Bart de Muynck: 0:03

Now if you go to even the biggest companies, but they don't have the latest and greatest technology. The kids nowadays will say, Yeah, I'll, I'll just go somewhere else cuz this is not cool, right? I don't wanna work with this kind of technology. So technology plays a big role on the talent side as well

Tom Raftery: 0:20

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain and I'm your host Tom Raftery Hi everyone. Welcome to the Digital Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and with me on the show today, I have my special guest, Bart. Bart, Welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Bart de Muynck: 0:44

Sure Tom, I'm very happy to. So I'm Bart de Muynck. I'm the Chief Industry Officer at Project 44. I joined Project 44 about seven months ago. Been in supply chain for the last 30 years. Started my career in Europe originally from Antwerp Belgium and now live in Texas in the us. And the previous eight years before joining Project 44, I was actually head of our logistics technology research at Gartner as a Vice President of research there, Tom

Tom Raftery: 1:14

Okay, you haven't kept that Belgian accent. I can hear the Texan twang coming through already.

Bart de Muynck: 1:21

It's always funny because when I talk to a Texan, they always know I'm not from here, but yet when I go to Europe, they think I'm, an American. So it's a little bit, you know, that kind of area of maybe not belonging in either one and yet belonging to both sides.

Tom Raftery: 1:34

Right. I haven't picked up the Spanish accent yet and I've been living here since 2008, so I dunno what's wrong with me

Bart de Muynck: 1:40

You could have fooled me, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 1:43

For, for people Bart who are unfamiliar with Project 44, can you explain who or what project 44 is?

Bart de Muynck: 1:52

Yeah. Happy to do so, Tom. So Project 44 as its mission, wants to connect the supply chain connective tissue in connecting all of the different players in that ecosystem. And so at the core, what we do is we provide a platform that connects to all the carriers, all the three pls, the brokers, the suppliers, the customers, and provide shippers, not just with that connectivity, but also with all the data that flows through there. That then in turn provides companies with data and data insights to help run their supply chains better and help them making more, better informed and better decisions.

Tom Raftery: 2:32

Okay. and let's dig into that a little, because it, it sounds, ideal. You can see everything, but can you actually see everything? And how can you see everything using the project 44 platform?

Bart de Muynck: 2:43

Yeah. Very good. Well, I would say, can you see everything? No, but that's what we're working on, right? Will I say, can we see a lot more today than what we saw yesterday? Yes. And what we saw 10 years ago and 20 years ago. As we know, supply chains, although in nature they are very connected, often they are very disconnected, and we've definitely have seen that during the last few years with all the supply chain disruptions and especially with the Covid pandemic. Companies really saw that they had a lack of that connectivity and collaboration, and a lot of it was based on a lack of access to data and data transparency. I would say today there is a lot more data out there. If you would look at some of the numbers, and I don't wanna scare people away, but we've gone from like two zetabytes of data in 2010, and a zettabyte is about the equivalent of a billion terabytes. We've gone to end of this year, we'll be already over 125 of those zetabytes. So in 12 years we went time 60 the amount of data that's available. Then the question is how do you get access to it? And again, because we've increased the amount of IoT devices, we have cloud platforms, it becomes easier to get access to that data. And so as Project 44, our core focus is how do you get connected to all of those sources and pull as much of that information in, and then look at how do you make sure it's high quality data and then kind of interpret the data and provide that back to the consumer of that data to our customer to make sure they can interpret the data in the way that is important to their business. And again, that can be different for a shipper versus a carrier versus another intermediary. They look at the data quite differently.

Tom Raftery: 4:33

Sure. Yeah, and I mean, one of the challenges I gotta think in supply chain is that there are so many stakeholders involved and connecting all of those up, so you can see the whole up and down of your supply chain has gotta be, That's gotta be one of the biggest challenges, right?

Bart de Muynck: 4:49

It, it is. And I think again, because of the situation we've seen in the last two years, people are more aware of that, right? So there's more of a need for it. But I would say people also understand they have to collaborate more and better, and they also at the same time understand that that. The core of collaboration is being connected, right? And that connectivity really starts when you integrate or you're able to integrate the different companies and, and provide that, that data and create that transparency. So we're seeing a lot more openness and willingness from companies to do that. And it's, it's a hard work, right? That's why, you know, there's not a huge amount of these platforms out there. There's a fair sum. And there's some like us that are bigger than others. And I will say it takes a lot of effort not necessarily to build the technology that kind of people see on their screens, but what really takes a lot of time and effort is to build all of those connections and the intelligence to make sure that you pull through those connections, the right quality of data.

