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Pawan Joshi is executive vice president, product management and strategy, at E2open. In this role, he is responsible for corporate strategy as well as product and technology strategy. Joshi works closely with customers to understand and address their evolving supply chain needs while ensuring alignment across customer-specific solutions, E2open products, and overall company goals and strategic direction. He is also responsible for the evaluation of new technologies and products, along with E2open’s acquisition strategy. Joshi has been with E2open for over a decade and has held multiple leadership roles in product management, professional services, and sales.
Prior to serving at E2open, he spent three years at i2 Technologies in product management, where he helped companies in the manufacturing, transportation, and retail sectors optimize key business processes for maximum profitability.
Joshi received his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (New Delhi) in manufacturing sciences and engineering. He then completed his master’s degree in manufacturing systems engineering and ultimately his Ph.D. in industrial engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Joshi has also taught graduate courses in manufacturing systems and distributed supply chains.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 00:01
Shippers reclaim the skies. Trailer-loading robots are coming. And new technicians in trucking. Pull up a chair and join us as the editors of DC Velocity discuss these stories, as well as news and supply chain trends, on this week's Logistics Matters podcast.
Hi, I'm Dave Maloney. I'm the group editorial director at DC Velocity. Welcome.
Logistics Matters is sponsored by nVision Global. nVision Global is a leader in global freight management solutions and services, specializing in freight audit and payment, order management, supplier management, visibility, TMS, and freight-spend analytics. Why choose nVision Global over other providers? Well, their end-to-end solutions and services enable you to manage your entire global shipping process from the confines of a single easy-to-use platform. Interested in saving 7 to 12% or more on your freight spend? Check out nVisionGlobal.com.
As usual, our DC Velocity editors Ben Ames and Victoria Kickham will be along to provide their insights into the top stories of this week. But to begin today: with a rebound in air travel, there are more flights available now to shippers, including cargo-only flights and belly space on passenger planes. How can shippers take advantage of that extra capacity? To find out, here's Victoria with today's guest.
Victoria.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 01:27
Thanks, Dave. Our guest today is Pawan Joshi, executive vice president, product management and strategy, at supply chain technology provider E2open. He's here to talk with us about current trends in air cargo and how they're affecting shippers. Welcome, Pawan.
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 01:43
Thank you, Victoria. Great to be here.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 01:45
Yeah. Glad to have you. First, can you tell us a bit about E2open? What does the company do to support supply chain operations?
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 01:53
Sure. As you described, you know, we are a software provider. Our primary mode of service is SaaS, so we deploy in the cloud, and our platform allows our customers to really run their supply chain from an end-to-end perspective, all the way from, you know, how products are manufactured, how components are sourced, how ingredients are bought, to how they're manufactured, to how they're moved from where they're manufactured to where they're sold, and then also helps in the selling process. We look at our platform along, you know, three broad areas. There is the underlying applications that are used to make decisions. There is the underlying network that allows our customers to connect to their partners across multiple tiers of the manufacturing, logistics, and trade and channel supply chain, as well as a collaborative platform on which they can make their decisions, not just with users that belong to our customers, but also their trading partners across the entire outsource process.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 02:54
Terrific, thank you. So, as we said at the outset, we're talking about air cargo, and demand is stabilizing following some big challenges during the pandemic. I wonder if you could talk a bit about those challenges of the past few years and why things are now sort of getting better?
