2025 Supply Chain Management Trends

Intro/Outro 0:00

Welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast . Listen in as co-hosts Ted Stank and Tom Goldsby set sail into the world of end-to-end supply chain management , diving deep into today's most relevant business topics . They'll share insights in pressing industry issues and tackle the challenges keeping supply chain professionals up at night . If you're enjoying the ride , download and subscribe to Tennessee on Supply Chain Management on your favorite podcast platform now .

Tom Goldsby 0:28

Hello and welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast . Great to be with you , the first podcast of 2025 . And I kind of had to check myself mentally there to make sure I got the year right . It's kind of like when we used to write those checks and for the first six , seven weeks , the year right . It's kind of like when we used to write those checks and , for the first six , seven weeks , glad to be with you and thrilled to be joined not only by my good friend and colleague , dr Ted Stank , but we've got a couple of great junior colleagues joining us on this broadcast today too . But hey , ted , happy new year .

Ted Stank 0:58

Happy new year , Tom 2025, . How is that possible ? I ? Remember a time thinking that let's see if I could live long enough , I might see the year 2000 and I'd be 40 . And now it's 2025 . I can't believe it .

Tom Goldsby 1:10

And we're a full quarter century past Y2K , right , none of us thought we're going to survive that . Yeah Well , hey , ted , I tease that we're going to be joined today by some of our faculty in the Haslam College of Business Supply Chain Management Department . Why don't we go ahead and introduce those fine folks ?

Ted Stank 1:26

Yeah , I'd be happy to do that , tom . You know , any great organization is only as good as the new people that you continue to bring in to innovate and bring their new ideas and thoughts . And we have been really , really , really lucky at University of Tennessee , supply Chain Management , to have just a phenomenal group of faculty Two of our newest faculty your guys are not our newest faculty anymore , but two of our newest faculty are joining us today . I'd really love to welcome both of them .

Intro/Outro 1:53

Hussein .

Ted Stank 1:54

Abdullah is the Jim Bennett Fellow and Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management with us , and SK Jong is CSX Corporation Scholar and Assistant Professor in Supply Chain Management . They are both . I know that commercial says we're not supposed to say this because we're not really rock stars , but they're rock stars . Hopefully Billy Idol doesn't show up and tell us we can't be rock stars , but these guys are rock stars folks . You're going to hear it from the kind of things they're working on and couldn't be more delighted to have them with us on faculty at University of Tennessee Supply Chain Management and as guests with us on the podcast today . Guys , welcome .

Huseyn Abdulla 2:30

Happy New Year , tom Tate . Thank you for having us .

Seongkyoon Jeong 2:33

Yeah , happy new year . Thanks for having us today .

Tom Goldsby 2:35

I will say that I chaired the search committee in the fall of 2022 , when we had two faculty lines open and when we had the interest of Hussein and SK and we thought if we could just secure one of them it would be a big win . And , lo and behold , they both decided to join us and the rest is history . But , listeners , you're gonna get a sense for why we're so thrilled to have them on our faculty here momentarily . But , ted , why don't we do a little bit of a roundup , catch up to look back as we close out 2024 . We start the year 2025 and just tremendous happenings , obviously in world matters , in business and supply chain .

Tom Goldsby 3:14

I've been out and about traveling over these last couple of weeks . I was with the supply chain leaders in action last week as we planned our 2025 engagement 75 senior supply chain executives around a massive U-shaped table and we talked for a day and a half about the issues that were on their minds . And then I just came back yesterday from Sunland Logistics , a great partner organization of ours . I convened with their voice of the customer endeavor in Greenville , south Carolina . Again , a lot of great minds in one room talking about matters of supply chain . And hey , this will surprise no one out there , but the word uncertainty continues to be the dominant theme out there . A lot of that around geopolitics and world matters and general business , but of course we can't talk long without talking about a change of administration . Donald Trump gets sworn in on the other side of the weekend and you know there are a lot of discussion as to what's kind of bluster or negotiating tactics and what's going to become policy in a matter of days .

Ted Stank 4:16

Geez , Tom , you've been out and about . I've been ensconced over at our beach house on the coast of North Carolina for this holiday season . I didn't realize any of this was going on . I thought everything was just smooth sailing , no turkeys .