Tom Raftery: 5:51

Okay. And is that the only challenge, or are you also facing mind shift challenges from people from being, you know, what we used to call server huggers to now sharing information? Is that a challenge or what other challenges are out there?

Bart de Muynck: 6:07

Yeah, it, it still is, right? And there's still many challenges out there. But again, that's why companies on their own wouldn't be able to solve and that that's why they come to a platform like Project 44. But I would say people sometimes, have the impression that because we went in many cases and transportation as a function is one of those places where we are using more and more cloud technology, cloud platforms that all of a sudden everything is just available in the cloud. But the fact is, when you're using routing solutions, last mile solutions, TMS solutions, you name it in the cloud, even these clouds are still quite segregated. One company from the other. So it's not like it just opens up the data to everyone. So that is, is a challenge, is that sometimes people think, Oh, we're in the cloud. So we just have magically all of that information connected between all the different companies. And the other part is still that a lot of companies have that mantra that we should not share data, right? So we see that, especially if you look at shippers, for example. They could be working a lot more together, but everyone's kind of going like, Oh, no, no, no. My data is so important and I can't share that. And we should go. And that's the challenge is how do you get people more and more to that mindset that we change that mantra to share as much as you can. And we've seen other industries that are already been successful at that. One example that comes to mind is a, Airbus has this consortium called Sky Wise where all of the different airlines that are buying these Airbus planes that a lot of 'em are direct competitors on the same routes that are sharing all of that information on all the Airbus airplanes within one big platform, and they found that they're a lot more efficient doing that. So we have to do similar things in transportation. But I will say, although it is a challenge when you bring people together on the platform where it is easier to be able to share the data and to collaborate together, then obviously you take kind of that challenge away from them around the technical part of realizing it. And also when you show 'em the value of it, we can really demonstrate it. That takes some of those concerns away as well.

Tom Raftery: 8:19

Okay. And we should of course, clarify for people. I mean, on this podcast we define supply chain has everything from engineering to manufacturing to logistics delivery, warehouse operations, field service management, the whole thing. But you're not that entire supply chain end to end. You're just tell people what, what slice of that you guys deal with.

Bart de Muynck: 8:43

Yeah, you're correct. What we are really focused on, you have, if you look at inventory, You kind of have inventory at rest, for example, what's in a warehouse and then you have inventory in motion when it moves. So we really focus on that inventory in motion. So, a product that somewhere gets out of a mine and gets transported to a warehouse where he goes from a supplier to a manufacturing location when he goes from that manufacturing location to a port or from a port to a dc from a DC to a store or potentially to a end consumer, to their home. We track all of that. So our focus is really how do you track all of the information around that product that's in motion, not just on the road. So we've extended as well from. The road into the yard of a company. So where you create yard visibility. So going beyond the gate and all the way to the dock door, and now we're even going onto the next phase where you can start looking at how does that product actually go into the dock door. As we're seeing even there advances being made in technology to use sensors and camera vision to look at product as it moves into the dock door, towards the warehouse.

Tom Raftery: 9:56

Nice. Nice. And is this, batch delivered data? Is it real time data? Is it, a mixture of both? How does that work?

Bart de Muynck: 10:06

Yeah. What we do as a core is we have a, an API first methodology, so we always try to get to the source where we get it realtime. And do it through an API interface because that's the highest quality, that's the best latency. It's timely, it's the highest quality of data. But in some cases, the reality is that not for every mode of transportation or for every carrier or every company out there that you might be able to use the api, so in other circumstances you might have to use other technology to get to the data. But mainly, and especially if it comes to like full truckload where you can access the telematics or in the US we call the ELD electronic login device, where you can pull that information real time. That's the preferred method.

Tom Raftery: 10:55

Okay, and talk to me a little bit about your new Movement platform.

