Supply Chain Now Episode 328

Prefer to watch the podcast in action rather than just listen?  Watch Scott and Paul Noble as they welcome Mark Manning to the Supply Chain Now booth at the DMSCA Conference.

On this episode of Supply Chain Now, Paul Noble joins Scott as they broadcast live from DMSCA, and welcomeMike Manning of iTrace Technologies to the Supply Chain Now booth.

[00:00:05] It’s time for Supply Chain Now Radio. Broadcasting live from the Supply chain capital of the country, Atlanta, Georgia. Supply Chain Now Radio spotlights the best in all things supply chain the people, the technology, the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

 

[00:00:29] Good morning, Scott Luton here with you once again. Supply chain. Now welcome back to the show. We are not broadcasting live in Atlanta G-A, but rather we’re here in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we’re continuing our coverage of the Dimka annual conference. What is Dembski? Yes, well, it’s diverse manufacturing supply chain alliance. And if this is not on your radar, it needs to be a great conference here. You can learn more at DMB, SICAD DOT U.S. before we get started with this business. Later, it will be interviewing two quick programing note. Number one, you can find us and subscribe to our podcast at supply chain now where every year podcast from would encourage you to do so. We’ve got a new subscriber love campaign that we’ll be launching here shortly. You’ll be Bill. Take advantage of that. And then secondly, want to say big thanks to our Verusen team for sponsoring our coverage here at the Dems good conference. And on that note, we’re going to bring in our esteemed fearless supply chain adj. co-host Paul Noble, founder and CEO at Verusen. Paul, how you doing?

 

[00:01:31] Thanks, Scott. Great to be here. Just keep an eye on a warm up. Yes, it is surely chilly. Desert Morning. You can almost economists see that our listeners can grab that ball and we just keep adding monikers as we introduce it as as a co-host or so.

 

[00:01:48] But all right. So put you on the spot real quick before we bring Mark in. What is one neat observation? I mean, cash, especially for the last conversation or the conference that you can share from the dense event here?

 

[00:02:01] Yeah, I think the depth of conversations shared with David last night. David, that David Burton. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Dembski leader. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Zach. And like everyone knows David. So, yeah. So I shared with David last night how impressed I’ve been interacting with the group and being our first time here.

 

[00:02:26] You know, hey, what can we do to be more involved and support? Because I think that there’s there’s a lot of great things going on here, but that much of the sessions are walking the walk. And he he loved it. He loved that outside eyes observation. And I think that that’s the take away from the individuals we’ve talked to on the on the podcast here and the breakout sessions and just the the sidebar conversations. It’s all about getting things done and working together and learning more and being curious. And I think those are all great elements to have at it. Event like this one. We’re all spending our time.

 

[00:03:03] Excellent and really accurate feedback. I appreciate you sharing with Verse of the Mind. You can find out more about Verusen what Paul and team were doing. VeriSign dot com. You know, they’re it’s they’re using an ad driven technology to harmonize data around the world, focused on materials and materials management. Yeah, I’m glad that Paul along here for all these conversations we’re having. All right. No. With no further ado, I want to bring on our featured guests here today, Mark Manning, founder and CEO with Outraced Technologies.

 

[00:03:35] Mark, how you doing? Great. Thanks for invite me along this morning. You bet. Well, we really enjoyed the brief, you know, five minute conversation we had last night. Daniel Stanton, who is connects everybody happy to connect us. And your ears have been Burnam probably for a couple hours yesterday, as Daniel is kind of telling me some of the things you’ve been up to. And I’m really intrigued here in a moment to talk a lot more about Outrace Technologies. I think it’s gonna break through. You know, I think when people hear certain words in Supply chain in a business that it just requires an eyeroll podcast is one right podcast. Certainly one blockchain is probably a close second. Right. You’re doing some really cool things that are very their impact in businesses now. And we’re gonna talk more about that. So kind of bust through the the assumptions folks are making about certain things. But Marc, before we get started on that before talk shop, let’s get to know you better. So tell us a little bit about where you know, where you grew up and give us an anecdote or two about your upbringing. Yeah.

 

[00:04:35] So I grew up in London, England. I was a Ashlea Telecoms engineer. I studied telecommunications and I was traveling all over the world, actually working for an American company. They were based out of New York. And we were installing satellite telecommunications equipment for the large banks, for international trading, oil companies, that kind of thing. I ended up working. In the international tech support team that had an office based in New York and I got a call one day, hey, do you want to come out and spend some time in New York?

