The Infrastructure Technology Podcast Explores the Supply Chain

Welcome to the first episode of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast, presented by Roads and Bridges and Mass Transit magazines!

Hosts Gavin Jenkins, Brandon Lewis and Harlee Hewitt introduce themselves and share their excitement about launching the podcast. They also discuss their locations and briefly talk about how they began thinking more about the supply chain, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The episode focuses on the supply chain and its relationship with technology. Guest Gary Smith, a supply chain expert with 40 years of experience, provides insights into the evolution of the supply chain, starting from its early days as "physical distribution", to its modern form influenced by technology like AI and RFID. He explains how the supply chain has become essential in competitive industries, particularly mass transit and construction.

Smith shares how events like the COVID-19 pandemic and disruptions like the key bridge collapse in Baltimore highlight the fragility of supply chains. He emphasizes the need for visibility across the entire supply chain to handle disruptions and manage risks.

Gavin Jenkins (00:03):

Welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. My name is Gavin Jenkins, senior managing editor of Roads and Bridges, and with me are my co-hosts and co-producers, Brandon Lewis, the associate editor of Mass Transit Magazine. And we have Harlee Hewitt, who is a jack of all trades here at Endeavor Business Media. We have her on Roads and Bridges as associate editor, and she is also on Construction Equipment as associate editor. Brandon, Harlee, eelcome to the podcast. This is our first episode. How do you feel?

Brandon Lewis (00:38):

Well, thanks Gavin. Appreciate it. This has been a long time coming. It's been months of anticipation and planning and meeting and can't wait to finally be here today.

Gavin Jenkins (00:52):

Harlee, how you feel?

Harlee Hewitt (00:55):

Yeah, lots of work, but really good work, really beneficial work, and I'm really excited to dive into the technology side of our industries and how it's benefiting us and all of the innovation that we've spoke to people about.

Gavin Jenkins (01:10):

Okay, excellent. Excellent. So for our listeners out there, we are not in the same room. We are recording this over Teams, and I am in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and with me are two people who are in the Cleveland area, just up the highway. And what part of Cleveland are you in, Brandon?

Brandon Lewis (01:33):

So I am in Rocky River, Ohio. It's a suburb just outside of downtown, approximately 15 minutes.

Gavin Jenkins (01:40):

Okay, so you are in Cuyahoga County?

Brandon Lewis (01:43):

I am, yes.

Gavin Jenkins (01:44):

Okay. And Harlee Hewitt, you are originally from Oklahoma?

Harlee Hewitt (01:49):

I sure am, yeah.

Gavin Jenkins (01:51):

And you've moved to Cleveland, Ohio, after graduating from college. What part of Cleveland are you in?

Harlee Hewitt (01:59):

I'm in the Cleveland Heights area, so I'm in the heights. From a different direction, I'm also about 15 minutes away from downtown.

Gavin Jenkins (02:11):

Yeah, I have friends from Cleveland, and I've always asked them why do they call it heights instead and just hills?

Harlee Hewitt (02:20):

Right.

Gavin Jenkins (02:21):

It sounds so snooty.

Harlee Hewitt (02:24):

It does, and there are multiple, so it really becomes elitist I think with people. They have their friends.

Gavin Jenkins (02:31):

But it's a working class area. I just don’t get it.

Harlee Hewitt (02:34):

I don't either.

Gavin Jenkins (02:35):

Can you imagine in Michigan instead of Auburn Hills, it was Auburn Heights. It wouldn't fit Michigan. Okay, so we're talking about technology, and we're going to be examining the technology side of our two respective industries, Roads and Bridges, the construction industry of Roads and Bridges and Mass Transit, public transportation, rail, bus, everything in that regard. We're going to start off with the basics, and we're going to start off where both industries connect and have in common, and that's the supply chain. And so, I want to ask, we'll start with you, Harlee. Before the pandemic, did you ever think about the supply chain?

