Sustainable Supply Chain

AI, Robotics, and the Evolution of Supply Chain: Insights from Prof Sečkin Ozkul of USF

October 23, 2023 Tom Raftery / Sečkin Ozkul Season 1 Episode 360
Sustainable Supply Chain
AI, Robotics, and the Evolution of Supply Chain: Insights from Prof Sečkin Ozkul of USF
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In the latest episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I had the privilege to delve deep with Prof Sečkin Ozkul, fromf the University of South Florida. We traversed the transformative landscape of supply chain management, its evolving trends, and the undeniable importance of sustainability in today's business world.

One of the episode's standout moments was Sečkin's point on the burgeoning demand for supply chain graduates. Employers today are actively on the lookout for these specialised graduates, recognising the unique skill set they bring to the table. It's no longer about stumbling into the field; it's about honing a craft that's increasingly becoming indispensable.

We also touched upon the exciting integration of AI in the supply chain curriculum and how students are being primed to harness its power. From AI's potential to revolutionize forecasting to its critical role in analytics, it's evident that the world of supply chain is rapidly evolving.

And, we talked about the increasing prevalence of robotics in warehouses? Sečkin's students are at the forefront, observing these changes firsthand and keenly understanding the implications.

Lastly, Sečkin's insights into the rising C-suite roles dedicated purely to supply chain dynamics underline its growing significance in global business strategies.

Don't miss this episode brimming with insights, trends, and a peek into the future of supply chain management. Dive in now!

P.S. Want to get in touch with Seckin? Shoot him an email at SOZKUL@USF.edu.



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Thanks for listening.

Seckin Ozkul:

We basically host an event here at University of South Florida that is meet the employer event. We host it every semester and every semester we have 25 to 35 companies show up just for hiring our supply chain management students. Lemme say that one more time. 25 to 35 companies. Just to hire our supply chain management students.

Tom Raftery:

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 and welcome to episode 360 of the Digital Supply Chain Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and I'm excited to be here with you today, sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain. Today, we have a special episode where we'll be talking about education. But before we kick off today's show, I want to take a brief moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping the podcast going, and I'm truly grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like minded individuals who are passionate about supply chain. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of your latte and your support will make a huge difference on keeping the show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode. Or visit tinyurl. com slash dscpod. Now, without further ado, I'd like to introduce my special guest today, Sečkin. Sečkin, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Seckin Ozkul:

Hi, Tom. Yes. Thank you. My name is Seckin Ozkul and I'm an assistant professor at USF Muma College of Business at the Monica Wooden Center for Supply Chain Management and Sustainability. And I'm also the director of our USF Supply Chain Innovation Lab

Tom Raftery:

And USF,

Seckin Ozkul:

University of South Florida.

Tom Raftery:

right? No worries. I knew that, but not everyone listening might have known that. Thank you.

Seckin Ozkul:

Sure, of course,

Tom Raftery:

So, Seckin, tell me a little bit first before we get into the University of South Florida and what you're doing there. Tell me a little bit first about how you got to there. What's your journey to becoming an assistant professor in USF?

Seckin Ozkul:

Sure. Thank you for, for that question. I think it's, it's important to give a background. The way I started basically is I got a, a scholarship to, to come and study in the United States. I'm originally from Istanbul, Turkey. When I finished high school, I got a scholarship from Auburn University in Alabama. And basically, I, I studied four years there in engineering and once I finished, I got a consulting job in Tampa, Florida where University of South Florida, U S F is located. So once I started my, my four years, additional four years of journey at my consulting job here. I got a master's also at University of South Florida. And as I was reaching the third, fourth year of my journey as a consultant, I realized that my true passion really lies with working with students, working on research, teaching. So I decided that I'm gonna go back and get a PhD. And we have Gainesville, Florida where Universal of Florida is located at. And that's fairly close from Tampa, about an hour and a half by car. I went there. I applied and I talked with some professors and I was able to get a an assistantship for my PhD studies there. I studied additional four years for my PhD and once I was ready to graduate there was a faculty position open at University of South Florida where my wife also works. And, and and everything worked out. Thankfully I applied for that position and I was able to obtain it. So that's the journey that I, I took.

Tom Raftery:

Interesting. The stars aligned for you. That's very nice. Very nice, very nice.