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 03:11
Absolutely. I think, you know, we, the pandemic was really an eye-opener, you know, across the board for supply chain, and not just supply chain professionals and practitioners, but also the rest of the world that used to rely on supply chain but never understood or even knew of what supply chain was. And as a result, what we saw during the pandemic was a massive shift in terms of our consumption, both on the demand side, as well as how do you support that consumption on the supply side. And when we look at supply, and when we talk about supply, it's not just around ingredients and components, but it's also around, you know, the freight capacity that is used to move things around. And air cargo, just like any other mode of transportation, went through a massive upheaval. You know, we saw that upheaval happen on the ocean side, on the road side, on the rail side — over-the-land transportation, but air also took a big hit. And it took a big hit for primarily for two reasons. Number one, you know, lack of personnel to keep the flights up and running and the infrastructure up and running. But more importantly, a lot of air cargo moves in the bellies of passenger planes, and when that, when the passenger flights came to a stop, you know, that capacity that's available, suddenly disappeared. So, we saw a massive, you know, decline in capacity that's available, but we also saw a massive decline in the demand, at least in the first few months during the pandemic. And if you look at, and start looking at, you know, the total CTK, the cargo tonne-kilometer graph, you saw the demand drop down pretty dramatically. But as soon as we started kind of finding a new normal, somewhere around May of 2000, you know, that demand went up pretty dramatically. And it went up dramatically because every mode of transportation was pretty much, you know, going to through a massive demand spike. We saw, you know, ocean ships getting backed up outside of ports. The same thing happened on air, and air was even more dramatic because of the need to move, you know, the pandemic-related stuff quicker into, from geographies into other parts of the world, and we saw that massive jump up. Now, over the last two, three years, on an average, the demand for air cargo has been going down, but what this has really resulted in is, you know, the catch up that has happened to get around excess capacity. The big thing, if you take a step back and start thinking about now is the backdrop of the macro conditions, macroeconomic conditions that we have. Even though the demand of products has slowed down, I think excess air cargo capacity being available, has actually helped, especially providers and manufacturers that produce products that can be moved very quickly over air. Think about, you know, high tech, semiconductor, a lot of that cargo that can move really quickly over air that is less bulky, can fit into, you know, the belly of aircraft, and a lot of quantity can be moved. Those tend to be, you know, the beneficiaries of this excess capacity being available now, and that's really what's causing the demand to start catching up.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 06:20
So what can shippers do to take advantage of these current conditions?
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 06:25
You know, there, I would say there are two or three things. One is the ability to actually think about, air transportation is one of the fastest modes of transportation, right? If you compare that with road or rail or ocean, for that matter, it is the fastest. And what it really allows the shippers to do is to think about not predicting what they need to ship, you know, 8, 10, 12 weeks ahead of time, like they have to do for ocean, or you know, 4, 5, 10 days ahead of time, what they have to do for road and rail. In this particular case, they can think about what you need, you know, 24, 36, 48 hours ahead of time, and the advantage that it provides the shippers is, you don't have to think about what you need to ship and how much you need to ship so far ahead of time, and it allows them to then start reacting to, you know, what is really happening, get a better understanding of the reality on the ground, and react to that movement of goods based on that reality. So, a good example of this is, if you're moving freight on ocean, and you have to book, let's say, 10, 12 weeks ahead of time, you have to predict what are you going to move 10, 12 weeks ahead of time? What should you be producing to get ready 10, 12 weeks ahead of time so that they can be put on a boat, and then 10, 12 weeks later arrive at the destination. What that does is, you start to forecast, and by definition forecast has, you know, variability built into it, so the further out you're forecasting, the higher variability,you have to deal with. You may have moved the wrong products to the wrong location; you might move the wrong kinds of products in different styles, different colors, woolens versus cottons, depending on weather patterns changing, and what air, availability of air cargo allows you to do, if you can leverage it, is the ability to start thinking about moving freight closer to when you need it, and that reduces the variability around forecasting, makes it much more certain. It does come with a higher cost, but at least you can offset that with, you know, a higher degree of confidence that what you're going to ship is going to be used and is going to be the right kind.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 08:25
Right. Then you mentioned, you know, high tech, semiconductor industries, are some that are affected by this. Are there any others, or you know, other industries that may not typically think of shipping in this way that maybe could start thinking about that?