Harlee Hewitt (03:21):

I didn't, and I think it's because it's something that as you'll see our incoming guests talk about on this episode, it's a blind art. It's something that we don't think about at all because we are so, in this country, ready to consume. We're so used to going to the grocery store and seeing rows and rows and rows of things waiting for us. [We have] many options to the point of being paralyzed by choice I think sometimes, so you don't think about it, but I specifically remember in COVID that image, right of the paper towels and all the toilet paper being gone. And it not only being a problem of everyone needing to buy it up because we weren't sure of what was happening, but because it wasn't able to get to us in the ways that it usually is. So that image kind of sticks with me but definitely not before COVID had I thought too intensely about it. What about you, Brandon?

Brandon Lewis (04:31):

So no, I never intentionally thought about it either. In college, right before COVID, I took an economics class, and we would talk about supply and demand and how sort of that supply chain may loop into that. And again, maybe somewhere along the lines, I may have heard of it in a political ad or a reference or something like that, but never fully thought about it until like you said, Harlee, I am standing there at the grocery store trying to collect all of these things because my city is about to shut down, and there's nothing on the shelf.

Gavin Jenkins (05:08):

Well, okay, so you referenced college, we referenced college with Harlee. So, I think we should tell the listeners a little bit more about ourselves. I want to start with ages. Brandon, how old are you?

Brandon Lewis (05:19):

It's funny. I have to think about this more than I should for my young age, but I just turned 26, about two and a half weeks ago.

Gavin Jenkins (05:27):

Oh my God. And Harley, how old are you?

Harlee Hewitt (05:32):

I'm 25, and I turn 26 in a little over two weeks.

Gavin Jenkins (05:38):

Wow. So wait, you're a Scorpio.

Harlee Hewitt (05:41):

I'm a Scorpio.

Gavin Jenkins (05:42):

Okay. Intense.

Harlee Hewitt (05:43):

Intense.

Gavin Jenkins (05:44):

You are intense.

Harlee Hewitt (05:45):

[I] think About everything too hard.

Gavin Jenkins (05:46):

Yeah, I also am a Scorpio, but I am not turning 26 in two weeks. On November 7^th, I will be turning 44, and so I am much older than both of you, and I also did not really think about the supply chain until the pandemic, but our guest today has been thinking about the supply chain for most of his life, and he is such an expert. It was such a joy to get to interview Gary Smith, who has more than 40 years in supply chain management, and he is a recent retiree from the transit industry. He is currently an adjunct professor at Rutgers University, which is the alma mater of our producer, Ryan Curtiss. But Gary Smith also is a freelance writer. He spent nine years as the chief of supply chain, EAM at MTA, New York City Transit. He was also a vice president of supply logistics for the MTA. He was the director of supply chain operations for the New York Housing Authority, and he also had his own logistics consulting company. This guy is an expert, and he knows how the supply chain impacts all industries, especially ours. So, let's dive into my interview with him. Ryan Curtis will take us away.

Gavin Jenkins (07:35):

Gary Smith, welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. How are you today?

Gary Smith (07:39):

I'm doing great, Gavin.

Gavin Jenkins (07:41):

Alright, well we're here to talk about the supply chain and its relationship with technology, but first, let's start here. It seems, and this is very anecdotal, but it seems that no one really talked about the supply chain until the pandemic, and it became an issue, so let's discuss what is the supply chain?

Gary Smith (08:07):