Seckin Ozkul:

Absolutely. And don't we wish that all

Tom Raftery:

So tell me, Seckin, can you mention that as part of the title of the school you teach in, it contains the word sustainability, so that's interesting. You don't find a lot of supply chain schools with the title sustainability built in. Is that recent?

Seckin Ozkul:

So the Monica Wooden Center for Supply Chain Management and Sustainability has been, uh, found that we had a Center for Supply Chain Management and sustainability. But Monica Wooden she was the founder and CEO of MercuryGate. It's a a TMS and also has an optimizer, freight optimizer tool. And she basically brought that company up from from from the beginnings all the way to the time that she actually was able to sell the company. And she was very generous to name our center and give us a donation to, to, to USF, to the Muma culture of business. And we built our center together basically with Monica, with, with her guidance. So now that said, we always had a had a understanding of how important sustainability is. This is something that we actually cover in our classes, in our courses for our students as well. We live in the 21st century and and we, we believe truly as a, as a faculty core here that works in supply chain management, you cannot do supply chain management without really doing good sustainability practices. So we always had that sustainability goal. But now that with Monica's support, we are really focusing on that aspect as well. Because again, when we look at supply chain management these days, a lot of the big firms, a lot of the firms that do supply chain management, they really are looking to have sustainability practices as well. Because everyone realizes we need to be good corporate citizens at the end of the day for future generations.

Tom Raftery:

Sure, sure. And I'm just wondering . That focus on sustainability as a part of supply chain management, did that come about because industry asked for it to be on the course or because students wanted it to be on the course or a combination or neither something else entirely.

Seckin Ozkul:

I think that's a, that's a fair question. So curriculum is driven by faculty at University of South Florida. So our faculty thankfully have a very good understanding of the importance of sustainability. So the faculty had already had their buy-in to, to include sustainability in some of our curriculum. And of course our students, they realize growing up in this world, talking with different industry partners, they realize that there is a lot of sustainability practices and they understand the importance of including sustainability into their business plan, into their lives. And also, of course, our company partners that we have as a part of Monica Woodland Center for Supply Chain Management and Sustainability. They also realize, how important sustainability is. They have their own initiatives in sustainability, so it's a perfect match actually, when we look at it. Our students are wanting to be a part of this. Our company partners want to be a part of this, and also our faculty realizes the importance of sustainability. So it's a perfect combination of the three coming together. That's why we are able to, to see sustainability in the name of our center.

Tom Raftery:

Nice. And how long has the University of South Florida had sustainability as part, as a core part of its supply chain management courses.

Seckin Ozkul:

So our programs are fairly young in su supply chain management. They are we are on our fourth year now with our Bachelor's of Science in Supply Chain Management and also Master's of Science in Supply Chain Management. Since we started, we have that designation, but we go way back really with the name of our center, even before Monica named our center generously, we still had sustainability. We had sustainability goals. So if you, if you look back, we are going back approximately 10 years plus with our sustainability goals. But of course now with, with more resources through Monica's generous gift, we are focusing more on real sustainability aspects as well in our curriculum.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And have you, have you been involved in sustainability projects yourself,

Seckin Ozkul:

Correct. So we teach classes. I believe that everyone knows, professors teach classes, right? But I think sometimes there, sometimes folks forget that we actually do a lot of research in the field of supply chain management as well. You know, sometimes for our co company partners, private partners, sometimes for our governments or government partners. But I was recently involved in a a USDA United States Department of Agriculture funded project together with FAA Federal Aviation Authority where they wanted to look at a bottom up supply chain development for Carinata. And Carinata is a mustard seed. And when you crush Carinata, a certain oil comes out of it. And then you take that oil, send it to a bio-refinery and run it through a certain processes . You can get jet fuel, nafta, diesel, and so on. So basically it's a sustainable biofuel from farm to jet fuel, if you will. And to our farm to airport is I think what we called it as we were working on this, on this project. And it's a feel good project, it's not because it's not Necessarily regular fields, right? Fossil based fuels. It is a, it is a sustainable fuel. So, so that was a project where I worked on, this was a big project multi-year, it's multi-million dollar funded research project that we had, the consortium of different universities and also different industry partners that we look to, to develop a Carinata supply chain within the southeastern United States, but with customers as far as California, where there's a high demand for these sustainable fuels, of course, also Florida and some other parts of the United States, as well as the, the end user, as the, the airport, the customers and some, some other firms in the air airline industry.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And in terms of the curriculum that you're teaching, what aspects of sustainability are on the curriculum and you know, what, what are the students interested in really?

