001 - Bill Marrin

Since the 1980s Bill Marrin has been one of supply chain’s most important thinkers. He has worked for innovative start ups as well as Eastman Kodak, and has worked closely with companies like Apple and Adobe to help improve product delivery as the print and publishing industry adopted networked services in the 1990s. As Bill says, “We were doing cloud before cloud computing was cool.” In 2007, Bill joined World 50, an invitation-only peer organization that provides a forum for C-level executives at the world’s top companies to exchange ideas in pursuit of growth. The supply chain subgroup, Supply Chain 50, was started by Bill. Connect with Bill on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-marrin/ ⏲️Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 – Richard's introduction to today's show and Supply Chain Next 02:00 – Bill's background as a supply chain professional 05:30 – The economic similarities between the 1980's and today 07:00 – What Bill learned from the dot-com crash 10:00 – Why supply chain wasn't integrated within the leadership of organizations until recently 13:00 – How the Supply50 group has evolved over the years 15:00 – What makes supply chain special to Bill 18:30 – How supply chain priorities have shifted toward innovation over the years 21:00 – Why the roles of supply chain professionals have expanded over time 24:30 – How Bill defines the digitization of supply chain 29:30 – The biggest factor stopping businesses from adopting digital supply chain practices 33:00 – Why supply chain functions are very similar across industries 36:00 – The security and data challenges large organizations face today 39:00 – How businesses should think about data science within the supply chain context 43:00 – Why companies struggle with the intake of accurate asset data 47:30 – Where Bill sees a massive opportunity in the supply chain of retail 50:00 – Why Bill thinks fast moving businesses will continue to win long-term 55:00 – The reason legacy workforces are holding supply chain organizations back 58:00 – How leaders can build succesful teams in 2019 and beyond