 

[00:05:07] So I spent a bunch of time there and eventually they had a position open for me and offered me a full time job out and in the New York area.

 

[00:05:17] So I actually met a girl at the same time in America and I had a job and a girl in New York. The two things came together and I ended up moving. Sounds like a Hugh Grant movie that.

 

[00:05:34] How long were you in New York? So I was there for six years. And in that time, I traveled all over the country.

 

[00:05:41] But the dot com boom was occurring in California. So there was a massive amount of technology innovation occurring out in the Bay Area. And in mid 99, I got a call from a guy I’d been working with said, you got to come out of California, come see what’s going out on here. It’s crazy. Wow. So I got a plane ticket and went out and interviewed for a very tiny startup that, uh, managed to get I think it was around 30 million dollars to develop a next generation telecommunications platform and ended up working there. There was when I started, there’s only five or six people.

 

[00:06:17] Mm hmm. Wow.

 

[00:06:19] That was the trip to California. I never went back. The rest is history.

 

[00:06:24] So let’s shift gears. Well, you know, I want to bring some UPS up that I learned from you, Mark, in the pre-show. You’re a big cyclist and you cycle competitively. Yes. So before we talk about artery’s talk, tell us about where that passion was that came out of it. Would you start that?

 

[00:06:42] Well. So when I was in the U.K., I used to race cars. A car racing motorsports was that was my big thing. And I had a race car that I took over to Europe and and raced over in Europe. And when I came to the U.S., there was none of that kind of racing in the US. But I had a bicycle.

 

[00:07:00] So that’s a song.

 

[00:07:03] So I was out riding his bicycle and it was way too big for me, a friend to given it to me. And I got involved with a local bike club and they said, hey, if we get you a bike that fits you. Would you race for us?

 

[00:07:17] So I ended up racing on the local bike racing team in New Jersey and it must’ve been good. Apparently we’re not through the categories and ended up on a very large team based out of the East Coast and then continued racing. When I came out to California and of course California for cycling is amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing. And there’s such a depth of talent and the competitive level that there is is incredible. So that this race has been awesome. It’s so much fun. And it’s it’s kind of built a network for me to connect with other, you know, CEOs of companies, tech companies, CS out in the valley. It’s kind of taken over from golf and in that respect. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So no urge to go back to motor racing. Car racing. Oh, I’d love to, but, uh, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s not as environmentally friendly as the scene.

 

[00:08:09] Ford versus Ferrari. I have. Last weekend. Yeah, we did too. Yeah. And also one related that’s more of a documentary. It is shelbie. Oh yeah. Let’s something about whole Netflix documentary. And it really you know, I didn’t know his background. You know, for me with the Shelby Mustang and his name, Lunga from Models. But what a fascinating entreprenurial story. Yeah, that’s fueled with, you know, a fiery need to compete. Yeah. So anyway, well, who knows? What?

 

[00:08:42] Once you win some cycling titles, we might see a lot of racing on the Indy circuit or something. Yeah. I mean, I’m fanatical about F1 these days. I watch a lot of Formula One. That’s a that’s getting very exciting the last couple of years. It was boring for a while, but yeah.

 

[00:08:57] And I watch a lot of that. All right. So let’s shift gears and let’s talk more about Outrace Technologies. And so, for starters, tell us what the company does.

 

[00:09:08] So we provide Supply chain security solutions. And primarily we help manufacturers who are producing product in China or other parts of Asia secure that production from the moment the product is born all the way through to its end of life. So being able to ensure that your factory in China is only producing the product that you ask them to produce, that you’re tracking all of the scrap to make sure it’s not leaking back out into the marketplace and then providing that security on the distribution chain from the factory all the way through to the retailer and the consumer fighting issues like counterfeit gray market trading and diversion of products and warranty return for that kind of thing.

 

[00:09:50] And there’s a there’s a big demand for that level of transparency, right, Paul? And in this supply chain. Yeah. Yeah.

 

[00:09:56] Everyone refers to and and and and really. Linear at all, but that traceability from product to build materials through the direct materials all the way back to the source. Depending on what you’re making, I think is the absolute desired state by nearly every manufacturer, if not.