Seckin Ozkul:

So we are weaving sustainability into different courses that the students are taking. I'm teaching for example data analytics type of courses and Lean Six Sigma. And in Lean Six Sigma course that I'm teaching we are talking about continuous improvement. So one of the continuous improvement aspects that we talk about is sustainability, because everyone knows. I was gonna say God knows, but everyone knows also that that every firm can do better in their sustainability goals. And they are looking. We see many firms, they are looking to do better. They're looking to improve their sustainability goals. They set goals for the, for the future, 2025 2030. Here's how much we're gonna cut down on our carbon footprint. So we are seeing a lot of that. So we are weaving in special modules within the Lean Six Sigma where we talk about how do we improve our sustainability? How do we improve our or reduce our carbon footprint? So those are some of the, the ways that we can introduce sustainability, or we introduce sustainability into Lean Six Sigma. With our supply chain analytics course we are covering different supply chain management modules and within each module we are discussing as that module specifically relates. If we are talking about warehouse management, for example, we talk about how do we reduce our carbon footprint if we have boxes delivered And then we get the goods out of the boxes. What do we do with these boxes, for example, right? Do we just simply trash them? Do we try to recycle them? Is there a better way? Is there a way to recycle those boxes directly the way they are and reuse them? So we have those kind of discussions with our students, and mainly it's not me telling them, it's mainly me asking them how could we improve our sustainability so that we can have our students critically think about sustainability and come up with some solutions.

Tom Raftery:

Nice, nice, nice, nice. And I wanna, I want to take a step back and, you know, have you tell me a little bit because you've said yourself, everyone knows that professors in universities teach, but what else do you do? What's, what's, what's a day in the life of a supply chain professor like what, what is it you actually do day to day?

Seckin Ozkul:

Sure. Thank you for, for asking that question. That's a great question. Right. I, I enjoy the, I have a smile on my face when you ask me that question, so I normally, come into my office in the morning. I start my, my job really at home. I wake up, I make myself a cup of Joe, right? A cup of good coffee, and I sit down and I normally would go through some, some news looking for, for supply chain related news. I believe every good supply chain management professional reads the news, follow up the news. I always tell that to my students. I I ask, what did you see today in the news when we start the class with, what did you see in the news? But, so I, I, I do what I preach. I look at the news, I see what's relevant to supply chain management, or what can impact supply chain management. And then I come into the office in the morning and I would normally answer some emails. Our students reach out via email. They sometimes will reach out through the learning management system. I answer my students questions. I do this a couple of times throughout the day so that I, I. I know when our students have questions, they have the question now, right? They didn't have the question in like five hours. So I always try to be cognizant of that and try to answer the, the questions of our students multiple times throughout the day. But I have focused times besides the, the preparations for the teaching and all that, I have focused times where I spend for research. So we do a lot of academic type of research. So we have some meetings for some of our research projects with, with some of my graduate students and some other colleagues. We meet with them. We move those research forward throughout these meetings. I also have specific focus time where I do writing, because we, we do publications as professors. So I focus my time specific certain portions of the day, just specifically writing where we are working on different type of journal articles. And I will be doing some writing on those so that we can actually move that forward towards publications as well. I have meetings with my students, my, my grad students specifically as they're working on their master's thesis and then some of our PhD students where I serve on different dissertation committees. We have meetings with them to understand what they're doing, to give them some guidance to, to see where we're gonna end up with all that great research as well. But I also have meetings with my students who take my courses where they would like to answer some face-to-face questions, especially in the, the supply chain analytics and logistics systems analytics courses, which is an undergrad course. And the second one is a grad level course of analytics. They would like to come into the office show me their work on Excel because we do a lot of Excel coding. We have SAP, we cover SAP in that course. They would like to show me something on their SAP, where, where they have some questions. So, I really am passionate about what I do. I, I really enjoy working with students. Uh, I enjoy working on research, so believe it or not, the day goes by like this and then a new day comes along. But it's pretty much between these lines. It's fun. It's, it's challenging and it keeps me alive and, and, and, and, and kicking, I guess is the word I'm looking for.