Tom Goldsby 4:27

Everything's hunky-dory on the coast .

Ted Stank 4:29

Yeah . Yeah , I didn't know any . I'm really , really intrigued to hear what you're going to have to say about what's going on . I just going to climb out of my hole and think everything is going on as always . No , I'm kidding .

Tom Goldsby 4:41

A lot of craziness . Before all that , I was out on the West Coast , out in LA , and right before the wildfires Geez , actually , there were already starting to be some fires in Malibu , as they're around the Christmas holiday , but had no idea what was brewing Global warming and climate change and everything it brings with it . And , of course , getting to Greenville . Yesterday I had to take a pretty roundabout way to get there , just as you routinely do when you're heading to North Carolina .

Ted Stank 5:07

Yeah , why don't you kick us off , tom ? What do you think is your biggest ? I'm glad you confirmed that uncertainty is the biggest issue . I did a podcast last week with one of our great partners , project 44 , and they asked me what is your one thing on top of your list ? And I said uncertainty . So why don't you dive into that ? What are some of the big ? Issues related to uncertainty that you're hearing .

Tom Goldsby 5:30

Yeah , I mentioned the change in administration and I think we try to hold things in pretty close confidence with the SCLA , just as we do with our GSCI .

Tom Goldsby 5:39

But I will share with you that there was some speculation on the bluster slash rhetoric to policy kind of ratio . You know a lot of talk , certainly throughout the campaign season and as it relates to you know that beautiful word , as Trump calls it tariffs and how that could impact trade . Also a lot of talk of immigration policy and how that can impact business tax policy , immigration policy and how that can impact business tax policy . But I will say that the SCLA group came down somehow with this 60-40 ratio that it was 60% fiction , 40% fact , of course . Then you got to figure out well , which 40% , what's going to be fact ? Is it going to be those 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% incremental tariff on China , or is it going to be something presumably less than that ? Also , in immigration , as our guest Marian Wanamaker has pointed out , all net growth in labor has come from immigration in recent years . So this talk of rounding up illegal immigrants and constraining legal immigration is something that has a lot of businesses very

Retail Sales and Returns Management Trends

Tom Goldsby 6:46

concerned .

Ted Stank 6:46

Yeah , love him or hate him , donald Trump is a disruptor , right . I mean , that's what he's been known for his entire professional career . What he likes to do is to cause uncertainty and set a lot of interesting positions that are at extremes , so that he can try to find some middle ground on things . And so I kind of agree with that maybe 60-40 approach . That I think that we will definitely see changes in all those areas you talked about . Approach that I think that we will definitely see changes in all those areas you talked about . But I think it's kind of a starting point for a lot of discussions around tariffs , around immigration . I mean , for one thing , some of the things just aren't physically possible , like some of the immigration issues he was talking about . So now you're hearing more things like , well , immigrants with criminal records are going to be the first to be deported , that kind of thing . I think in a lot of areas , it's just going to be wait and see .

Ted Stank 7:36

The interesting thing we live in a time where there's so much I'm not going to call it information , I'm going to call it data being thrown at us from so many different sources that I think that most of us perceive that we're in this crazy world of turbulence and when you get beneath those clouds of craziness and you look on what's going on on the ground , there's certainly some changes on the horizon , but things seem to be going pretty well . You know , I mean I think that if you look at where we were in this podcast a year ago , two years ago , talking about what was happening with inflation and are we going to have a soft landing , and the numbers that came out this week about inflation , everybody said it was going to show this huge increase in inflation and guess what , it didn't . So what's the Fed going to do ? Are we going to have more inflation cuts this year or not ? And you get underneath all that turbulence and guess what Business is doing .

Ted Stank 8:31

Pretty well , you know , tom , you often talk about what happens with retail sales over the holiday season as a real bellwether for what's happening with consumer confidence , etc . Retail sales during the holiday season November and December actually kicked up . They were 4% over 2023 . Holiday sales . Online sales were up 8.6% , right in line with predictions . The inventory to sales ratio something you and I have talked about a lot everybody was worried it was going to be really high because of all the stocking that retailers did during the summer because of the fear of the the east coast port strike , fear of tariffs that are going to happen potentially this winter . Guess what ? Inventory to sales ratio has been steady since the summertime . So I mean , partly we got to parse out all the stuff that's being put out there in so many different media formats from what's really happening on the ground , and that's hard to do , you know .