Bart de Muynck: 10:59

Yeah, so Movement is a brand new platform. There's a couple of different aspects of it. So on the first part is that we did several acquisitions over the last year and a half. And the acquisitions we did was in different modal areas of transportation. So obviously when Project 44 started start on over the road ltl, then going into full truckload, et cetera. But for example, ocean, the data is quite different. So we acquired a company called Ocean Insights last year. That got us all the data. We acquired another company that focused on ocean clear metal, but really where the, the play was around their artificial intelligence, machine learning capabilities that we could apply to the entire ecosystem. And then we did acquisitions in other areas like synfil, which we acquired earlier this year, which is more focused on rail and intermodal and barge, which is much more used in Europe, for example. So the Movement platform really brings all of the different modes of transportation, all of those different data sources into one platform. So now you have truly end to end transportation visibility across all modes, across the whole globe in one single platform. And then we've added on top of that a brand new state of the art interface so that the customer experience in using the system is very adaptive to the user themselves and makes it really easy for them to get all the data they need at their fingertips. I would say our CEO would, would compare it a little bit to the first iPhone when it came out, right, where you had, hey, before you had multiple devices. That you really gotten into one device. And then on top of that, you added a completely new interface that you interact with. And then thirdly is what we call the data, what they, you know what with the iPhone is that the Apple store where you also add the content. So that is really what Movement is. It is truly the first global all modes platform with the newest state of the art inteface.

Tom Raftery: 13:06

Okay. And does that come with a suite of analytics as well?

Bart de Muynck: 13:10

Correct, Correct. Now people are using the platform a little bit different. So in some cases companies might say, Well, we're using our own control cap tower, which they might have created. Or in some cases they use their control towers from one of our partners, whether that's a Blue Yonder or even SAP, or an Oracle or an O9 Solutions. And so in those cases, what they really come to us for is the data. So in that case, we provide data as a service. And again, at the core what we provide is the connectivity and the data. So for those companies who do not have a control tower and do need a platform that also provide the analytics, we obviously have a full suite of analytics capabilities that can do analytics. Around the data, whether it's for visibility or it's around sustainability or other areas where we provide that on the platform.

Tom Raftery: 14:03

Okay. And talk to me a little bit about the sustainability, cuz that's kind of a hot button topic for me. So tell me a little bit what you're helping with there.

Bart de Muynck: 14:10

You're, you're absolutely correct. So on the sustainability side, we've seen that come up, especially in the last year, a lot more as a priority for companies. And for a lot of them it's around ocean. So on the ocean side, we provide reporting around ocean emissions. And if you look at it, all of the ships around the world, they're responsible for about a billion metric tons of CO2 emissions a year. And that's become a lot more important also because of next year IMO 2023 is a guideline that will go into effect where ships have to lower their carbon footprint. That means either you're bringing newer ships that have that lower carbon footprint and where we make that visible so when people make a choice and they can say, I'm gonna go with this steam line, or that steam line and difference on the ships can be three to four X as many emissions depending on the type of ship that you use. But the other part is the older vehicles will have to actually slow down to emit less carbon to emission. So now your sustainability is also impacting visibility because why? The transit times will go up, right? If you go one, knot per hours slower, obviously your transit time will take longer. So how do you take that into consideration? And then in places like Europe, the over the road the trucking part becomes a lot more important because there we're starting to see carbon reporting coming into place as of next year, but we're also seeing a lot of countries in the world where they're starting to introduce carbon taxes. Right. And right now we're seeing anywhere from $25 on the low end to almost $140 per metric, ton of CO2 of carbon taxes. Unfortunately, in the US there are no carbon taxes, so for the road part, we're seeing companies not necessarily being very focused on that because it's a little bit harder when there isn't a cost aspect with sustainability to really make it into an roi. So we have the leaders to companies that are, I would say, kind of top in what they're doing. They're doing sustainability no matter what cuz their customers are requiring it from them. But it's a little bit harder to sell Tom if there isn't a a cost involved. Whereas in Europe with the carbon taxes, it's a lot easier to, to sell a product where you say, Hey, here's a direct savings you can have because you know you're paying on all of those carbon emissions.

Tom Raftery: 16:35

Sure, Sure, sure. I gotta think with Tesla releasing their Tesla semi in December of this year with a reputed range of five to, I think it's depending on the battery, five to 700 mile range fully loaded. With a megawatt charger, meaning it can charge in 30 minutes., that's gonna make a huge difference because you mentioned roi, and of course if you're using an electric vehicle versus a diesel truck, the electric vehicle operating costs are significantly lower. The the cost to fill the tank, as it were, or the battery. Is gonna be much cheaper with electricity versus diesel. And the cost of maintenance of electric vehicles is roughly 50% of the cost of maintenance of internal combustion engine vehicles. So I suspect in the next year, 2, 3, 4 years, as more of these electric trucks come online from all the manufacturers, not just Tesla, that will significantly move the needle on that too.