 

[00:10:17] All right. So, Mark, I wish we had your product about 8 years ago. So I spend a lot of time in middle stamping and we would supply parts to have Rod Industries. And one of my least favorite projects I was given is we had sent some some bad parts to a company and they identified whatever took place. He identified those our part. I was given the project of tracing it back and pulling out from inventory. Other parts related to that. That lot. Yeah. And for us at the time, it was a deeply manual process and I probably spent two weeks of my time. And to be fair, I was not the most engineering minded. So I have learned kind of the whole process. I did it, but it took two weeks to get back and make sure we isolated the rest of the parts from that lot so that it didn’t contaminate any other products. I bet with your solution, it doesn’t cost people weeks and weeks of time.

 

[00:11:18] Now, we could do we can determine the exact machine the exact day in seconds it’s produced on our report. One of the big side effects that I didn’t expect from the implementations that we did that big the customers really appreciate was that, yeah, we’re securing the machines in manufacturing and we’re secured in a manufacturing facility to ensure that they’re only producing what is requested on the purchase order. And yeah, we understand what the scrap goes and it can control that. But what it did give them that I hadn’t thought about was real time visibility into what is being produced at this moment in time. On this day, if so, they have a dashboard now they can look across the four factories that are producing for them in China and they can look at exactly the progress of each purchase order almost in real time. Yeah. At that factory in China. And that normally takes them days of phone calls, chasing around, you know, trying to find someone who understands what’s going on, what a demand planning superpower.

 

[00:12:13] Right. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah.

 

[00:12:16] So what type of.

 

[00:12:21] Tell us about the applications. So I mentioned medal standings earlier. What are some of the common products that that you’re dealing with? Yeah.

 

[00:12:28] So our our heritage where we actually started off was securing watch production for a very large U.S. watch company and being able to provide them with the information on three specific problems. One, how is their factory performing? Are they producing additional product and shipping out the back door to IS? How is product getting into marketplaces like eBay, Alibaba, Amazon, not the ones and twos, but the bulk is getting onto those platforms as a diverted or gray market goods. And then the third thing was when they received the product back for warranty return or replacement. Is this product genuine or fake? And how much time does their incoming customer service spend trying to figure out if someone trying to request a reward to a replacement for a counterfeit product warranty return fraud? So we started off in the watch industry and that’s where our our technology evolved. We now have a number of European watch brands that are using our technology, specifically the ones who are producing in Asia. And now we’re moving into medical device and aerospace, because when you boil down the manufacturing of a watch, it’s a stainless steel machine in very much the same way as a medical device is a stainless steel component or an aerospace pie is a stainless steel titanium component. So we’re evolving now into these other industries that are from a production and supply chain perspective, very, very similar to what the watch industry does, very deep supply chain, very complex parts shipping all over the world.

 

[00:14:07] All right. So for so clearly very meaningful impact. Big, real, tangible armoire. Yep. How so? I am not a technologist, but I’m assuming your solution is built around the blockchain at its core or it takes elements from blockchain speak. Speak to that a bit because there’s so many folks and we talked to them on a regular basis. Not everyone, but a lot of folks believe blockchain is a fad. It’s coming and going. And then the other side of the house folks know that it is revolutionizing the supply chain business world. Speak to it a little bit how you’re incorporating.

 

[00:14:46] So we’re actually seeing two streams of companies out there, the ones that are curious and interested in blockchain, but haven’t deployed it yet. Maybe they’re looking at it and doing pilot tests and then the companies who have. Absolutely no interest in blockchain. And I’m looking for solutions with traditional technologies and database technologies.

 

[00:15:04] We happen to have evolved from a traditional technology company into a company that is supporting blockchain for the future. Supply chain security. So we’re seeing both and we actually run both side by side. OK. So we’re not a pure blockchain company. We don’t have a token that we sell or, you know, an ICAO strategy. There’s a lot of companies that are fallen foul of that. We see blockchain as another technology to enable our solutions to be deployed. So when someone performs a an authentication using our mobile app on a product, for example. That information is pushed into the company’s database. The brands database, so they have that tracking information.