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 08:40
Yeah, so I mean, we talk about high tech and semiconductor, but but then if you take a step back and start thinking about pretty much any industry, most industries are actually at the receiving end of a lot of high tech and semiconductor. Let's take automotive as an example, or industrial for that matter, right? If you think about their supply chains, there's a lot more, you know, semiconductor, a lot more glass, a lot more equipment, a lot more batteries going into those kinds of supply chains, and a lot of those supply chains are becoming more high tech than they ever were, right? The move from, let's say, internal combustion to electric vehicle[s] has, you know, kind of jumped-started that. So, when you start thinking about those supply chains, those traditional supply chains, you don't think about air freight in those supply chains because you're thinking about bulky, you know, transmissions, you're thinking about gearboxes, you're thinking about engine blocks and all that. But all of a sudden, now you go into EV mode, you're thinking about glass and semiconductor and motors, you know, those kinds of things that are, in many cases, beneficiaries of being able to be moved on on air, right? So, those are the things that we start thinking about. Traditionally that industry has been leveraging a lot of over-the-land and over-the-ocean type movements. I think they would benefit a lot from, you know, some of these over-the-air type movements. Not that they're not doing it today, but I see that picking up way more than it is. So, while on one hand, we're thinking about high tech and semiconductor, I think we got to also think about all the industries that use semiconductor and are relying more on more high tech would be beneficiaries of, you know, this mode of transportation becoming more available in terms of capacity, as well as in terms of cost.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 10:24
Great. And peak shipping season is almost upon us. How will the trends we're talking about, you know, as well as other cargo trends, affect their this year's peak, in your opinion?
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 10:35
Yeah, so I think this peak season, if you think about it from a holiday standpoint now, most of the products are probably in region already placed to be, you know, placed in DCs and all that to move to the last-mile location, if you want to call them that, whether it's a retail store or a DC that can ship a parcel over to you. So, I think what has really happened is, you know, with the macroeconomic conditions what they are right now, I believe that where air cargo will come in is the ability for a lot of these companies to leverage air freight as a means to balance out what they thought would sell, what sales is not getting sold, but more importantly, what they thought is not going to get sold, has a higher demand. So, being able to leverage this faster mode of transportation to move freight, move goods into regions, and move the kind of goods that you never thought would sell enough into regions where they're actually selling more. So, this, because there's extra capacity available and the demand's lower, that would be the way, I think, a lot of shippers will be able to react to the peak season. It is, you know, 15 — 10, 15, 20 weeks ago when you started pre-positioning your products. If the forecast what you had was not accurate, and the macroeconomic conditions did not allow you to forecast based on, you know, what your prior experiences were, this allows you to kind of course-correct places where you actually underforecasted, and you have the ability to move it from, you know, a different region into a region.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 12:05
Is there anything else about this topic or, you know, supply chain trends in general, you want, you think our listeners should be watching closely, just to finish up here?
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 12:12
Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know, we have realized in a much more, I would say, important manner and much more effective manner, is that supply chains are super connected, right? We're talking about air being a mode of transportation, primarily, but logistics, in general, combining that with the concept of forecasting, and supply management and demand management, all of a sudden has the ability to unlock a lot of constraints that we see. The example that I gave around using air freight to balance out, you know, forecast errors, just because forecasts will always have errors, and if you underforecasted something and you cannot use a traditional mode of transportation, how about leveraging the faster mode of transportation to actually account for that? Every one of these decisions are, again, interconnected. Today, our decision-making process is broken down into silos — you know, demand planning does demand planning. Supply planning does its stuff. Logistics and transportation does their own stuff. But if we actually come together and start solving these problems, we have the ability to convert these forecasts errors, potential disruptions, you know, whether it be because of weather, whether it be because of, you know, geopolitical reasons, you have the ability to react to them in a much more holistic manner, in a much more effective manner, and in my mind, a much more proactive manner, because you're then able to look at, not what your constraints are, but how can you relax your constraints based on, you know, based on options that are available across other departments. So, in my mind, opening up and starting to think about the problem holistically, starting think about it end to end, starting to involve your partners in solving the problem, is really the way to go about doing it. In the past, technology was a constraint to do that. You know, we didn't have the right computer infrastructure, we didn't have the cloud deployment models, we did not have the ability to move data around, we did not have the ability to process vast amounts of data to make decisions. Technology is there now. We've seen that over and over again, I think now is the time to actually start thinking about how do you change your business processes, decision making, leveraging the technology to start thinking about the supply chain as a connected process, not ending at departmental boundaries, not ending at enterprise boundaries, but think about it as a holistic thing, and recognize that, you know, brands don't compete against each other. It's the supply chains behind the brands that are actually competing against each other. And that's the power of how we need to start thinking about it.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 14:41
All good advice. Pawan, thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your insights.
