies. But in general, I do believe that there is a lot of talk of regionalization and resiliency.

Lynn Torrel:
And there, it needs to be defined exactly what that means for a customer for their strategies. And then, looking at, is that something they want to do themselves? Is that something they want a partner with? We also offer services in engineering because the manufacturing is one aspect, the entire supply chain is another aspect.

Lynn Torrel:
So, if we have customers who have a single source device as part of their technology innovation, can we provide alternatives that come from a different supplier manufactured in a different region, to help de-risk the supply chain? So, I think there's a lot of ways in which we can drive resiliency and support regionalization as our customers want to define that.

Yossi Sheffi:
Dave

Dave Wheeler:
Sure. We have a real interesting combination, I think. I guess I would tie it to a key initiative we have underway and have had over the last couple of years, but especially in 2020. It's been focused on design for lead time? And so, as we think about an agile responsive of supply chain, a lot of that is around lead time, shortened lead times, so that we can sense demand and rapidly respond with supply.

Dave Wheeler:
And that tends to focus our energy around localized, regionalized supply base. And our ability to open up our own capabilities there, in every single country that we sell into is unrealistic. And so, using an outsourced specialized capability on a regionalized basis makes a lot of sense to us. And that will certainly continue to be the trend as we designed for lead time, so that we can respond, shorten up our inventory turns and really get a little bit more precise around what inventory we have on hand, based on our sell through. So, that would be our trend at the moment.

Yossi Sheffi:
Thank you. Every virtual conference with them on, every other question they get this, digitization of the supply chain. The question is, what do we mean by this? Which technology cost, where? What are the technology... ? For example, Flex, and I'll develop this unbelievably NASA like world, that looks at all the supplies.

Yossi Sheffi:
That's something that takes a lot of money and time to develop. Lynn, if you can just say a word about your systems, it was developed actually even before the pandemic. But then about the technology that you think are critical, for making the supply chain more agile, responsive, shorten the leads time, increase inventory turn and all the good things that we expect.

Lynn Torrel:
Flex benefited greatly during the pandemic in the investments we've made in our digital technology. And the best example is the Flex Pulse center, which we started in 2015 and have been continuously innovating since. So, Flex is a cloud-based intelligent platform that provides real time visibility into our entire global supply chain.

Lynn Torrel:
And we use it to manage all aspects of our business, we're able to go in with a click of a button and look at a global picture, drill down to a regional picture, a site level, a customer level, to a part number level. And understand what potential gating aspects we may have. So, the insights we are able to glean from our Flex system are incredibly powerful. Prior to joining Flex, I was a supplier to Flex that and I remember my first visit to the Flex Pulse center.

Lynn Torrel:
And I told my predecessor that I had data envy, because it was so powerful. Coming now, and joining flex, I realized how critical and important those investments are in managing such a complex supply chain. Also, you mentioned it at the beginning, we support over a 1000 customers, with 16,000 suppliers and that translates into a million skews.

Lynn Torrel:
So, that working across multiple industries makes it incredibly complex. So, the visibility that we have from our Pulse center, is incredible. It was a significant investment in the continuous innovation, and we've innovated even with lessons learned from COVID. And one of those was, and Dave, you mentioned that the tier two, tier three supplier and the lack of visibility, both from their supply chain, but as well as their financial health. And, that those are areas where we believe further furthering the capabilities of our system will require third party partners to support us with that information.

Lynn Torrel:
Because, even before COVID, we had environmental issues impacting our supply chain. Then you have the trade tensions, then the global pandemic, that need for resiliency and visibility is more critical than ever. And in some cases, it will require really an industry wide type of connection, to be able to gather the information in and provide that visibility. We have nine of those around the world, of Pulse centers. And they're wall length across a room, digitalization tools that provide live-streaming and really actionable insight for where we may have challenges. So is a very state-of-the-art, from what we've developed

Yossi Sheffi:
Absolutely, Dave, can you talk to us about, where do you see the most important investment in supply chain digitization? What problems are we trying to solve?