Tom Goldsby 9:30

Yeah , no , I agree , you know , as I was with our friends at Sunland the last couple of days , I was kind of setting the table and looking at some of the barometer indices . Certainly , you know inventory to sales , holiday sales and those things I'm on and , as you know , I pay so much more attention to consumer actions , sentiment I don't think sentiment amounts to much these days , but global supply chain pressure index from the New York Fed continues to be below zero . So that means minimal volatility and global transportation rates , manufacturing indices , purchasing indices and so forth . Also , we're seeing , as you pointed out , inventories in check , inflation up a tad . Bls data from the Fed showed that unemployment continues to be quite low and very much in check . So you're right , I mean the fundamentals are good .

Tom Goldsby 10:19

And what I'll say , you know , having spent a lot of time with some industry leaders the last few weeks , people are generally bullish . You know the term uncertainty did come up quite a bit . You know there's some anxieties for sure out there , but meanwhile I think there's generally a bullish outlook . And you're right , I mean the fundamentals remain very strong . And hey , somehow we did survive that campaign and election season . There's no insurrection . We've got a clean transition of power that looks to be happening next week , so a lot of reasons to be feeling pretty confident .

Ted Stank 10:50

Yeah , you know there was a title story , a cover story , from the Economist back I think it was in December of the American economy is the envy of the world . I always like to read the Economist because it's an offshore perspective of what's happening here in the United States . The US economy is the envy of the world . Yet if you were to go out and ask the person on the street about the US economy and maybe let's push this back to October , november , during the election campaign the person on the street would say , oh no , we're in a mess and one of the things that I have had to really recorrect . So I'm an old dude .

Ted Stank 11:22

I grew up watching people like Walter Cronkite on the news , and Walter Cronkite was the voice of fact , right Whether it was or not , we all believed everything Walter Cronkite said as truth . And now there's so many definitions of truth and one of the things that I think we all have to reset our dials on is that the media , even the mainstream news media , is viewed as an entertainment industry now , I think . And to come out on the nightly news and say , hey , everything's cool , the economy's clicking along the nightly news and say , hey , everything's cool , the economy's clicking along , we're all good Doesn't get people to tune in , and so what we get is everything's really bad . You better go hide under your bed and put your money in your mattress , because the world is falling and I think we just need to reset our can I say our BS dials , to kind of go through the BS .

Tom Goldsby 12:14

You have given me an idea , though . Ted . I think maybe in the future , we need to deliver this podcast with that Walter Cronkite voice , or maybe you hey , I'm Dan Rather , you're Walter Cronkite , something along those lines .

Ted Stank 12:26

Huntley Brinkley . My parents were Huntley Brinkley . Report people .

Tom Goldsby 12:30

Now you're dating yourself , Ted . Yeah , I'm definitely dating myself .

Ted Stank 12:33

But hey , you know what , tom ? You and I could go on talking forever , but one of the things we really touted with this podcast today was the guest that we have with us . Let's start with Hussein . Hussein does a lot of work on returns management , works with a number of our partners , does a project in our advanced supply chain collaborative on returns management , and I mentioned how we had a really strong holiday season with retail growth , a lot of that coming from online buying , and we all know that that's a perfect world where everybody that buys something online keeps that product and never sends it back . So let's get Hussein's take on this . Hussein , tell us some of the things you're working on and your perspective on both retail sales and the impact it's having on returns management .

Huseyn Abdulla 13:18

Yeah , first of all , I'm always impressed by the resilience of retail industry in the US , and this goes way back even during World War I and World War II . We can see the traces of retail industry showing extreme resilience and sales increasing or keeping steady pace . But one thing is also certain is that more sales means more returns , and according to the latest estimates by National Retail Federation , we're expecting more than $800 billion worth of products , which is about 16.6% of entire retail sales in the US , to be returned to retailers this year . And what this really means for a lot of the retailers is that they will have to continue rethinking extremely generous return policies that have been offered for decades now , things that have become such a norm for consumers that they take those lenient return policies for granted . They feel entitled to those policies and increasingly , retailers realize that those policies are no longer sustainable . They are not sustainable from financial point of view and they're also not sustainable from the environmental sustainability point of view . And what we see in this space today is that a lot of the retailers restrict their long-established lenient return policies . This is a trend that has been ongoing for the last six , seven years I would say A prominent example for this , which really motivated our recent research published in Journal of Operations Management LL Bean's case .

