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A
Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening.
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Wherever you may be. Folks, Scott Lewton here with you on Supply Chain. Now we have another special episode ready.
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To go today as I captured a.
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Few interesting conversations, intriguing conversations for my visit to a private leadership conference held by my good friend Tony Shirota and the Reverse Logistics Association. On this episode, we feature a conversation with Troy Campbell, director of Reverse logistics with the Home Depot. Troy offers up a few valuable aspects of his experiences and journey as well as he really focuses on the importance of taking care of your people. Hey, no matter what sector you're in, I also spend some time with Dr. Glenn Richie from Auburn University. Now, not only is Auburn cranking out lots and lots of supply chain talent each year, but Dr. Richie has been researching the reverse industry space for almost 30 years. Stay tuned for some good stuff as we learn a lot more from Troy and Glenn. And here we go.
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Welcome to Supply Chain now the number one voice of supply chain. Join us as we share critical news, key insights and real supply chain leadership from across the globe. One conversation at a time.
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So, folks, I'm continuing my interviews here at the Reverse Logistics Association Leadership Summit. So lots of syllables here in Dallas, Fort Worth. Beautiful Dallas, Fort Worth. And this week at least, it's the center of all things. It's the center of the universe for all things reversed. And I'm here in this conversation with Troy Campbell, director of Reverse logistics with the Home Depot. Troy, how you doing?
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D
I'm doing great.
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A
Great to meet you. Same as I'll tell you, folks can hear the buzz in the background. You got a bunch of leaders in the space right now. There's energy and it's good to be here in Dallas. So is your one of your first summits?
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D
No, I've been a few of these now. So you've been part of the reverse, the rla, prior RLA for about five, six years. So I've been through a few summits.
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And folks can learn a lot. I think my opinion, I think it's.
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D
Not only learning a lot about reverse, but the networking piece is even bigger. It's the best place for.
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A
Well, and we're going to touch on that in here in just a second. But I want to start with this. I'm known for my flood and warm up question and we could talk about yours, I think for quite a few hours. So you're a big time New England Patriots fan.
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D
Absolutely.
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A
Long time fan.
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D
Long time.
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And y' all have had it really good in the last 12 years, would you say?
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E
15.
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D
15 years, probably 15.
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A
At least six Super Bowls.
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D
Yeah.
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Oh, my gosh. Including a crushing one against my Atlanta Falcons. Oh, my gosh.
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D
Rewatch that one frequently. Honestly.
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Oh, man.
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Okay.
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I know. I know who I'm dealing with now, but let me ask you this. We were just talking about Bill Belichick's for Ray into college Football, which is going to be cool to watch, but if you think back on all those teams and all those moments, it's not a fair question to ask you, but what's one of your favorite moments or favorite players? You know what? Really, you have to pinch yourself, man. I'm a Patriots fan. Top of the mountain.
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D
Yeah. I think it's the Edelman of the teams. It's the guys of the team that were really nobodies through college and had a fight and scratch the way through their career. I think I like that just because. Just in life in general, you see those folks, whether in business or in sports, they have to fight and claw their way through. They never expected to be even much, and they had a. You know, nothing was handed to them on this little stone. And I just kind of really appreciate those kind of moments in the games and those individuals make them. I hate to bring that game back, but the catch, like, that's just crazy, right? Just the things he's did throughout his career. I just think, you know, he was somebody who wasn't really meant to be. Was he a quarterback? Was he running back? What was he going to be? And he ends up being like one of the number one players.
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A
Troy, I'm with you. And, you know, he was like a Swiss army man, right. There's so many different situations and roles and game situations. He could deliver and he did the limer. And to your point, it seems like someone like an Edelman and others that come to mind, they earn everything they get. And to your point, that's not just a great sports story, but I love seeing that in the business world, too. All right. I really wish you'd share one of those six super bowl trophies, but I'm probably not getting that. Damn.
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D
Okay.
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A
All right. So as I mentioned to you, pre show, we really enjoy sitting down with a variety of leaders from the Home Depot. Had some great conversations. I really appreciate the Home Depot support of the RLA and the conversations going here because it really helps further industry. And we got, you know, we've come a long way in the reverse side of things, but we still got a long way to go. But let's talk about your role, Director of Reverse Logistics. Tell us about what you do at Home Depot?
