Into: You are listening to Behind the Ops presented by Tulip.

Russ: I went looking for a Santa hat and this, this lame red beanie was all I could find, but I did find some jingle bells to put around my neck. 

Madi: All of our listeners, they're gonna hear a faint jingling throughout this, uh, this episode, and it's really gonna add to the magic of continuous improvement in the North Pole.

Russ: Producer Jasmine and I were debating whether to remove the jingle bells or keep the jingle bells. And I have to say, I think it's gonna be just slightly too disruptive. So let me get, let me get it outta my system.

And then the, the sound of, the sound of disposed jingle bells.

Somewhere a Foley artist is earning their stripes. Madi intro us. What are we talking about today? 

Madi: So it's the holiday season. Here we are, and we are a couple of Manufacturing affinity nerds. 

Russ: That's true. 

Madi: So why not combine two amazing things: how Santa does what he does and continuous improvement and digitization into one very fun hypothetical conversation.

Russ: I have rarely seen you so excited as you are about this thought experiment, in managing the North Pole more efficiently and effectively. 

Madi: Well at my core, I'm a storyteller and not all stories are true. Some of the best stories are fiction, so let's combine the truth of digital transformation with the fiction of Santa and maybe even like kick off with some science of AI since I did ask ChatGPT how Santa would improve his operations.

And I think that the universe via the AI had some good ideas. 

Russ: Gimme the AI rundown. 

Madi: So he says, like all good consultants, that it's difficult to say and it really depends on efficiency and cost. So starting off strong. Um, but first he would look into using automation and technology to, to streamline his toy making machines.

Mostly to help his elves produce more toys in less time and help free up the elves to focus on tasks that could potentially increase output. 

Russ: What AI did you ask this of? 

Madi: ChatGPT. It was shameless plug open AI. 

Russ: It's useless. 

Madi: So what does the AI get wrong here? 

Russ: Well, I mean, it doesn't really start with pain points, right?

It gets to, we need to increase output and that's good. We need to reduce costs also. Good. But I mean, if, if we knew how to do that, why would we be consulting with a chat bot to solve our problems for us? Santa's got real pain. 

Madi: And of course they're taking a, uh, technology first versus elf centric approach, which I find objectionable. 

Russ: Elf centric. Reindeer centric. You gotta think about what the real core of your operation is, and you have to be able to blend tradition and craftsmanship and ruthless, modern efficiency all together. And that doesn't necessarily start with your technology. 

Madi: Oh, it definitely starts with a business objective, like making as many, I mean, there's a growing population that's just more toys dealing with a lot of different languages.

Uh, Santa also has supply chain issues, so kind of melding all these things together. I think the, the focus on enabling elves is a, is a better start versus the secondary value of improving efficiency in production. 

Russ: I had a couple of core pain points for Santa that I've brainstormed and I don't have good answers to all of them.

I have some, I have partial answers to all of these. Santa trying to get this Christmas thing going. He's got scope and scale problems. And you talk, you, you know, you mentioned this with population growth, but think about, think about at its core, how's even supposed to manage his data for all the good little boys and girls.

What, just a book? A book would be impossibly huge. 

Madi: He does have a list of all of his, uh, customers that he needs to deliver high quality goods to, and he checks it twice. But I think we definitely can get some value out of, uh, a digital ledger and better traceability of who's good and bad, because we also have to deliver coal.

So there's some, um, some raw good delivery that needs to happen. 

Russ: I wanna see automated checking twice by exception. Like, sure you can check it twice, but manually checking a list of all good little boys and girls on the entire planet. Let's say that's like 2 billion people. How are you gonna check a 2 billion person list without magic, which is a total cop out, right?

Like we we're talking about the non-magical way that Santa would, would handle this if suddenly all the Christmas magic was gone. 

Madi: Yes. This, this does assume a lack of magic. All this talk of magic though, Russ, is making me miss the Jingle Bells. I feel like anytime magic is mentioned, a little jingle would've would've added a lot.

Russ: we'll put it back in in post. Speaking of Magic... 

Madi: So the second thing on Magic, Santa should consider implementing Lean Manufacturing techniques to reduce waste and improve efficiency. And lean really is kind of like magic if you're applying it well and in operations, it's operational magic. 

Russ: Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Lean is magic. Yeah, that works. 

Madi: So, applying this magical framework, really focused on standardizing work, improving processes, I think here's where technology enabled magic can really take place. You know, getting access real time to that data, being able to move between projects without having to pull elves out of production or hire new elves just to focus on number crunching is, is a way that, you know Santa can really improve. 

Russ: and there's, there's a critical elf shortage anyway, these things don't grow in trees. The cookie elves do. 

Madi: How many elves do you know that are both magical elves that live in the North Pole and have, you know, six sigma black belts?

I bet the the number is very low. There may be one. 