Huseyn Abdulla 14:50

In 2018 , LL Bean decided to restrict their 100 years old return policy , which allowed customers lifetime return windows , no question asked , full refund policies when they step back from this longstanding return policy . There was a lot of negative reactions in media , among consumers on the forum discussions that why retailer actually made this decision , and a lot of the consumers said that we're not going to shop from LLB in a game and this kind of sparked a question for us because we were kind of surprised to see , even if the new policy allowed customers to return the products within one year , which is really a long time period , we saw these negative reactions . So was it just a few customers who were extremely unhappy and talking about it online , or was there more systematic reasons why customers disliked when this retailer stepped back from their longstanding lenient return policy ? And hence we started our investigation and what we find was really interesting to us . We found that customers reduced their trust into retailers' ability in delivering good quality service and , in general , in retailers' goodwill when retailers restrict their longstanding reunion return policies .

Huseyn Abdulla 16:07

And , surprisingly enough , this really was independent . This negative reaction was independent from the extent to which customers actually return products . So even customers who say that we don't really return products very often reacted negatively . In our experiments with US consumers to restrictive policy changes of retailers and trying to understand why , we revealed that return policy leniency has a very strong signal about the retailer's service quality in general . It is perceived as an important element of the customer value proposition . So whenever you take it away , customers react negatively and they react negatively in different ways . They decrease their purchase intentions with the retailer , they reduce their intention to spread positive word of mouth about the retailer , they reduce their intention to spread positive word of mouth about the retailer and they also have less loyalty intentions .

Ted Stank 17:00

Hussein , have you looked at actual sales numbers ? Have these retailers that have made these policy decisions actually seen a dip in purchasing ? Because , as we all know that , for consumers , purchase intentions don't always align 100% with their actual behavior , right ?

Huseyn Abdulla 17:16

This particular research . We are trying to create a kind of a tightly controlled lab environment where we can definitely dig deeper into the psychological mechanisms of these reactions . But what we know , and according to some recent articles by Wall Street journals , actually surveyed retailers report that they experienced a reduction in their sales after they imposed return fees or they restricted their return windows , and our research really taps into why this decrease in sales , the actual decrease happens .

Returns Policies Impact on Sales

Ted Stank 17:48

Okay , so the premise is that if you change and restrict your returns policies , we've seen that it decreases sales and your exploration is why ? Absolutely .

Tom Goldsby 17:59

Yeah , that's fascinating to hear that . It's a signal of the service quality right and the work that we've done previously in returns which , by the way , I will tell you that we were originally looking at last mile delivery from advanced supply chain collaborative research Alan and Emily and I undertook and the companies with which we were working some very prominent companies said you know , we're actually getting pretty good at the last mile delivery . It's that first mile of returns that we're really struggling with . And , hussein , I know that while a great deal of your research kind of looks at that marketing interface , I know that you also have a strong operations background as well . What's kind of the state of the art in terms of that first mile of return ? Are we getting any better at taking back that nearly 17% of stuff that comes back after it's sold ?

Huseyn Abdulla 18:49

Well , there , are a lot of developments , especially with the advent of artificial intelligence and other technologies that we have at our discretion .

Huseyn Abdulla 18:57

We're getting increasingly better at forecasting returns , for example , and I think return policies is an important element here , because return policies set the stage and dictates to a large extent the timing , volume , quality of those returns and by applying this technology artificial intelligence , for example , or better machine learning techniques we can better predict those inflow and make accordingly our plans better in how we're going to acquire those returns , how we're going to process those returns and , most importantly , how we're going to disposition those returns after we acquire . A lot of the retailers have made significant investments in those techniques . Some retailers choose to outsource this return acquisition , processing and disposition processes . They collaborate with third-party logistics providers . Recently , dhl went into the returns processing industry . They're planning to open 14 returns processing locations and offer services to a lot of the retailers . So we do have different approaches , centralized and decentralized , when it comes to managing returns , but overall we increasingly see that retailers recognize the importance of returns on their financial bottom lines and try to align the reverse supply chains with the forward supply chains better .