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D
Yeah, so in the director of Reversal Logistics, I support the four reverse logistics facilities, the that we have in the country. There's. We have in Phoenix, Arizona, Pennsylvania, McGaughan, Georgia and Indianapolis, Indiana. So there's four sites. They range from 400,000 square feet to about a million. And each site has about three to four associates in there. Really the blood of our work. Right. They're the ones doing every single bit of that returns ugly freight, handling it and managing how to get it to look out. You know, we look at as it comes in the building. Right?
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Yes.
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D
The old analogy with the who returns stuff we do in, you know, Home Depot or Walmart bags. And here's my freight. We make it look pretty on the outbound side. So you package it, we get it going and send it off back to our vendors or our liquidators. So we manage those folks, you know, and then there's, you know, that's. I say it's easy way to look at it, but there's a lot of inner workings between, you know, conversations with store leadership team about stuff coming back. Yeah, we work real closely with our recycle sustainability partners, also work real closely with our salvage liquidated partners. So there's more than just really the four centers. There's a lot of, you know, partnerships that you need to work with in that role to really make everything flow smoothly out. And then you look at the merchants, how they make policies for product. And also, you know, there's a lot of folks that don't, I don't think, understand the different things that'll impact the reverse channel throughout its life cycle, especially in a larger corporation.
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A
I think that is well said and especially so succinctly. And you know, as I heard you talking about all those different shareholders, stakeholders, whatever you want to call them, participants, a very unique ecosystem on the reverse side and one that y' all have really, I think a lot, a lot of organizations can learn from what y' all been able to do at the Home Depot. Let me ask you, there's four centers. When I toured the McDonough center forever ago, I think he only had three. Where's the newest?
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D
So the newest one is Pixon, Pennsylvania. That's a million. I think it's 1.1 million square feet. We like to say it's, I hate to say fully automated, but it's more automated. You probably remember the McDonough facility. Very basic in automation. This has a little bit more automation, something I talk about a lot. You know, automation is tricky in Reverse, because the box is not a box when it gets returned. So we've learned a lot in that. And if we were to do it again, probably a lot of things we do differently only, you know, it's hard to get that to work with that type of freight. It is, yeah.
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A
That's a great call out because as tricky as automation can be on the forward side, it can be, to your point, trickier on the reverse side in the return space. But I loved your emphasis a moment ago of the people, the associates, the team members. That phrase that, that I love hearing because it always conjures up my, you know, times in my journey of going down to the plant floor or the warehouse floor and interacting with the expert. The people that do it every day.
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D
The ones, yeah, they, they know what's going on, they're doing it every day, they're lifting the boxes and putting it. Yeah, they do all the work for us.
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A
So true. And bringing it to. Also to that McDonough facility, one of the four you mentioned. It was amazing to have the opportunity to walk through there and you're describing the ecosystem. It makes perfect sense. As I was viewing the different, you know, kind of the flow of the facility, right. From product coming back and to the product being kind of figuring out what they're going to do with it and remanufactured, going back to shelf or what happens. And the people and the job they've.
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D
Got to do is complicated. It is complicated, very complicated. And especially in our business, you know, reverse is nothing that any company really puts in their forefront. It's always something that's an afterthought. Oh, crap, what are we going to do with reverse? And so you don't get the state of the art systems, warehouse management systems or any of that stuff. So we have to kind of, it's clunky. We have to figure it out. And what happens in reverse. Your associates, which I said are the blood, sweat and tears of our business, they have to figure it out. And there's a lot of that dispositioning work we have to do. Some of it, we have to think it's a system, is not going to tell us how to disposition. Some of it does, some of it doesn't. Sometimes we have to think, oh, hey, what would you do with this product? Is this a liquidated product? Is this not a liquidated product? So that makes it a little tricky.
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A
It does, but I'm glad that we've got. I almost said thought leaders, but it's more than thought leaders. It's Folks that are doing it that are really unlocking innovation for the whole industry. And I really appreciate you being here and being able to contribute to the conversations that are. Take place here.
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E
Yeah.
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But help the industry move forward. All right, so let's do this. There is our audience won't be new. It's supply chain now to the reverse space and the returns management space that Tony Shirota has referred to as the dark side for a long time. And unfortunately, a lot of folks in industry and outside industry are still kind of becoming more aware of that. But beyond that, as a reverse logistics professional and practitioner, there's so many trends going on, so many topics, so many developments. What's one that you've really got your eye on here, say this year in this space?