Dave Wheeler:
Sure, now we've made the decision too, as many companies have, either in the past or at least thinking about it, to really invest in a new ERP and a new supply chain planning suite, which will bring in demand sensing, actual sell-through data point of sale information, use AI to give us a better forecast, that's the expectation, because it all starts with the forecast. And so we're excited about that, we're about ready to get started on it.

Dave Wheeler:
So, as far as software and a platform, to help us tie, end to end supply chain together, that's a big deal for us. I would say on the product side, there are a couple of areas that really came to the forefront in 2021. One was, in the past we have done some 3D product modeling. So, our suppliers have capabilities, that we have helped them get ramped up with, to be able to create a 3D computerized model of a shoe, that's in the design phase.

Dave Wheeler:
And, in the past, we've created physical prototypes which get produced and then sent, transportation, handling, all that. All that adds about four to six weeks onto the overall production cycle. And if they get it wrong, then we start that over again. With the 3D model, which we've really invested quite a bit of money in. And just in the recent past, in 2020, we were able to really turn these prototypes quickly in the virtual world. And so that's been a big improvement for us in the digital transformation.

Dave Wheeler:
The next step is to be able to take that 3D model, and have a blowout into a bill of material, and digitally right to the shop floor. And so, there is a lot of work across a number of different suppliers, to help us get to that point as well. And I know a lot of companies, in our industry are working toward that. And that I think, will be true product, digital transformation, I'm excited about that.

Yossi Sheffi:
Good. Doesn't it change tax, let's go back to Lynn. During the pandemic, has it changed the way that as executive, you do your job? How you lead your organization? You have a pretty large organization reporting to you. And did it change your leadership style?

Lynn Torrel:
I think it probably enhanced some of the strategies that I've always employed. One of my leadership tenants has always been collaboration, I always believe that it's important to have teams working together to drive the best results, because it's a very complex industry that we're in. And, I think that came to another level during our pandemic, because certainly, I was relatively new to Flex when the pandemic broke out.

Lynn Torrel:
I joined of, October, of 2019. So, when we started those daily calls, with my leadership team who are phenomenal, who are experts in their area, we would have a discussion. And I said, I wanted to hear everybody's voice and everybody's concerned when we were having these discussions, because we needed to make quick decisions, to mitigate our supply chain. And we would meet again in the morning, in case we had to adjust them.

Lynn Torrel:
So, I would say, I think collaboration was something that increased across the organization, as people understood all aspects of our business needed to be in constant communication, to understand the customers, the suppliers, our manufacturing capabilities. We had our manufacturing sites closed down and open up, as our suppliers were closing down and opening up. So, we shifted product around the world, to make sure we could recognize revenue and support our customers.

Lynn Torrel:
So, collaboration was enhanced. And, I think communication, one of the things I learned personally is the importance of ongoing regular communication. In some cases, I thought it might be repetitive. But, recognizing the organization wanted to hear from the leadership team, even if in cases it wasn't perfect information, or we knew exactly what was going on, but really learned that regular communication to the employees was very important in such an uncertain time, that they would hear from the leadership team on the strategies we were employing for the business.

Yossi Sheffi:
Dave, what's going to say about your leadership style? And if anything jumped in during the pandemic.

Dave Wheeler:
I think I would just, 100 percent emphasize Lynn's points right on target, as far as communication, collaboration. I would just maybe add an additional point, that I've recognized certainly working in the virtual world, with the staff folks that are working from home and in other locations. My leadership style, went in the office has always been, let's have a meeting. And prior to that meeting, there's a lot of work that actually gets done.

Dave Wheeler:
After the meeting, when you're breaking up and having hallway conversation, a lot of work actually gets done there. And, in zoom calls or team calls, when you hit that leave button, that ends. And so, that's the part that I recognized that we were missing out on, even though during the meeting, super collaborative people can hop on, almost on a moment's notice, with no travel, which is fantastic.