 

[00:15:50] But in parallel, we push it into a blockchain. So that transaction is recorded on a blockchain ledger as well. And they have a choice of where they want to go to get their information and what kind of database technology that they want to use. So we look at it as as kind of future proofing. Yeah, we solve your problem today. And if you want to utilize blockchain technology in the future, we are connected to that. I mean, you can use that. So one of the things about blockchain is that a lot of people have touted blockchain by itself as it will solve counterfeit. So Greenmarket. That version is going to solve world hunger and peace and everything else that blockchain magically to do. But as I presented at that Moscow conference last year, which got a lot of interest, was the blockchain is an interesting technology, but it has a piece missing. And to make it complete, you need to have a very, very secure way to connect a physical product, a watch, an aerospace part, an automotive part, a medical device to the digital ledger.

 

[00:16:51] How do you securely create that digital twin of this item on the digital ledger? And that’s the piece that blockchain has been missing in most of the touted anti-counterfeit and A.I. diversion solutions out there. The data to the ledger connecting those two things to distribute the trust. Yes.

 

[00:17:12] Well, put those very well explaining that. Yes. Know whether it’s A.I. or blockchain, you know. We know.

 

[00:17:22] Cutting through the noise, answering the misnomer is what it is, what it’s not. Your expectation. Neither are magic wands. And there’s a strategy towards both at scale. You’re mixing traditional with, you know, scalability, possibilities with those technologies. Not replacement. Not magic wands. Right. Right. All the all the things that I x, you know, tend to explain it as we go into our customers. You know, when we’re asked. Oh, so you put that on a blockchain. We’re like, well, there’s always the possibility that you can get there once your data is in a place that, you know, supports that appropriately. Yeah, from a digital perspective. So lay the foundation, put up the studs, then put on the roof.

 

[00:18:12] Right. Right. Rather than working backwards. Right. Yeah. The blockchain by itself is not going to solve your problem.

 

[00:18:17] I have to do all the work that I would have to do anyway. Yeah, serialization is very, very important. Yeah. Know, putting in the track and trace components that allow you to, you know, actually create the transactions each point in the supply chain. Yeah. Because if you’re not pushing transactions to the blockchain, because you’re not scanning anything or anything that doesn’t, doesn’t do anything right.

 

[00:18:38] Yeah. And and I think a great place to start. And it sounds like that’s what you’re doing is. All right. Do you have a new good new finish? Good. Let’s start there. Rather than trying to overwhelm yourself by trying to transition everything in the past immediately.

 

[00:18:52] Yeah. And you have to start when the product is born. Because if you can’t authenticate that the product when it was produced is the one that is recorded on the blockchain, it doesn’t matter what happens at the distributor or the retailer. At the consumer, you have to secure it at the very beginning because otherwise all the data after that is in doubt. And that’s what people are realizing now with the blockchain solutions, is that having a blockchain by itself doesn’t actually solve anything. Right. During the actual supply chain security work with a blockchain database actually does make it easier to deploy. And that ease of deployment is something that I think blockchain lends itself to very, very well. Certainly if you are deploying in Asia at factories, connecting those factories does become a little easier. And that’s the advantage, I think.

 

[00:19:40] Mm hmm. Okay. So I want to kind of bring the conversation out a bit more broadly and market love for you to weigh in on it. You’ve got a global, a fast moving, ever evolving global India in Supply chain community. Right. What’s one or two things from a trend standpoint? From a development standpoint, innovation standpoint, you name it, that you’re tracking more than others.

 

[00:20:05] So one of the greatest challenges we find when we start working with clients is is the hurdle of the education. Initially, they don’t have a problem, but they have no idea how to solve some of these problems. A lot of companies we work with, I mean, we’re talking big, big global brands have no serialisation process in place right now. And although there’s a serial number actually on the product or on the package, no one is actually tracking it. The the number is applied at the factory. Someone’s got a label and they’ve put a serial number on there, but they are not actually capturing the data. So they’ve done the first step, but not the next piece. And we’re seeing I see more and more of that. But I see more and more companies now who are realizing that they have to do something with this data. The data is valuable to them. They’re not capturing it, but they need to. Yeah, because once it’s gone, it’s lost. Yeah, but yeah. And you know, having a serial number. The second trend is having a serial number or QR code or data matrix code is not a security solution. So it’s great for basic simple Logistics grace basic simple supply chain. Check it tracking. But providing product security is another layer.