Tom Raftery:

Cool. Cool. And what, this is gonna sound really, really silly question now, but what are the kids into these days? What I mean, what, what I mean by that of course is, you know, we, we hear that the younger generations have a passion for sustainability and purpose, which maybe older generations weren't as cognizant of. So that's, that's I wanna say it's anecdotal, but you are there at the kind of the coal face meeting these students day in, day out. Is that actually true? Is it something that they are passionate about? And also are there other topics that they're particularly concerned about that we might not be aware of?

Seckin Ozkul:

So our students both undergraduate and graduate they are, they are very aware o o on what they want from their lives. They have supply chain management as their major. They know that they wanna be in this field and they understand the importance of sustainability through our courses, but also overall through their passion. I believe just like you mentioned, the younger generations are very aware of of the importance of sustainability. So they are looking to tease out those aspects as we are discussing this in class. And, and they are very cognizant of the importance of sustainability. Some other things that they're really aware of are what are the the, the employers are looking for in, in an undergrad or a grad level student as they are graduating? So they realize that data analytics is becoming more and more important. A lot of the, the employers are looking for those skills to be able to use Excel as a coding mechanism. I give you, as type of a certain question with some variables, are you able to code that into Excel and get some solutions and possibly just revise a couple of those variables in the future as my, my job conditions get re revisions and then still make use of that tool that you developed? They also understand the importance of tools like SAP, right? The, the s ERP tool widely used. So we are giving that to our students as well. And, and mostly what our students hear from the employers are what we hear from our employers ourselves as faculty members. So the way that we developed the curriculum at at University of South Florida at at the Muma College of Business for supply chain management majors was really in partnership in discussions together with our industry partners for our Monica Wooden Center here that we mentioned about. So, so we understand what the employers are looking for. We therefore understand what our students are looking for. So we, we tweaked our curriculum and we always listen. Right? We are always ready to make more tweaks. Just a quick example of that, Tom is AI, right? AI is everywhere right now. We know it wasn't anywhere a year and a half ago, but now it's everywhere, right? It, the world is so quickly revolving, and I shouldn't say it wasn't anywhere, right? I had a lot of great colleagues that they kept on working. The reason we have AI right now is because it was always somewhere and folks have been working on this. Really great researchers have been working on this for so many years, so it was always somewhere, but the general public was not exactly aware of it until we heard of Open AI, ChatGPT, Bard and so on and so forth. There are so many others right now. Right. If we just type you know, generative, generative AI tools there's gonna be a huge list right now, but we only heard a couple of them. But we are looking to introduce now little by little AI into our curriculum as well. And I think it's really important. If we don't do that, we would be doing a disservice to our students. So we are always looking to evolve at the University of South Florida.

Tom Raftery:

And tell me a little bit about the AI in that scenario, because as you said, it is really the, kind of the hot topic right now. How you, how are you folding that into your courses and are the students Well, well, I mean, actually let, let's, let's let ask something quite specific in fact,

Seckin Ozkul:

Sure.

Tom Raftery:

a lot of colleges have grappled with ChatGPT. Do they allow their students to use it or not? And do they have tools which can tell whether their students are using it or not? So how are you guys dealing with that?

Seckin Ozkul:

Sure. So we are taking, like, we basically held a lot of workshops on AI and how to use AI as far as in our courses in the higher education We are seeing AI not as a threat. I mean, we have to, of course, take into account how we want it to be used in our courses. You know, just a simple essay. AI can easily take care of that right now. Right? No problem at all. And you can't even detect it at some cases. And it, at some cases you can detect it. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to encourage our students to interact with the AI and to, to basically use AI as a, as a back check, if you will, or as a as another person that they are discussing some idea with, right? So to bounce off some ideas with. So we would like to start using AI in that sense. But AI is very, very capable. It used to be not able to do analytics, but now it can do analytics too. So, so what we are trying to, to do is we wanna allow our students to understand how to use AI, how to use it better. Because we had a discussion and somebody said, you know, AI, you know, the, the common thing to team is AI is gonna take our jobs, right? And, and, and the discussion was AI is not gonna take our jobs, but the person using AI is gonna take a person that is not using an AI's job. So that was a discussion that we had. So we want to give enough of AI to our students, whereas making it basically even the, the, the playing field for all our students, some students using AI, some students not. That's not what we are after, but we would like to basically introduce and weave AI usage into our curriculum.. So that our students know what is capable of and how to best use it to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

Tom Raftery:

Nice. Nice, nice. Cool.. And where do you see, you know, going forward, the what, what kind of trends are you seeing in supply chain?