Tom Goldsby 20:20

Yeah , you mentioned DHL . I think they made a considerable acquisition over the holiday to buy Happy Returns , one of the foremost players out in that space , and there's just an awful lot of activity going on out there . But it's fascinating to hear that we're getting better at forecasting returns . Hey , ted , correct me if I'm wrong , but don't we continue to struggle with demand forecasting , don't we ? But we're getting better at returns .

Ted Stank 20:43

Oh no , no , Forecasting Tom for decades has been relatively stable and probably close to 100% accuracy , I think . Right , yeah . By the way , another major focus of our advanced supply chain collaborative work is to really get a laser focus on how to improve planning . We've talked in the past about how we think that's one of the last great frontiers of improvement in supply chain management and now , with 16% of retail sales coming back , we need to get better about that as well . You know , hussein , it always amazes me that there are some retailers that build their competitive advantage , if you will , on their returns policy . Ll Bean was one of those , as you suggested , for 100 years , and now they're not . I mean , people always bought from the LL Bean catalog because you knew that if you bought it , you could return it , and that's what they were known for .

Tom Goldsby 21:31

Yeah , that was the premise of Zappos right . Amazon got tired of competing with and bought Zappos right . We can't avoid the Amazon effect in all of this right . I mean , it certainly has drawn us in and that kind of guarantee of great customer experience , hussein , can you kind of speak to . What role then that returns policy at Amazon has across the board ?

Ted Stank 21:51

Before Hussein talks to this I don't know if you've seen commercials over the holiday season . You can now buy Hyundai cars on Amazon at pretty good prices and have it delivered to a dealership near you . So what's the returns going to be like on a Hyundai SUV ?

Tom Goldsby 22:07

Maybe an asterisk on that return policy for that one , I don't know .

Huseyn Abdulla 22:10

Yeah , what is unique about Amazon's approach to returns is that Amazon never offered the longest return time window to their customers .

Huseyn Abdulla 22:19

There are a lot of retailers department stores , big box retailers who offered like open-ended return policies or return policies of one year , no questions asked . But what happened with Amazon is that they were the most successful in aligning returns with the rest of their business model . For example , they offered try before you buy service in 2018 , and they're going to actually end that program by the end of this month . By the way , they were essentially capitalizing on customers buying several products at the same time , trying at home and returning the unwanted product . But that was an entryway for them to sign up for the prime membership , which was a primary source of revenue and profit for Amazon for a long time . So they do things or they align their customer experience with their return policies in a way that allows , for example , returnless refunds . So they say keep the product , here's your refund , because processing that return , they know that it's going to cost even higher . So this kind of alignment process , policy alignment determines success when it comes to returns management , I believe .

Ted Stank 23:28

So we've touched on a theme here that kind of keeps emerging about this whole returns industry , retailers , clearly and that's around planning , which touches on data and new techniques like AI , etc . So increasingly across the supply chain we are getting new sources of data , tapping into connections with suppliers , with customers , to get data , all of which makes us much more interconnected across the supply chain , which is a great thing for transparency , for planning , for improved operations . But interconnectivity has a dark side , doesn't it ? I have a son who's a computer engineer and he said every time you guys in supply chain make a connection with another entity , it puts us in more danger of being hacked . Sk Zhang is one of our other new faculty members with an expertise in cybersecurity . Sk , what's your whole take on this new world , not only in the retail world but of end-to-end interconnectivity that we're rushing headlong into , and what's your research telling you about the big issues and themes in that area into ?

Seongkyoon Jeong 24:33

And what's your research telling you about the big issues and themes in that area ? Thanks for a quick summary about the change in the interconnectivity

Supply Chain Cybersecurity Challenges and Strategies

Seongkyoon Jeong 24:42

between people and companies . It is very true that after COVID-19 , everything has changed a lot , especially the inter-organizational interface and even interpersonal interfaces . So what we saw everybody now knows this kind of fact that the number of cyber attacks increased a lot as we went through COVID-19 . And then at the same time , so the term supply chain cyber attack is emerging too . Right , many cyber attacks emerged from suppliers . Basically , suppliers were the routes of the heck .