 

[00:21:20] You can’t do that with a QR code. Creating authenticity with a QR code is it’s anyone can create a QR code. Anyone can read a QR code. So being able to provide that authentication layer to the product itself, the packaging and then tie that in as the track and trace component through the supply chain is is where we’re seeing things going. Blockchain has been valuable for us in another way, kind of unexpected in that it’s brought the conversation about Supply chain security much, much higher up. It’s created a curiosity, it’s created an awareness that, okay, yeah, there’s a mechanism out there that we need to have for tracking things. We don’t do that today. So now the conversations are starting now. And I think that’s been for me, its greatest value is as a discussion point, as a start of a discussion that leads to, oh yeah, okay. Blockchain can do that, but you can actually solve our problems today. And. Yeah. Kick kick it out. Right. Years. We don’t have to wait for that to be the solution that that eventually solves it. We can do something today. And, you know, save the millions of dollars between now and when that actually happened. Yeah.

 

[00:22:33] Yeah, yeah. Brick by brick approach. Yeah. No, we’re in construction mode this morning. Supply chain construction analogy converging here in Scottsdale. I love it.

 

[00:22:47] All right. So I want to pick your brain on something. So last night you shared it. You’ve been. A variety of startups. And I would love for you. Martin, speak to startups have really seemingly have really proliferated out in the Supply chain community. And I think the other cool thing to see, you know, kind of having been in this space for about fifteen years is that large established companies are more and more willing to partner with startups more so than than ten, twelve years ago, maybe more so than five years ago. Know if I speak to. Well, for for the entrepreneurs listening and tuned in, speak to your son, your key lessons learned from being a ritual startup contributor or participant.

 

[00:23:36] Right. So this is actually I was counting last night when when I I saw some of the discussion point. This is actually my fourth company that I founded by myself. But I’ve been involved in another three or four startups that other people have brought me into their roles. So I have actually I have a product company alongside the software company as I trace technologies and have founded a co-founded a manufacturing product company out of San Francisco that I co-founded a company called Dodo Case. And we made handcrafted cases for Apple’s iPad. Nice. So that was well, that was my, you know, real, uh, stepping stone into manufacturing. But we actually shortened our supply chain with that company and that we produced everything in San Francisco. Nice. So although it was contained. Yeah. Yeah. We realized that you could actually produce some of the parts cheaper than having them produced in China and shipped over. And our lead time was zero because we could go out into the workshop and produce one if we wanted to. Yeah. And we didn’t have a minimum order. You know, there was no order required. So for one off we went off to 10000. Yeah.

 

[00:24:59] Ready to go. Yeah. You want five tomorrow. Yeah. We’ll go out and actually produce some. Obviously there was a capital equipment investment that we needed to make up from, but it actually paid for itself within a year. So from an Froome not Trident ProPurchaser perspective. If my advice to people who are starting product companies is that you don’t have the manufacturing China. Certainly not from day one. Now you may not at scale at very, very large scale make the same margin as you would if you purchased product in bulk from from an offshore manufacturer. But you can actually simplify your supply chain, simplify your production. And what was really key for us was being able able to produce units of one, because as soon as we were able to produce units of one, now we can produce custom products in the client. Now they can go into the Web site typing. They want blue, they screen that. You know, it’s just because in different places and we could create custom product for them. And that was because we pushed the supply chain down to be able to create individual products of one. And that’s all the rage these days.

 

[00:26:04] As Gartner and many others pointed out in their research, mass customization is a big deal. Yes. Right. Everyone wants to pick their colors or pick their style or pick their texture, whatever it is yet. But their dog’s face on it. Yes, that’s right. Yeah. And companies are finding ways like makeup companies, a game or L’Oreal things. It is it is one that partner, they’re finding ways of offering customization on that mass scale. It’s really a fascinating trend in retail. If there’s one other observation. Yeah. That that you would offer listeners that either are in startups or entrepreneur wannabes or folks, you know, you name it.

 

[00:26:42] Yeah. What would that be? So I don’t pay any attention to what the bases tell you like that.

 

[00:26:50] And the torpedo. Exactly. The bases are going down.

 

[00:26:56] They are very focused on their industries. And your idea may not fit the industry that the v._c._r.s are focused on. But that doesn’t mean to say is a bad idea.

 

[00:27:06] It just means that either the VCR that you’re working with or not appropriate for your industry. You know, what we actually found was that it was easier for us to go get customers to pay us for our product and our technology than it was to convince the city species and Silicon Valley to invest in our growth. So, yeah, um, my lesson learned that of trace is that you can’t do this and build a technology company in Silicon Valley without B.S. money from Silicon Valley bases. Yeah. And then they’re gonna be banging on your door. Well, maybe one day.