Russ: I can tell you right now that I don't know a single elf that fits that criteria. 

Madi: The talent shortage, it's hitting everybody. 

Russ: Santa especially. So if, if Santa didn't have magic to address the labor shortage, he's gotta do more with fewer people.

Madi: Do more with less. It's the anthem. 

Russ: So visibility into who's doing what, how are they doing it? You know what I'm, you know what I'm picturing now? I'm picturing an elf with one of those retractable badges tagging into his elf assembly line. 

Madi: Did you ever see the Santa Clause? 

Russ: Yeah. 

Madi: I imagine the elf that you're talking about right now is Bernard as like an adult production manager.

Russ: I think Bernard perfectly captured Hollywood's version of a production manager, probably better than he captured elfdom.. 

Madi: So what else are, are there any other areas? So this is kind of the, the end of the line for the ai. 

Russ: Yeah. Santa has his data management problems and he has his fulfillment problems.

That's more of a logistics thing than the Manufacturing thing. So even if, even if he can. Let's say he squeezes every last inch of efficiency out of his elf labor force, and he' s got good data management, he's got good visibility into his systems, he's using the right gentle touch, so he doesn't, he doesn't throw away the things that are critical to the process.

You know, the, the wooden hammer and the curly shoes and the, the pole at the north. You know, you can't just toss that stuff out because it's old fashioned, because that's part of the Christmas magic. I mean, Christmas charm, we're not allowing magic. Uh, so you gotta keep that stuff cuz otherwise Christmas's brand sufferers and uh, Christmas's product development goes down the, you know, down the toilet.

And Christmas just wouldn't be the same. But the backend stuff where you, you're not necessarily seeing it as a kid. Christmas morning, wrapping paper, tearing into it. Uh, you know what, if the toy shows up broken. Are we supposed to call the North Pole? Like all this whole, this whole, what I would say is like, it's like a distributed subcontracting model that Santa has clearly taken on where Santa delivers my child a toy, but the child can take the toy back to target.

That's the sort of novel business thinking that that's the way to, to address these things without just magical thinking. 

I 

Madi: love that in 2022, kids can take their Santa toys back to Target. 

Russ: That's right. They've got a straight line between, you know, the universal data management with like UPCs and then all of, uh, target's enterprise data systems that ties back to the North Pole and the, the maintenance and support, the after sales support that the North Pole can offer.

You know, they can't take all that on themselves. Like you said, there's a, there's an elf shortage, but they can get it to a good customer outcome by having, you know, places where they need to be. Real companies solve santa problems. Stuff, you know, they don't, they don't use magic. Alibaba, Amazon. This is why you have random, random people showing up at the door, you know, in a, in a personal vehicle, solving that last mile of delivery for Amazon, particularly around the holidays, 

Madi: also, major shoutout to the US Postal Service. Does an excellent job on the same problem.

Russ: I think the seasonality of it too. So this, this big surge of activity at one time, that's a problem that you know, if you're an industry that's always having big seasonality, then you can get used to it year after year after year. But if you have inconsistent seasonality where, where it's not actually seasonal, it's just, you know, ebbs and flows in what your demand is for your manufactured goods, that causes all kind of problems.

And even if you get. You know, a huge glut of demand. All of a sudden, everybody wants, I don't know, new podcasting headphones. If everybody decides that that's what they want, you know, at one given time, and it's a big trend, that can be a real problem to try and ramp up and then ramp back down again. 

So Manufacturing production planning. Whether that's software based or uh, whether it's magic based, both of those are, are things that, that actually have to be deployed all the time and are really difficult to handle as you have longer and longer supply chains stretched all the way across the world, uh, and kind of getting the information to exactly the right place at the right time.

That's kind of why Manufacturing and logistics software sit by sit side by side and why we spend time talking about supply chain stuff here, not just, not strictly Manufacturing stuff. 

Madi: No. We, we have to think about that entire value chain and, and everything that comes along with it. 

Russ: The entire elf value chain.

Madi: Well, I hope that all of our listeners, when they think of Christmas and the North Pole, also think about lean and magic and end-to-end systems that are helping get all of these goods to all the good girls and boys and folks around the world. 

Russ: Just a quick note before you go. We'll be taking a break for the holidays.

But we'll be back in January. Thank you so much for welcoming us as your new hosts. 

Happy holidays everybody. 

Madi: Happy holidays. Until next time. 

Russ: See you next year. 

Into: Behind the Ops is brought to you by Tulip. Connect the people, machines, devices, and systems used in your production and logistics processes with our frontline operations platform.

Visit tulip.Co to learn more. The show is produced by Jasmine Chan and edited by Thom Obarski. If you enjoyed listening, support the show by leaving us a quick rating or review. It really helps. If you have feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at behindtheops@tulip.co