Seongkyoon Jeong 25:11

What's really interesting is that many companies , many buyers , let's say , blame suppliers . It's not us , it's the suppliers that didn't keep the compliance or policy so that we had a hack incident . So one question is like well , okay , they are rational . Is that maybe by making that kind of excuse , they were trying to avoid that kind of blame , right ? So does that really actually work ?

Seongkyoon Jeong 25:35

So we actually looked at stock market reaction . If they actually say , oh , this is because supply chain or the accident that was actually occurred by the supplier's fault , is there any kind of financial outcome difference ? And we found that there was no difference , which means investors know it's not just supplier' fault . It's your fault too , because you didn't manage the supply chain well right ? At the same time , then , do investors penalize the company for not managing supply chain well Well , we found that when the supply chain cyber attack occurs with data breach or operational disruption , the penalization is much harder and harsher . So it's not just about making excuses . I mean , companies should really be transparent about what they do and they should be responsible for supply chain cyber attack . Don't just make excuses . It's also within our responsibility domain .

Tom Goldsby 26:29

Well , that's fascinating to hear and you know we've been studying supply chain risk now for more than 20 years and , as you kind of paint the picture , sk cyber is distinct in the forms it can take , the threat it can present and also , as you're suggesting , the fallout that comes with it when the world does learn of a cyber attack . Now Ted kind of put this premise out there . He and I , for nearly three decades , have been saying manage business relationships , yes , selectively , but deep relationships are very valuable , but those deep relationships have to be supported with interface and a lot of that is data . So what perils do companies face as they have these close ties and do manage them on a selective basis , but , to your point , it presents vulnerability . So what steps can companies take to enjoy the upsides of that engagement without maybe some of the downside potential ?

Seongkyoon Jeong 27:25

Sure , Let me introduce another study of my research team . We looked at the digitalization benefits and , let's say , perils as well , by industry . The pace of digitalization differs , right , and we found that there is a kind of very interesting pattern as digitalization goes up . There is evolution pattern of cyberattacks . Basically , the first cyberattack wave is like social engineering-based cyber attack , so the focal company would be under attack by scam mails or any kind of social engineering tactics based cyber attacks . And then what companies usually do is they just increase the counter measure . For example , they train their employees better , they apply more tight information policy . Then what hackers do , as far as I know from the interview with actual hackers , is that hackers find out another route .

Seongkyoon Jeong 28:20

So suppliers are the weak link of the cybersecurity . For example , let's say let's make this kind of analogy you are attacking a fortress . The main door is defended by really bulky guys . What are you going to do ? Are you going to fight those guys ? Maybe you're going to find the back door right , you're going to find a channel or mode and you can fly into the fortress . For example , suppliers are usually not really cognizant of the cyber attack issues . So there was one very interesting survey by MSNBC back in 2020 . Very interestingly enough , suppliers or small firms are more confident about cybersecurity , which is very weird , right . Typically , cybersecurity is a function of investment and attention . So , for example , google I'm sure they have a fantastic cybersecurity system , right , but small companies they don't have enough resources to invest in cybersecurity systems , so they are typically weak . And then hackers usually find out routes through the suppliers and eventually they get access to their buyers , which are the biggest companies of the world , for example .

Ted Stank 29:28

SK . To your point , one of the most notorious cyber hacks happened I don't know six , seven years ago now , when Maersk , the big shipping company , was hacked , and it impacted all of their customers as well , which are mainly every Fortune 500 company in the world and everybody else , and that hack came in through an HVAC maintenance company at their headquarters in Denmark .

Seongkyoon Jeong 29:54

Yeah , it's very interesting . Back in 2013 , target was hacked , right For the same reason . The HVAC company was leaked , basically , and one of the credentials was hacked and then , using the HVAC company's credential , the hacker got into Target's system and they stole the personal information of all the customers , including credit card information . Okay , and that was really a fiasco for Target .

Tom Goldsby 30:18

And we just had some HVAC work done here at the house last week and I didn't do my due diligence . Now I'm getting a little bit worried about these HVAC vendors . But it does speak of an added very important criterion to supplier selection logistic , service provider selection , customer engagement that historically we're concerned about . Let's look at the inbound side the quality of those inputs , the assurance around it , the ability to meet the quantity needs , quality of the personnel and the relationship potential . But now we need to add cyber provisions and protections very much to that selection portfolio .