Pawan Joshi, Executive VP, Product Management & Strategy, E2open 14:46
Thank you very much Victoria. Appreciate the opportunity.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 14:49
We have been talking with Pawan Joshi of E2open. Back to you, Dave.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 14:54
Thank you, Pawan and Victoria. Now let's take a look at some of the other supply chain news from the week. Robotics are being applied to nearly every aspect of our supply chains, and Ben, you wrote this week about recent advancements in trailer-loading robots. Can you share what you learned?
Ben Ames, Senior News Editor, DC Velocity 15:12
Yeah, I'd be glad to Dave. As you say, we see robots, really everywhere, throughout particularly inside the warehouse and the DC, around the yard, moving trailers, but one problem that has been really hard to solve has been getting boxes and/or pallets into and out of truck trailers or shipping containers. It's one of these warehouse jobs that's actually really hard on human workers to do, and for good reasons. The boxes are heavy, of course; those trucks are obviously parked outside the DC at the dock door, so hot and cold weather extremes come into play; and it all happens in a really restricted, dark space. So, right now humans are doing it, but it's really hard work. But in recent months, we've seen some progress in automating that. All three of us were at the major ProMat trade show about six months ago, and there were long lines there to watch some robots from three different vendors that had arms, automated arms, that could unload trailers. They used special end effectors on those arms that had suction cups to grab box after box, and then to place them on to a nearby conveyor. Examples of those: Boston Dynamics and Pickle were two of the ones that really had big crowds around them, and Mujin also had another, slightly different type of arrangement, but it was really impressive to see some of that progress.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 16:41
Well, I do remember seeing those crowds at those booths on the ProMat show floor, but they're still kind of in early-development and pilot stages, right, and not really in full production yet?
Ben Ames, Senior News Editor, DC Velocity 16:51
That's exactly right. These solutions are all pretty cutting-edge right now. They require a lot of computer vision, artificial intelligence, and that's so that the robots can recognize a box, tell which way is up, tell where the best part of the box is to lift from. These are things that humans, of course, take for granted, but it takes a lot of computing power for a machine to do it. Having said that, we saw two steps lately that showed some real progress. One was just a couple of weeks ago. There was a deal where Boston Dynamics said that it will provide its container unloading robot — they call it Stretch — in more than 20 facilities over the next two years. That's for a German e-commerce retailer called The Otto Group — and the other one was just a few days ago: FedEx actually said that they were going to run a pilot test of a system that runs in the opposite direction, and that's loading the trailers, instead of unloading them. The engineers in the field that I've talked to have said that it's a tougher challenge, even, than the ones that unload them, and that's largely because like, if you think of that Jenga game with the wooden blocks, building a tower the right way, can be a lot harder than knocking it down, which you can do with just one hit, right? But there's a California startup called Dexterity AI that thinks that it has it figured out. It has a robot that navigates to the back of the trailer, connected, again, to a conveyor that feeds it boxes, and then it builds what the firm calls "stable, dense walls of randomized boxes." So, that's even harder when you get a parcel carrier like FedEx, because they of course, accept packages of any size and shape, whatever people decide to ship. So, we'll see how, you know, both of those new applications go with the difficulty of the particular warehouse task for people and a really tight labor market that makes it hard to find them, the technology could really make a big difference if it continues to work out.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 18:44
Right, and they do sound like some very interesting solutions to make the all that heavy work in a warehouse much, much easier.