Okay, let's start out by telling you that several years ago, I've been involved in a professional organization called ASCM, which is the Association of Supply Chain Management, and several years ago when I was working with them on a committee, we came up with a definition, what we call our elevator speech for supply chain. And hopefully it will make some sense to you, but it says this: If every organization has a supply chain, the most efficient and effective ones are the closed loop systems for moving, storing and configuring products, starting with raw materials and ending with a satisfied customer. Whether it's moving information or physical goods, nothing happens until something moves. That in essence is a supply chain, okay? Now, to give you a little more background, I consider myself a second generation supply chain professional. I toured my first distribution center with my father, and he was in supply chain with Montgomery Wards and a number of retail operations in his life, but I toured my first distribution center when I was seven-years-old, so it's kind of in my blood and to give you sort of a brief history of supply chain and where we get to right now in my father's time, it was called physical distribution. When I started my career, it was basically logistics. It really didn't become supply chain until the term supply chain was really coined in the 1980s, but it didn't catch on until the nineties or so when consulting firms, when big consulting firms started using it and developing supply chain practices. And what became supply chain management really started as three different functions: Purchasing, warehousing and transportation, and these functions for the longest time were separate and considered cost centers. And as cost centers, the goal was to minimize the impact to the company or to the organization and drive costs out of the system, but what happened was in the 1960s, there developed a program called MRP, which is Manufacturing Resource Planning, and what that did was this was developed by a guy named George Licke, and he was in IBM, and he took the Toyota production system and started playing with it basically on the computer and came up with a way of refining it such that instead of these three functional silos, they decided, well if we can combine these things and then start looking at costs that were common to all of them, and if we reduce costs, we could reduce costs significantly, but also at the same time, make an impact on the overall supply chain. So, in other words, if you were reducing costs in transportation, you may be by driving down and getting the cheapest transportation costs, it might affect your delivery dates because you may be having a very cheap, getting a very cheap trucking rate, but it's not going to get there on time.

Gavin Jenkins (12:11):

So basically, I want to jump in real quick. So basically, technology and the beginning of the computer age has been the driving force behind the modern supply chain as we know it.

Gary Smith (12:22):

Yeah, exactly, and so, what's happened over the last 30 years, we've leveraged technology to where supply chain improving supply chain management becomes a competitive advantage to an organization. If you can get your materials in faster, cheaper, better than your competitor, then you can satisfy the market faster. When I was at the MTA, relating this to Mass Transit, my goal was to get the materials into the warehouse and then out to the repair, whether it was to the subway barns or to the bus depots, get those repair parts out there, so that we could turn those buses faster, and we could turn those trains faster, so that they could get back out there because rolling stock that's out for repair doesn't generate any revenue. And the idea there is by keeping it, by minimizing the time that it took to turn buses and trains around and getting it through the system, we could ultimately satisfy the ultimate customer, which was the transportation riding public.

Gavin Jenkins (14:02):

Alright, well with that as the definition, let's sidetrack for a second, and let's talk about you.

Gary Smith (14:10):

Okay.

Gavin Jenkins (14:11):

You retired in 2022, but you're still very much focused on the supply chain, and you're freelance writing. You're also an adjunct professor at Rutgers University, where you're teaching, was it business analytics in terms of the supply chain?

Gary Smith (14:27):

Well, the course is called Business Logistics and Transportation Logistics. It's a required course, undergraduate course, and so it's a lot of fun.

Gavin Jenkins (14:38):

Yeah. Oh, I'm sure it is. So, what is it about the supply chain that fascinates you? It's like you're retired and you just can't quit, you can't walk away from the supply chain. What is it that you love about it? And obviously, like you said, it's been a part of your life since you were a child, and then from there, talk to us a little bit about how it's evolved.

Gary Smith (15:04):

Well, it's always been a challenge because there's so many different parts of it that you could get involved in. I mean, I've been involved from the operations standpoint, running warehouses, the consulting standpoint where I designed facilities. I developed networks. I did studies on inventory management, inventory control and things like that. There's always something to do there. If you're a technology person, the technology, the issues that you have with it, there's always something that's happening. I mean, just look at what happened with COVID. I mean, it was funny because for the longest time, for example, my wife always tells a story, she really didn't know what I did for a living in supply chain, but when COVID hit, and she started seeing things, the grocery store shelves going empty, or she couldn't get paper products or things like that, and she started paying attention to it, she realized the importance of what we did because trying to get material from point of manufacturer to the point of consumption can be a real art, and you don't notice it until you can't get something, and that's what happened during COVID. And so, it really brought things to the forefront. So that's one of the things, And I've written a number of articles on the industry and in what's happened during COVID and in the post-COVID world, and there's just so much that's happening right now with the retirement of the Baby Boomers and the amount of change that is happening due to technology. And we talk about that, and we talk AI and things along robotics and things like that, the amount of change that's happening that is really disrupting what's happening in the world. And then you have the issues with things like climate change and stuff like that, where we're dealing with those kind of changes, and they all have an effect on taking products from point of origin and manufacturer to the point of consumption and how that works. I mean even with right now, we're dealing with things like there's a terrorist in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal playing with traffic there and disrupting traffic. We have strikes going on. We're looking at the strikes from the longshoremen and the Gulf states and in the east coast now we had that. And also, there's some issues, labor issues in Europe, ect. Also, the key bridge at Baltimore, and that was another disruption, and it was unfortunately, it was a terrible fluke, a terrible tragedy. But all these things happen, and they're constant issues with dealing with getting things to people on time.