 

[00:27:41] Yeah.

 

[00:27:41] Now that I think that’s a common misnomer. Not every business is v.c backed and that’s a mechanism for growth. Right. And there are different ways to get there. Yeah. And all should be explored. Yeah.

 

[00:27:55] Don’t give up on your idea just because you can’t get funding from a visa. Current point. Okay. So as we start our wrap up interview with Mark Manning, founder, CEO, Outraced Technologies, one shift gears to Demko. Clearly, this is at least your second year because you you keynoted last year, it seems. Yeah. What’s why are you here? What’s the value here and watch other folks be here. So we were invited last year.

 

[00:28:20] I met Daniel Sanson, who you mentioned, Mr. Supply chain UPS. I actually met him on Linked-In and we’d swap some ideas of e-mail and that kind of thing. Yeah, he’s a very social guy with those kind of things.

 

[00:28:32] So he’d invited me along because we were doing some interesting things with blockchain and the message that we were sharing about blockchain of. Yeah. It’s a great technology, but it’s incomplete, really resonated. What we’ve what Daniel was looking out for his company and and his involvement with blockchain and Supply chain. So he saw that idea and felt that that would be a valuable thing to share with Dembski members last year. So he invited me along to be on the panel with him. It was a very interesting panel. It had the United States Air Force Institute of Technology, IBM. Watson was there with their blockchain solution. Honeywell Aerospace. And then it was I traced technologies, these giant said, and a little guy.

 

[00:29:20] And of course, I had a different opinion on blockchain, too. The other three companies. But what came out of that was a discussion with Honeywell Aerospace, where they said, yeah, we get it.

 

[00:29:33] We understand we’re deploying blockchain and for their their marketplace, go trade their act.

 

[00:29:44] And they they saw that, yes, there is a piece missing. And it started a discussion around how I trace Honeywell and Daniel Stanton’s company Secure Marking could collaborate on a blockchain implementation. So that was last year. Great panel, great presentation led into some discussions. And we actually deployed a blockchain solution with Honeywell Aerospace using I traced technologies, our mobile application, and it’s recording the birth of aerospace parts in their production. And, uh, our technology captures that birth event with a secure I traced code and the app pushes that information to Honeywell’s blockchain. It pushes it to the trace blockchain as well, but it pushes it to the Honeywell blockchain. So they have now a blockchain record of the birth event of that part. And now they can track back again and again through its whole lifecycle.

 

[00:30:42] Well, powerful within aerospace is huge. There’s really nothing about the importance of maintenance.

 

[00:30:47] Yeah. So that leads to Dembski. This year was the hey, we had a great discussion last year. It led to a real deployment of a blockchain implementation. Let’s come back and present the update a year later of what came out of it. Dembski meeting in twenty nineteen. Some of it. Another walking the walk at them.

 

[00:31:08] That’s right. It’s going to be a book or a dance or something.

 

[00:31:12] But it is really neat to hear because our observation as first timers pulling this year is is the instant collaboration is sitting down. Let’s figure this out. Let’s let’s really plan for some action or next steps. That seems to be a big part of the DNA of this event. And so it’s no surprise. I’m glad you’re here is kind of it. You’re often a case study of what to come, of the impact of the kind of the the genesis of a of a very meaningful and impactful deployment of that collaboration. That bet that arguably started at Dembski last year maybe. Yeah.

 

[00:31:48] And what was really, really exciting with Honeywell is that they are a very fast moving for a large company. They move very, very fast. And we went from what was basically a whiteboard discussion about what we could do to a production deployment where we’re in the factory scanning product in eight weeks while in an hour, and then an aerospace engineering company where engineering changes were required, that the speed that they moved that to deploy this kind of technology. And it just shows that this isn’t hard to do. Yeah. If people want to do this, you know, four, six, eight weeks, you have to do it. Yeah. You just have to go do it. Do it. Yeah.

 

[00:32:28] No, I think that’s important. And then something around Dembski that I know you understand as a founder is, you know, this is not a conference. And, you know, any any activities around a startup selling to an enterprise is we’re not selling this to you, especially in the early stage. We’re innovating with you. Right. Let’s sit at the table and figure this out and go. Do you not not run through these lengthy cycles of. Right. Of here’s what you’re getting right. Yep. So we’ll put.