Bart de Muynck: 17:35

Yeah, I would say on the one part, I do agree and I'm a big believer in, in electrification, but the problem is short term's, not gonna be a solution. And the reason is, I mean, PepsiCo is one of the first ones. My previous employer, I've worked for them for 10 years, from 2005 to the 2014. It's been a long time since they ordered those Tesla trucks, right. And they're just now starting to get the first ones. And unfortunately, there's not a lot of electric heavyweight trucks that are currently driving around, for example, in North America. And the amount that Dell will manufacturing is, is not gonna put a big dent in the overall. If you look at millions of trucks in North America, same in, in Europe. We're talking about currently hundreds of those vehicles on the heavy side. Right. Obviously we see more of that on the lighter commercial vehicles like vans and box trucks. We're seeing more of them. So unfortunately I think in the first 10 years it's gonna take a long time for production to keep up, to really make a big, big dent into that. And, and the other part is the infrastructure, right? Do we have the infrastructure? I think there are states in the US that are very good at that, like California, but the rest of them are way behind. If you compare that to Europe. Why are some of the, the countries so aggressive, like Scandinavia, Great examples, Scandinavian countries, some of the most advanced when it comes to sustainability, but that's also because the government not only provides tax breaks to companies investing in those new technologies, but they're also putting in place the infrastructure to support it. So, I, I think those are the countries together with, for example, Asia, where we're gonna see a lot more electrification and a lot faster then unfortunately, what we're seeing in the US.

Tom Raftery: 19:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're, you're absolutely right. I'm not sure about the time scale, we'll find out. But right now, just in personal transportation the waiting list for a new ev if you go to a dealer today is, depending on the manufacturer, six to 12 months. Maybe shorter with a Tesla, but they're more expensive. And maybe, maybe that's because they can be, because there's a shorter waiting list. And it just speaks to a, an excess of demand over supply. The manufacturers are supply constrained with access to batteries, and that's one of these things that, you know it swings one way and then it swings another way, and eventually it kind of all, it all balances out. But it, it, it also, I think, Talks to a, a trend of movement in all the sections towards electrification and transportation. And to your point, I think it's just can the manufacturers get the supply up to meet the, demand that is out there?

Bart de Muynck: 20:44

Yeah, you're absolutely correct, Tom. So part of it is do they have enough raw materials like for the batteries, right? Because part of sustainability is also, it's not just what's the emissions, but you also have to look at it from how are we depleting the planet? That's a big sustainability factor as well. And unfortunately a lot of what we're using to build these things is depleting the planet of a lot of resources or we're running out of them. And then the other part is things like a shortage of, of chips, for example. Right. And I was one of those people that I said, I care a lot about sustainability, so my next car has to be a sustainable vehicle. So I had ordered one of those beautiful. Rivian SUVs and that was early 2021 was supposed to get it late 2021. Then it became even later, then it became 2022. And then I think earlier this year, I got an email saying, You'll be lucky if you get it in 2024. And by the way, because of all the supply chain issues, we're gonna charge you 25% more than when you signed on. And I said, Well, thank you very little, but that's not really gonna help me. So cancel my order. And what I really realized, and that's probably an even more sustainable solution, is that I don't really need a car. So I've been without a car now for the last year and a half and when I do need a car, either I try to use sustainable transportation. Like there's this great company here in Dallas that's called Ecar and all of their, it's like Uber. But they only use Tesla. So all their vehicles are electric. And they also, for every customer that comes on board, they plant a tree out there. So, from that perspective, there are challenges, like you said, that yes, I think very many people are interested in these beautiful new electric car. I mean, there's many examples, right? I mean, rance, completely new type of car that Teslas are great. You see even the, the high performance vehicles, like Porsche, right? Coming with a Taycan, gorgeous, gorgeous vehicle. But the problem is that people now starting to understand not only is it sustainable, a lot of these are actually a lot more I would say powerful than their combustion engine competitors. But the problem is if you want to go buy them, try try and get one. And, and you'll be on the wait list, right? And then what do you do? In the meantime, you'll probably go like, Well, I still have to get, have a car, and then I'll just buy another combustion engine in the meantime,

Tom Raftery: 23:02

So I, I had an issue like that not so long ago, and my answer to that was to go to the secondhand market and buy a secondhand ev and that meant I could turn it around in a couple of weeks. So it made, it made a huge difference. And you don't lose that. You know that that sudden drop when you take the, the, the car outta the dealership when it's, when it's new, you don't get that if you're buying secondhand. So that, that can help as well. There there isn't as great an availability cuz there's a big demand for secondhand anything these days, but , but it, it is one way that you can if, if possible, you know, and avoid that six to 12 to whatever month wait anyway.