Gavin Jenkins (19:00):

So if I may, let me just ask then. It sounds like, I started off this question with asking what are you still so fascinated with after over 40 years? And it sounds like that you are in love with this industry because it touches every aspect of life and also there's an art form to it. There's an art form to it to make it run properly, and if it's running properly, no one notices.

Gary Smith (19:34):

You basically hit the nail on the head, and you're absolutely right. It's great. There's always something to challenge you, and yet, at the same time, when things are running smoothly, that's when you know that something else on the other shoe's going to drop somewhere because nothing happens until something moves, as I said earlier. And so, it's fascinating from that standpoint and the creativity of a lot of these solutions really make it elegant, and technology has been a big part of it, but the point being is that technology is just one part of it. I look at supply chain as having four parts: People, material, equipment and space, and you need all four of those things working together.

Gavin Jenkins (20:38):

Alright, well let's talk about the creativity aspect of it because I think that's what a lot of the listeners will be interested in. Let's talk about how the supply chain adapts. There seem to be so many factors that impact the supply chain. Extreme weather, geopolitics, piracy, war, the economy, a pandemic like you mentioned, freak accidents like the key bridge collapsing in Baltimore. Am I missing anything? How does the supply chain become more agile and adaptable when there are so many factors at play? Is there a magic bullet to build a more adaptable supply chain?

Gary Smith (21:19):

Actually no, there is no magic bullet. It's really hard work and creativity that really makes it happen, but one of the things when you look at the pre-COVID world, we adapted and we made, we focused on basically three things: Cost reduction, efficiency and inventory visibility. Those were the three things. The problem was once COVID hit, we realized that those things shouldn't be the focus. Supply chains became very brittle, and they fell apart. We had all the issues with not being able to get things to where they ultimately were, your inventory. We were too lean as far as with inventory. We cut our inventories too much and what happened was within 24 hours, we were out of parts in some places, that type of stuff. And so, what we needed to focus on and what we've been focusing on ever since then is we're looking at instead of cost reduction, we're looking at the reduction of risk. We realized that risk is an important thing. Nobody ever thought of the issue with something like COVID would basically stop the world. Well, the problem was is that we've dealt with pandemics before, and we should have predicted. That should have been one of the things that we looked at, but we didn't look at. Then, we need to talk about efficiency. Instead of being efficient, we need to be effective. And thirdly, instead of focusing on inventory visibility, we need to have the end to supply chain visibility, so we know where everything is. And again, a lot of that has to deal with technology, but a lot of that deals with basically a lot of the concepts we've come up with and a lot of the strategies that we've come up with in order to make that happen, make that technology work.

Gavin Jenkins (23:58):

Alright, well let's dive back into the key bridge for a second, If we could. Devastating event for the city of Baltimore, but also for the supply chain industry. Tell us, has the supply chain globally recovered from that accident, and what has the impact of the bridge collapse been like?