 

[00:33:01] Okay. So Mark, as we as we look to wrap up here, how can folks learn more about outrace technologies and connect with you?

 

[00:33:09] Yeah. So we have an EFT website. So I traced tech dot com and we’re also on Twitter at. I traced tech and my email and phone number is all on the Web site. People can reach out to me directly from our contact page. And, uh, yeah, I look forward to hearing from folks who want to learn more about how blockchain can be implemented in the supply chain and how I trade can help secure physical products to that digital digital environment. Men love it. Really.

 

[00:33:37] I enjoyed this conversation. I enjoyed last night’s brief intro. And this is exactly what we thought it would be a pick anyway. So but hope our audience enjoyed it as much as we did. Really appreciate your time, Mark. And we’re gonna wrap up Paul in two quick notes to the audience from Sheer One. Stay tuned. We do it. We still have more programing and coverage of the Dembski conference to come. If Dembski is known or on your radar, it should be. You can learn more deum sca dot u. S. And then secondly, be sure to check out some of the things the Supply chain now team has got coming up with a wide variety of global partners, from EMT water to events to the Automotive Industry Action Group Moto X and many more. You can check out our Web site at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com, especially the events in the webinar tab. OK, Paul.

 

[00:34:24] Another great episode. Yeah. It’s Keith Scott Ausland. Come on. We gotta keep using our spring training in baseball. Yeah, right. My. A long shot of getting out to a Cleveland Indians game here while we’re here. But this teamone Greg White holds in here great conversations. Maybe next spring.

 

[00:34:44] Well, big thanks to Mark Manning, founder and CEO at Outraced Technologies, of course, big thanks to our sponsors. Paul Nobel and the Verusen team. You can learn more about them at bearskin VTR USC in dot com. On behalf of the entire team here at Supply chain. Now Scott Luton signing off for now. Hope you have a great week.

 

[00:35:03] Don’t listen to the V C’s and we will see you next time on supply chain. Thanks, everybody.

 

Mark Manning is the Founder & CEO of iTRACE Technologies, a Silicon Valley company specializing in supply chain security. Mark is a serial entrepreneur and has been involved with brand protection and product security for over 15 years, delivering technology solutions to some of supply chains biggest problems. iTRACE 2DMI helps companies stop Production Overrun, Diversion and provides secure product authentication to global fashion accessory brands. iTRACE has deployed blockchain and traditional track and trace solutions through a suite of desktop, on-product and cloud-based security applications. Mark studied Engineering and Telecommunications in London England and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

Paul Noble is Founder and CEO of Verusen, a technology firm that uses AI to predict inventory and harmonize data organizations in a variety of industries. Verusen automatically integrates to your ERP and disparate data sources — single or multiple systems, one or many locations. Then, the platform’s Artificial Intelligence learns from your own inventory experts and encodes their knowledge to provide seamless inventory harmonization. With Verusen, you get automatic naming and categorization with 99% reliability at scale — a true material master. Paul’s passion for entrepreneurship has always shaped his approach for go-to-market strategies and tools, which was the driving force behind pursuing his dream of launching Verusen to improve the availability of easy-to-use technology for optimizing the supply chain for materials and MRO. Learn more about Verusen here: https://www.verusen.com/

 

Scott W. Luton is the founder & CEO of Supply Chain Now. He has worked extensively in the end-to-end Supply Chain industry for more than 15 years, appearing in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Dice and Quality Progress Magazine. Scott was named a 2019 Pro to Know in Supply Chain by Supply & Demand Executive and a 2019 “Top 15 Supply Chain & Logistics Experts to Follow” by RateLinx. He founded the 2019 Atlanta Supply Chain Awards and also served on the 2018 Georgia Logistics Summit Executive Committee. He is a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and holds the APICS Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) credential. A Veteran of the United States Air Force, Scott volunteers on the Business Pillar for VETLANTA and has served on the boards for APICS Atlanta and the Georgia Manufacturing Alliance. He also serves as an advisor with TalentStream, a leading recruiting & staffing firm based in the Southeast. Follow Scott Luton on Twitter at @ScottWLuton and learn more about SCNR here: https://supplychainnowradio.com/

 

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