Seckin Ozkul:

So, we are talking a lot about, especially after the, the covid world, right? We are talking a lot about the onshoring, reshoring, nearshoring. So that's definitely a trend that we are seeing, especially in the United States. United States supply chains pre, pre covid were you know, really heavily invested in, in Asian economies. We still are. But, but we are also seeing some companies that do business within the United States looking at this the reshoring, the nearshoring, the onshoring options because they understand the importance of diversifying their supply chain portfolio. And I, I believe that's healthy. How much of that is gonna happen, within the near feature? It is very difficult to tell because there is still a cost component to it. But but we are already seeing some portfolios changing for major companies because they understand that if a major disruption comes along it's gonna be really catastrophic for their business. So, so they are looking at, so that's one trend that we are looking at. Another trend really is AI, right? You know, we should not not mention AI because we are seeing a lot of AI in forecasting these days with enough data points, with enough machine learning, AI can do a pretty good job in supply chains as well. So we are seeing a lot of that. We are seeing a lot of robot activities, right. My students just presented I have an assignment, it's called Supply Chain Management, Tech Update. And what I encourage them to do is find something that's happening right now that's techy in supply chain management and presented in class to, to, to your colleagues and to me. And they do a great job of that. And they just presented and the title was, I told them this sounds like a movie title. And the title was Robots in the Warehouse. So, so I thought that was pretty cool. But, but this is happening. And one of them recently I received an email from one of my current students, and they were the a, a major it's called Costco. It's a, it's a warehouse major distributor of, of different groceries and different goods. And they took a picture of a inventory robot just scanning for inventory within the aisles. And they said, Professor Ozkul, Hey, this is the robot that we talked about. Look, it's here, it's happening right now. So these are really feel good points, of course, for a professor and seeing our students so passionate about it, to take a picture and send me and send me that robot or the, the tech that's happening already. But I think these are again, the, the hot topics in supply chain of what are these robots capable of? Where are gonna be the human interaction, right? So, so those are some of the things that we are discussing in our classes, how the workforce is gonna look like. There's gonna be a, a possible workforce split at some point of some robots and, and some, some human interaction and some human supervision. So, so those are some of the really hot things and the current things that's happening in the supply chain management right now Tom.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And in terms of students applying to join your course,

Seckin Ozkul:

Mm-hmm.

Tom Raftery:

why should they? And if I'm asking that, it's a lot of people who are in supply chain professionally today fell into it accidentally from some other, you know, aspect, maybe from being in manufacturing or something else, and, you know, never studied it. And, you know, have eked out a living . Why? would you recommend someone do a course in supply chain in a university?

Seckin Ozkul:

Great question, Tom. We just had a discussion about this, interestingly, in the CSCMP Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals annual Edge meeting in Orlando, Florida. That just ended literally yesterday, actually on October 4th. And I was talking with some of our current students who were selected to be future leaders program there. And they were helping with the event and they were also networking with with a lot of industry and academic partners. So that was a fantastic opportunity for some of our USF students. And they were all of other students from different universities as well. So it was also very good camaraderie environment as well. And I was discussing with some of our students, because we were on the exhibitor floor. Our students, we run into each other and they say Professor Ozkul you know, they're always, you know, very pleasant and they're very enthusiastic. They said, oh, we are talking with all these folks. And the discussion somehow steered into what you just mentioned, right? A lot of people stumbled into supply chain management. And I said, well, you know, you have a big advantage because they're all looking for jobs, of course out there. They're talking with, with possible employers. Prospective employers. And I told them, you are one of your biggest advantages is you are actually studying this. The trend has not been there. Just like you mentioned, there was only a handful of programs going maybe 10, 15 years back, and now the, the number of programs are increasing. Why should students sign up for a supply chain management degree? In my opinion, number one, you really are honed in on your skills of what is expected from a supply chain manager or folks in the supply chain management programs. More and more employers, especially when it comes to supply chain management, realizes that there is a bigger workforce that are specifically trained in supply chain management. So, so they are actually going there as, as the first point of supply, if you will. We, we basically host an event here at University of South Florida that is meet the employer event. We host it every semester and every semester we have 25 to 35 companies show up just for hiring our supply chain management students. Lemme say that one more time. 25 to 35 companies. Just to hire our supply chain management students. So there is a big demand and the supply is not as high. And I think the companies realize what we are doing through the curriculum for supply chain management is exactly what they're looking for, or at least the initial skillset that they are looking for in in this workforce. So I think that's number one. But number two is supply chain management is great. I know you know this because you're in it just like myself, but it's a, it's a world when, you know a lot of new things keep on happening. You receive an email and your whole next five days change, right? You are trying to come up with solutions. You are doing a lot of critical thinking. It is challenging, but it is rewarding. It pays well as well. When you add so much value to a company, of course that company is gonna return the favor. As far as the benefits are concerned. So, so those are some of the reasons that, that our students are coming to us to and sign up for the supply chain management degrees. But I think the world is changing from the world of stumbling into supply chain. I think we are going to a more structured, or we have actually supply chain management graduates that we can directly hire for, for our supply chain management needs. That's the first point of stop. Quote unquote, rather than a lot of folks stumbling into it. That's how I see it.

Tom Raftery:

And do you think a degree in supply chain management is a, a key, not just to get a job in supply chain, but subsequently to land a leadership role within an organization, a C-Suite role, maybe.

Seckin Ozkul:

I think that's a great question, and I think the answer is yes, and the reason I'm saying that is, let's not forget, is supply chain management, right? I always I always pronounce that there's a lot of management skills that we are giving our students the critical thinking, coming up with different options, choosing the best option, and that does not always mean the lowest cost. These are just simple examples of climbing the ladder as a supply chain management. Your next step, just like you said, is possibly or your end step, and maybe the one before the end is COO, right? The Chief Operations officer. To be a COO, you really have to master the supply chain is, that's how I look at it. And you have to, of course, have good people working on the supply chain management as well. Without supply chain management, we don't have a product. We don't have a product in our customer's hand. And We realize that without that we don't really have a company, right? A functioning company. So I think it's really important and yes, definitely C-Suite. And we know if when you are a COO, in a, in a rightful acsession quote, unquote, you can end up being the CEO as well, right? So most companies choose that structure to to promote their COOs to CEO as well. But, but you know, a lot of companies these days that I'm working with, they have Chief Supply Chain Management Officers, so Chief Supply Chain Officers. So there are newer roles in the C-suite understanding the importance in in in addition to the COO, there is a Chief Supply Chain Officer in many companies, and I think that's, that's something important and, and something that should attract our attention because that says how important supply chain is when there is a specific C-suite position that only talks about supply chain, and that's not necessarily the full operations.

Tom Raftery:

Cool. Cool. Great. Seckin, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I didn't ask you that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Seckin Ozkul:

I think you've touched and, and pretty much from one end to the other end of the, the spectrum Tom, I appreciate your your questions because we covered from what a professor of supply chain management does all the way to, you know, how we focus on sustainability in our curriculum here at University of South Florida. To all the way to what our students are into, what are some good tr or important trends that we're seeing in supply chain management. We talked about tech of supply chain management, where we're going with that. So, so I think, I think we covered from one end to the other, and I really appreciate your questions.

Tom Raftery:

Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Thanks, Seckin. If people would like to know more about yourself, Seckin, or any of the things we discussed on the podcast, today, where would you have me direct them?

Seckin Ozkul:

Please have them send me an email. It's my my first initial S and my last name, Ozkul. SOZKUL at USF dot edu.

Tom Raftery:

Great, and I'll, I'll put that in the show notes as well, Seckin, so everyone can have access to it. Fantastic.

Seckin Ozkul:

Absolutely.

Tom Raftery:

Great. Seckin, thanks so much for coming in the podcast today.

Seckin Ozkul:

Thank you, Tom for having me. I really appreciate it.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, thank you all for tuning in to this episode of the Digital Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, over 3, 000 supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose our guests or a personalized 30 second mid roll ad. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of the digital supply chain. Thanks. Catch you all next time.

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