Gary Smith (24:19):

Well, fortunately, from what I know at this point, they've cleared away a lot of the wreckage of the bridge, and ships are now able to get into the harbor, and so that means that things can be loaded and unloaded again. They'll still have to rebuild the bridge and all that kind of stuff, but the traffic over the bridge still won't happen. But commerce is starting to happen again. The issue there had been that Baltimore was one of the largest ports of entry for automobiles coming from Europe, for example, and what they had to do in the short term was shift a lot of that to basically where I am right now in Brunswick, Georgia, where they have another huge port for. It's like the second largest port for unloading ships or unloading cars in the United States, and they had to move things, shift things down there. They've had to, so that had a big impact in the short run, but I think now the car parts and the cars themselves have started to shake out a little bit more. Of course, now I don't know if you'd noticed, if you've heard of this, but there was actually, hackers got into the parts and started hacking into car parts, so that a lot of repairs on cars at the local stations couldn't be done because they hacked in there, and they kind of destroyed the inventory systems, which is now being rebuilt and will have to take a couple of weeks to get done.

Gavin Jenkins (26:32):

Really?

Gary Smith (26:32):

Yeah.

Gavin Jenkins (26:34):

Was it specific to European cars like Mercedes?

Gary Smith (26:36):

No. Well, I think it was specific to a lot of American cars. I don't know specifically. I know Volkswagen wasn't hit too bad. I have a Volkswagen. We were kind of concerned about that. But anyway, bottom line was, there's always, like I said, something out there, whether it's hackers, which gets into the whole issue of supply chain security, and that's a whole other podcast I think at some point.

Gavin Jenkins (27:14):

Alright, well we'll have you back on when we hit supply chain security. Let's talk about materials for construction. I know that's what my readers for Roads and Bridges will be interested in. How does the supply chain impact the construction of roads and bridges in the materials that come in for that? Whether it's materials that go into the pavement or just materials that go into the construction equipment parts?

Gary Smith (27:45):

Well, again, it all feeds into the same thing, but the issues that you have there, where are you getting that material from? How is it being transported to where it needs to go and is it coming from overseas? Is it made domestically, ect. and how does it get there? A lot of big bulky things like things for construction can come by train and that's, luckily our train system is probably one of the best in the world as far as being able to move large quantities of bulk freight, and so things like sand and concrete and the bulk, things like that, or steel, those are the kind of things that can be moved in trains. Railroads can move those things very, very efficiently. Yeah.

Gavin Jenkins (29:08):

I'm glad that you mentioned that because whenever I think of the supply chain, I think of cargo ships, and I think of things coming from overseas, and it's important to note that a large part of the supply chain is domestic and just shipping things from say, the southwest up to the northeast.

Gary Smith (29:27):

And the thing is, what we've got here, I mean, you got to look at the modes of transportation basically. You've got trucking, you've got rail, you've got air, and you've got ship international, and there's various pieces to all of those and pipeline. So, we're not dealing with pipeline so much, although building the pipelines could be one of the issues, but most of the modes of transportation we'd be dealing with are basically truck and rail and maybe some air if you've really got to move stuff. I just saw something, in fact on LinkedIn, where they're actually building, they're actually built a plane, an airplane that will take the blades for wind turbines, and you can ship those because those things are too long to be pulled by a truck and too long to put on a train. But this plane is actually bigger than a 747.

Gavin Jenkins (30:40):

Yeah, it's not called the Spruce Moose, is it?

Gary Smith (30:43):

No, it's not the Spruce Goose. I can't remember the name of it, but I just saw it today on LinkedIn. It's kind of fascinating because, and it's designed to land on dirt, you don't need an airport to land. You can land on a flat piece of dirt, and it's short takeoff and landing.

Gavin Jenkins (31:10):

Okay.

Gary Smith (31:10):

So, it's fascinating, and so they're really coming up with these things, so that they can build bigger and more powerful wind turbines.

Gavin Jenkins (31:21):

Yeah, well we definitely need to move bigger pieces of infrastructure across the country. Let's talk about end-to-end visibility and it's part of eight steps that you've outlined before in your writing, but talk about those eight steps and beginning with what is end-to-end visibility and how can technology improve visibility in the supply chain?