Ted Stank 30:57

Hey SK . What have you seen in companies ramping up their talent base of cybersecurity experts in their IT departments ?

Seongkyoon Jeong 31:06

So let me talk about that issue more deeply . For example , can there be any perfect , let's say , panacea for cyberattacks ? So my answer is well , it's somewhat like ever-evolving fight of the cyber attacks pattern , which is ransomware attack . Ransomware attack didn't exist 10 years ago , and then now it's really rampage , right , and then , probably from last year , we saw a lot of AI-based attacks . Now hackers can make really convincing paragraph to fool people , right ? What I'm saying is that can we have a full , perfect system or perfect supplier selection criteria for this kind of issues ? My answer is probably not . So what I would rather say is we may have to have some perpetual interest in this kind of domain , adapting to any new emerging patterns . So I guess you're right that talent management is one of the biggest questions in this case . Who has this good catching up talent and adapting or adaptive talent as well ?

Seongkyoon Jeong 32:17

Some people would say AI may help . That's true at the same time , not really true . So one of our other papers or mine actually addresses the impact of AI or automation in vulnerability management , and we found that that tool helps . We found from the JavaScript ecosystem that that kind of automation tool applied by GitHub helps the resolution of vulnerability maybe two times better than the regular way . However well , as we saw from any kind of our personal use of ChatGDP , you don't actually apply all AI suggestions right away , so there is a complexity when you apply the suggested ways . So because of this kind of complexity , there is a huge variance of the resolution time . My point is like AI may help , yes , at the same time , supply selection may help , but it's what really matters is the people and our interests . Supply chain cybersecurity Action may help , but what really matters is the people and our interests supply chain cybersecurity .

Tom Goldsby 33:12

Well , it's good to hear that AI has another use case potential . Again , that was the hot topic the last few weeks , as I've been out on the road engaging with senior supply chain executives finding that use case and , dare I say , there was some suggestion we need to return to small data . I think , sk , your suggestion is that maybe that's a good idea to be more selective in the nature of the engagement and more focused on the applications , what we're looking for . But , sk , thank you so much . We hope that , by virtue of bringing SK and Hussein onto the podcast , the chance to showcase the talent that we have . We are so fortunate that SK joined us out of Arizona State Again , it's such a great program and Hussein out of equally esteemed Texas A&M back in fall 2022 . And it's been our good fortune to have you . They're having tremendous success as you can pick up on the research front , publishing in top tier journals but also doing that great applicable research that we value so much at UT .

Ted Stank 34:11

Absolutely , Tom Yep , so proud of you guys . Our future is very bright with folks like you on the team . Before I wrap , I wanted to say one thing that SK Online . One day I want to talk to you about how you were able to find a database of hackers to be able to interview .

Tom Goldsby 34:28

Oh , it got our attention when he was interviewing with us .

Ted Stank 34:31

Yeah , I have this picture . You know how they show people like all , with their silhouettes all blacked out and their voice modulated . That that's how you were talking to them .

Tom Goldsby 34:41

Well , I think I see his hoodie hanging in the background .

Ted Stank 34:45

Guys , thanks so much for joining us . Tom , as always , great to kick off the new year with you . We here at University of Tennessee are on the verge of starting our winter spring semester next week , and so everything's going to pick up from here . We'll talk to everybody soon at our next podcast coming at you in a month . Thanks for joining us , as always . First of all , I'd like to invite anyone who would like to talk to SK or Hussein about their research and maybe share data with them . Please contact us at gsci at utkedu , and with that we'll sign off and talk to you next month . Thanks , everybody .

Tom Goldsby 35:24

Happy New Year Be well .

Intro/Outro 35:26

Thanks for tuning in to Tennessee on Supply Chain Management . If you enjoyed the episode , subscribe today on your favorite listening platform to get all of our episodes as soon as they drop , and don't forget to take a moment to leave us a rating . Have any questions , thoughts or feedback ? We'd love to hear from our listeners . Email us at gsci at utkedu . Join us next time as we continue pulling back the curtain on the world of supply chain , educating and entertaining you along the way . Until then , listeners ,