Bart de Muynck: 23:40

And I think the, the next step even there, Tom, is how do you then take those? For example, we talked about electric trucks, right? Then we go from electric trucks to autonomous trucks that are also electric, right? So now you're bringing the electrification technology together with kind of the AI machine learning capabilities. But what's important there as well, when you start seeing that, and again, I'm a big believer in autonomous vehicles because it will reduce transit times, which is gonna have a huge impact. On where companies have to have inventory. And it can reduce their inventory and number of inventory locations dramatically. But the more you automate right, the more there's a need for data. Cuz the data is what's gonna connect it all. And the connectivity becomes important because we're talking about more and more even machine ordering. So it's no longer a customer puts an order, it's the machine that creates the order and, and we have systems that can automatically receive the order and automatically plan it and dispatch it. So with autonomous vehicle, now you can imagine your future, it will just call one of these vehicles as a, a truck as a service, right? Where it just sends another API to call that truck and then it, it gets to the dock door, maybe even robots load that truck. So that whole system, when you take the person out, it's all underbuilt with data. So the data becomes even more important, and the fact that you have that data that you can connect it. To all those different players, to the future carrier that's maybe has those, those, and it might be the manufacturers themselves that provide a service, right? You, you don't buy a car, you don't buy a truck. It's truck as a service. It's car as a service. But you need the technology to communicate and connect and collaborate between the different players to really support and automate that whole end to end process.

Tom Raftery: 25:25

Very good. Very good. Bart, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Bart de Muynck: 25:38

Yeah, I would say a couple of things, right? Which is kind of what, what is next in, in this visibility stage, because I always refer to visibility as a journey. And we're still in the first phases of the journey, which is yes, we are creating the networks. Yes, we are collecting a lot of data, and yes, we have analytics we can provide to the customers, right? But then the next step is how do you now use that analytics and the data to go from more historical and diagnostic and maybe even predictive to more predictive and even prescriptive, to then start putting in place the, the right steps to get to automation, and I'm not talking about automation in the sense of we're gonna automate everything and we won't need humans anymore. Right. I always refer to it as we have human intelligence within transportation. It's still people running the process, but we using the systems to help to make their job more efficient. To do it better, to, to handle more transactions. But at the end of the day, we're now also starting to use technology for people to enjoy their job more. So at the end of the day, you can attract talent and you can also retain your talent. And talent is, is one of those other challenges that we see. So technology can be placed not just to help with your current process but can also help you in the future to be able to attract your talent. And what people need when they do digital transformation is to attract digital talent. So how do you do that if you don't have the right technologies to use, those people will never want to come and work for you. I think we were probably born in an age where when we came outta college, you wanted to go for the big companies, the big firms. Now if you go to even the biggest companies, but they don't have the latest and greatest technology. The kids nowadays will say, Yeah, I'll, I'll just go somewhere else cuz this is not cool, right? I don't wanna work with this kind of technology. So technology plays a big role on the talent side as well.

Tom Raftery: 27:37

It's a fine point. Yep, yep. Absolutely, Bart. Really interesting. If people want to know more about yourself or about Project 44 or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Bart de Muynck: 27:49

Yeah, I would say obviously a great source is to go to project 40 four.com, our website. And then also you can look me up Bart de Muynck on LinkedIn. More than happy to either provide you with any answers to your questions that you have or connect you to the right people at our company that can provide those, those answers. And you'll see we have quite a bit of material also on the website with regards to our company re regards to our new platform Movement as well. Some of the other things that we're doing and that we're working on.

Tom Raftery: 28:20

Superb, superb. Bart, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Bart de Muynck: 28:25

Tom it was great being on here and I appreciate you having me on and I love the discussion. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, simply drop me an email to Tom raftery@outlook.com. If you'd like to show, please, don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast. Application of choice, to be sure to get new episodes. As soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.