Gary Smith (31:46):

Okay, well this started with an article that I wrote called After the Dust Settles, which was in supply chain management review several years ago, but end-to-end visibility really is the ability to know where your products are at any point in the supply chain and it's using end-to-end visibility. A party can track the progress of their products from the time the order is placed till when it's delivered and also be able to check that there's really basically three parts to this as well. I said delivery end-to-end visibility will tell you when the product or order will arrive at your destination. Risk ended visibility will tell you if there are any issues with the product. In other words, is it going to get there on time? Is there a problem with the manufacturer or things like that, so the point being is that you want to be able to see where anything is and determine whether or not it's when it's going to be delivered to you and also where it is, when it is and how it's going to get there. And the bottom line here is that, and not only is it between your supplier, basically you as either the middle party or could be a manufacturer, you could be a retailer, ect., and then your customer, but you're also dealing with, that's just your tier one. And a lot of companies don't even know who their tier one supplier, all their tier one suppliers and all their tier one customers. The thing is end-to-end visibility tries to trace it to the tier two and the tier three if they're going back basically to the dirt origins of the manufacturer and all the way to an ultimate customer because if you're manufacturer, if you're manufacturing something, you could be selling it to a person, but you also be selling it to a retailer. That retailer could then be selling it to a person, or you could be selling it to a wholesaler that goes to a retailer, so it's having that end-to-end visibility. You can then track and say, I've got so much inventory in the pipeline, so if something goes, there's a supply chain interruption from a supplier, okay, well, I've still got two months worth of supply in the pipeline going out to my ultimate customers, so it gives me some wiggle room to be able to help my suppliers with their problems, ect. So, the whole point is having that end-to-end visibility where we're using technology with RFID, with internet of the Internet of things ect., and with things like transportation management systems, ect., you can then be able to keep almost a real time inventory of where everything is in the entire pipeline.

Gavin Jenkins (35:42):

Okay. Alright, so this is a loaded question, and I'm going to ask it, and we're going to dive into it. What role does politics play in the supply chain and do politics impact how each part of the supply chain gets funding and/or operates?

Gary Smith (36:02):

Well, some of this I'm going to be working without a net on, but I will tell you because I don't know a lot about the funding issues, ect., but the point being is that my experience in working within the public sector when supply chain is something where you don't really, it is not a sexy thing. It is okay to be able to, for a regular consumer to go to Amazon and say, ‘Oh, I can find my stuff out here, and I can track my shipment through Amazon’, but nobody cares about that. The ultimate riding public, for example, in mass transit or they just want things to work, or they want a USB port on their bus or subway train. They don't necessarily care how that material gets on the bus. They don't care that you're trying to put together a plan to get better information and to be able to smooth out your supply chain glitches and things like that in the process. What you want to be able to do, because investing in supply chain technology in the public sector is to get people to actually buy into that is really tough because it doesn't buy you a lot of votes. In some cases, they just want it to work. The issue there is, which is one of the reasons why a lot of technology in the public sector is at least a generation behind, what's happening in the leaders in the private sector. There's a supply chain maturity model out there that Gartner, which is a consulting firm, put together, and it's a five-step, where one is the least sophisticated supply chain and five is the most sophisticated. The transit industry and public sectors, ect, they're about a one, one and a half. In some cases, Amazon is a five. Okay, and not that everybody needs to be a five, but I think that based on my experience with mass transit, ect., and the public sector, we should at least be at a three. We need to be investing not only in the technology, but also in our people to get them up to speed and make sure that they’re able to solve these problems because solving the problems will drive down the cost of operations in the long run, and that's really the key.

Gavin Jenkins (39:25):

Yeah, I was going to get us out of here and ask you a question about the future of the supply chain, but I feel like so many of your answers here have really pointed to how the future could be shaped if we invest in it, which was your last point right there, so I want to get you out of here on this question instead: You’re a second generation supply chain industry, so your dad was in it. Tell us a little bit about your dad. How long did he work in the supply chain industry and is he with us today?

Gary Smith (40:03):

No, he passed away many years ago.

Gavin Jenkins (40:07):

What would he think of the supply chain today?