Ben Ames, Senior News Editor, DC Velocity 18:50
Hoping so.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 18:52
Thanks, Ben. And Victoria, along the same technology idea, there's a growing need for technicians in the trucking industry, and your wrote this week about some of the welcome growth among technicians of one specific demographic. Can you share the details?
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 19:06
Yes, happy to, Dave. So, women continue to make strides in the trucking industry. We've talked about that a lot, and many are actually gaining traction as equipment technicians, and that's according to data from the 2023 Women In Trucking Index, which was released earlier this year by the Women In Trucking Association. And the news comes as the trucking industry celebrates National Technician Appreciation Week this week, and that's an event sponsored by American Trucking Associations, or ATA, and its Technology & Maintenance Council. Both groups, both Women in Trucking and ATA, emphasize this week the important role that technicians play in keeping trucking safe and goods flowing across America's highways, and as Women In Trucking pointed out, women represent a larger share of that profession today than they have in the past.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 19:55
So Victoria, what do the numbers actually show us?
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 19:59
Well, according to the Women In Trucking Index, more than 7% of technicians working for corporations with for-hire or private fleets are women. That may sound like a small percentage, but it's up from less than 4% in 2022, so a pretty good jump over last year. And the figure is rising alongside the number of professional women drivers in the industry as well, and that reached 12% this year, according to the same index. Now, this index tracks women's progress in trucking across a wide range of jobs, not just these two, and some other findings, which were released as part of a larger report over the summer, showed that nearly 44% of dispatchers are women; about 32% of women are in C-suite or executive positions; 37% are in supervisory leadership roles; and 28% serve on boards of directors, Listeners interested in learning more about the study or about Women In Trucking, can check out their website at womenintrucking.org, and it's an interesting site. There's lots of information about the industry in general, Women In Trucking's mission to promote gender diversity in the industry, you know, other resources, as well as stories about women truck drivers and how they came to the industry. So, a lot going on at that association.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 21:14
Right. And we certainly believe that growing diversity is always a good thing in our industry.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 21:18
Absolutely.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 21:20
Thanks, Victoria.
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor, DC Velocity 21:21
You're welcome.
David Maloney, Editorial Director, DC Velocity 21:22
We encourage listeners to go to DCVelocity.com for more on these and other supply chain stories, and also check out the podcast Notes section for some direct links to read more about the topics that we discussed today.
And we'd like to thank Pawan Joshi of E2open for being our guest. We welcome your comments on this story and our other stories, and you can email us at podcast@dcvelocity.com.
We also encourage you to subscribe to Logistics Matters at your favorite podcast platform. Our new episodes are uploaded on Fridays.
Speaking of subscribing, check out our sister podcast series Supply Chain in the Fast Lane, coproduced by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and Supply Chain Quarterly. Subscribe to Supply Chain in the Fast Lane wherever you get your podcasts.
And a reminder that Logistics Matters is sponsored by nVision Global. nVision Global is a leader in global freight-management solutions and services, specializing in freight audit and payment, order management, supplier management, visibility, TMS, and freight-spend analytics. Their end-to-end solutions and services enable you to manage your entire global shipping processes within the confines of a single easy-to-use platform. interested in saving 7 to 12% or more on your freight spend? Then checkout nVisionGlobal.com.
We'll be back again next week with another edition of Logistics Matters. Be sure to join us. Until then, have a great week.
Articles and resources mentioned in this episode:
- FedEx pilots trailer-loading robot with twin arms
- More women join trucking industry as technicians
- Visit Supply Chain Quarterly
- Listen to CSCMP and Supply Chain Quarterly's Supply Chain in the Fast Lane podcast
- Listen to Supply Chain Quarterly's Top 10 Supply Chain Threats podcast
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