Dave Wheeler:
But, intentionally carving out a little bit of extra time to connect into individuals, for five or 10 minutes, has made a big difference. Because after all, we're all part of the human race, we like to socialize, we want to talk about what's on our mind. And as we do that, we not only create new ideas and innovate, but we feel connected. And so, on top of what Lynn said, I just add that additional part.

Yossi Sheffi:
Certainly, people did amazing thing during the pandemic. I wrote a book, usually it takes me four years. I wrote it in four months, but that's nothing compared to developing the vaccine, that people can do. It takes 10 years, they could do it in eight, nine months, I mean, amazing, with new technology.

Yossi Sheffi:
So, I didn't mention the fact that Flex started making ventilators and New Balance started making masks, amazing how companies just did the right thing. And without much prodding and all these just, I've just mentioned that it was interesting to me that the masks that New Balance developed, were developed by the supply chain people, not by the designers.

Yossi Sheffi:
So, it looked great, but it's one thing to do, or discuss, or say, when the whole team feel this is a very new platform, it's important. And people work under a lot of adrenaline. The question is, so we learn how to do things fast, the question is how to keep some of this going forward?

Lynn Torrel:
Well, it's interesting. I had a discussion about this yesterday. Flexibility is in our name and in our DNA, I think at Flex. As a contract manufacturer and logistics provider, we support our customers and we have to be very agile. We are introducing new products around the world and any one of our factories, multiple new product introductions at the same time, that we're bringing products to end of life and managing that complexity of the supply chain.

Lynn Torrel:
So, it was, I would say we always work fast. And try and be flexible and agile to support our customers, because that's our business. When we moved into the ventilator production, we had passion, because we understood that we were making products that were desperately needed around the world to save lives. And that was something I felt was really critical for the organization.

Lynn Torrel:
I mentioned those 5:30 AM calls, because they were really early for me when the pandemic started. We've started getting ready to ramp our ventilator production. I was up before my alarm, I couldn't wait to get on the phone, to understand what we could do to get the products we needed, to get the engineering resources, the supply chain resources, to drive that product. So certainly that...

Lynn Torrel:
For our business, we need to be flexible and agile, but we certainly saw a difference in the level of passion during that time.

Yossi Sheffi:
Dave, how do you keep the spirit that made? I don't know. I describe in the book, making mask within, basically over a long weekend, putting together MIT and messages to general hospitals, that was an audio featuring material on hand and just doing it in there is really amazing.

Dave Wheeler:
You mentioned that it's a product of the supply chain, and that is a true design for manufacturing because we leveraged our available capabilities and materials. And, there was a ton of passion around it, no question about it. We did it within, like you said, a long weekend and really tapping into the talent that we needed to bring to the table, because we weren't masked as experts, we didn't work in the FDA world prior to this, we're footwear and apparel makers.

Dave Wheeler:
And so, there was a lot of learning and unfortunately folks came to the table and rallied together. I think, how do we keep that momentum up? We've learned a lot along the way, in the mask making business that has actually helped us. There are some lessons learned and new processes to your point. I mean, we made mistakes in the mask creation, we called back in March, we didn't even really know what type of mask to make.

Dave Wheeler:
Was it an N95 mask? A surgical mask? A basic face mask? What was the demand? And all these, changing consumer inputs and we made three versions within about six weeks, and we produced over a million masks and have donated those in hundreds of thousands of masks at this point. But certainly, lessons learned as far as implementing certain quality processes along the way as we shorten up that timeframe, so that we don't, incur any additional errors on our apparel and footwear business.

Dave Wheeler:
So kind of a combination of things of new processes to ensure quality, as we accelerate the process that's needed right now in this new consumer environment.

Yossi Sheffi:
I really want to thank both David and Lynn, for taking time out of what is a very busy and active schedule, still today to share with us some of the lessons we learnt from this year. Each and everybody, stay well.

Arthur Grau:
All right, everyone. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this edition of MIT Supply Chain Frontiers. My name is Arthur Grau, communications officer for the center. I invite you to visit anytime@ctl.mit.edu, or search for MIT Supply Chain Frontiers on your favorite listening platform, until next time.