Gary Smith (40:12):

I think he'd be absolutely floored by it. He would love it. He started his career at Montgomery Wards, which was to some of your older listeners, they may remember Montgomery Wards as a department store and a catalog store. He was in the catalog division, and then in the early sixties, a bunch of the guys from Montgomery Wards started JC Penney's catalog center in Milwaukee, and he was one of the first people to get involved in that and built up an organization that they designed their own distribution centers, they built them, they were able to pick something, get an order in, pick it [up] the next day and ship it out the third day. And back then, when you're dealing with computers that the computer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, drove the center in Atlanta where my father was the first catalog center manager. And to have that system there, which was incredible, and these were all done with holler Earth cards, the old IBM cards to run your programs and things like that, and everything was done from that, and I think he would just be extremely proud to see what has happened with supply chain in the last 40 years.

Gavin Jenkins (42:04):

That's cool. That's really cool. Well, thank you so much for your time, your expertise, having spent half your career in the private sector and then moving into the public sector. Thank you for your service and for lending your expertise to us today and come back again and talk to us here on the ITP anytime.

Gary Smith (42:25):

Alright. I think it's great. Thank you so much for having me and I look forward to doing this again sometime. Thanks, Gavin.

Gavin Jenkins (42:41):

Alright, well that was my interview with Gary Smith. Brandon, Harlee, what did you think? Start with you, Harlee.

Harlee Hewitt (42:49):

Yeah, so I think that it's really compelling to me how the scope really of what he covered. So I mean, he talks about supply chains. As he said it, before they were even really supply chains, as we think of them today, 30-plus years ago, really before technology started to take a real hold of how they're streamlined today. And then he goes all the way into the integration of these technologies and even AI more recently, and how even though they are supposed to streamline processes that they have, it kind of is just adding another layer of complexity and like he called it, adding to this blind art of every component kind of has to be in line. Every gear has to be shifting in the right way, and if it's not, you can see things slowed down really significantly. So, I just thought it was interesting. I mean, he covers as a professional in the business for so long as we covered in his bio, he was able to give that entire kind of history, and I thought that was really interesting, as again, someone who had never thought about the supply chain really in depth before COVID. So, yeah.

Gavin Jenkins (44:10):

Brandon, what did you think?

Brandon Lewis (44:12):

Yeah, it was a great history lesson of the supply chain, and I think one of the things he really did was make it clear what the supply chain is and what he sort of did for a living. Because the best part I thought of the whole interview is when he said his wife didn't really know what he did for a living until COVID-19 wiped out the entire supply chain, and I thought he also made a really good point, and we talked about it before the interview today, we're talking about it now, about COVID and the pandemic, but he said there were all these factors about not only supply chain, but about where we were sort of heading as a country before the pandemic, and that really, we should have seen this coming.

Gavin Jenkins (45:06):

And that's where the technology aspect comes into it, and the supply chain industry is only going to get more advanced with AI, and we're really on the cusp of a revolution in how our supply chain runs. And so, it was really important to have Gary Smith on as our first interview, as we dive into technology and how it is shaping our respective industries, but for me, what I walked away from that interview with was the connection he had to the supply chain as a child coming from his dad, and I've been the managing editor of Roads and Bridges now for three years, and family is a huge part of our industry. And whether it's asphalt plants being passed down from father to son, or it's daughters getting into the infrastructure industry, following in their dad's footsteps, there's a family aspect to construction that is undeniable, and it was really fascinating for me to hear of how he considers himself a second generation supply chain expert, and that was really cool. Okay, well that was episode one, first episode in the books. For Brandon Lewis and Harlee Hewitt, I'm Gavin Jenkins, and this is the ITP, that's what we're calling it, the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. And join us next time, where we will be talking to Darcy Bullock from Purdue University and Terry Meti, how do I pronounce that?

Brandon Lewis (47:03):

Mestas

Gavin Jenkins (47:04):

Mestas. We're going to be talking about traffic control and infrastructure. That's in episode two. Join us in a couple of weeks for that. Thank you to Endeavor Business Media for producing this and thank you to Ryan Curtiss, who is our producer. Goodbye everybody, and you'll hear us next time.