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D
So I think in this space this year. And we look at, you know, this may be just particular to our business, but I think anyone can really look at this. And it's the nature of how things are sent back to the centers. Right. So one of my main responsibilities is, you know, is efficiency. How quickly can we flow this through at the lowest cost? And so we're looking at how can we get things back into our network in a more efficient manner so that the associates I spoke about earlier don't have to have as much blood, sweat and tears moving that product. It's a little more efficient for them. So we're really looking heavily on that. That's really where a lot of that cost cutting of can go towards because we can reduce transportation costs, reduce touches within our buildings, and get it back to our vendors and liquidators in much faster, period. So we're looking at, you know, the. The freight doesn't come back directly to us. Sometimes it goes through multiple different three pl partners. So we're trying to work with them. And how can we get that freight to flow smoother? We're still fairly new at this. You'd think, why wouldn't we do this at the gate, out of the gate? Because we didn't.
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E
Right.
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D
We stood up these buildings, said go. And then we started figuring out all these problems. And this is. Has this problem has a long tail to it. We've been working on this one little by little each year. And this year, two years ago now, we merged with our supply chain partners within Home Depot. And that's really gotten everyone at the right seat of the table. So that's helped us out a lot to drive this process a lot further. So that's kind of, I think, the biggest one we're trying to take care of this year.
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A
I love it. And my favorite part out of all that you just shared there, as cool as all that is, is kind of what I hear one of your North Stars is how can we give our associates easier, more successful days? Right. We keep answering that question. I think that that's the solution for so many of the challenges we're faced with here today.
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B
Huh?
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D
Well, if you know Home Depot's logo back from the founders. Right. Yes. Take care of your people and everything else and take care of itself. So it's really the same thing we're trying to follow. And that's really. They. They have the pain of the work is trying to figure that product out. If we can make it easier for them, it's going to be easier for the rest of the business.
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A
I'm with you. I am with you.
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E
Okay.
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So I think I may know the answer to your. This question. Your answer to this question. But I'm asking you anyway.
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D
Sure.
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Because there's so many different. I've heard so many different reasons folks come take time out of their schedule, come to an RLA leadership summit and what they're looking to get out of it. And when you think of a short list of things, what's one thing you're looking forward to? Going home. Back to Georgia.
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E
Yeah.
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With after your experience here.
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D
So there's a couple things. I think there's two things I want to also give. I just want to get takeaway. I want to also. I want us to provide any insight I can provide to any other leaders that are maybe new to the reverse business. And why should they stumble out of the gate if we have what we've been doing now for. Been doing for 15 years. So why not offer some of those tidbits of insight of, you know, don't do this. Try this first. And the other thing I like to get out of it is just what are the other retailers doing? So I know this is going to be manufacturers retailers. So I like to at least partner with a retailer or two. Just same thing.
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E
What are you doing?
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D
Like, what are your challenges? What have you struggled with that. Maybe. Maybe I have too. We can share the stories or we can say, you know, we learned something from them. It's really just add to your. I'll say Rolodex. That's an old term. But. But I'll add to that. Right. Just to say, hey, maybe I'll need to pick up the phone and reach out to that person. Cause I remember having that conversation with them. And also we have vendors Sometimes that will run into us, and it's a good time for us to hit with vendors that we've serviced on the liquidation market. And they'll ask us questions about stuff. We've even provided them for maybe months. And it's as simple like, I didn't know I was doing that to you. We can tweak the biz, we can tweak the way we do that. And that happens more often than not because we don't realize that some of our product that we ship back to our vendors doesn't go back to the main brand vendor.
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E
Right.
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D
There's third parties that handle that for them. And so those small mom and pop, you know, warehouse folks are trying to, you know, handle that freight. And so sometimes they have the simple little question, like, why is the big Home Depot doing this to me?
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E
Right?
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D
I'm like, I didn't realize I was doing that, and they didn't know who I was. So it's a little bit of, I can help improve my operation by getting feedback from them, and I can help them with their operation by just making little tweaks. So that's always good, too.
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A
Troy, I love that. Pull out a couple of things in your last response. First off, yes, Rolodex is an old reference, and I should know because my wife likes to call me the king of old references. Right. I'm going to school sometime. Troy and I do talk supply chain one on one with usually, like, fifth graders. We did a lot of these back in the day, and sometimes if there wasn't a bunch of energy, I'm like, okay, kids, drive your Wheaties today. Because we got a full day of training. They're like, what are Wheaties? Yeah, so roll it to a. You're talking about language. I love this other thing you mentioned, a couple of things. There's. If you don't know about it, you can't do anything about it. So the Eureka moments, whether you have them here at an early event or in your own supplier supply chain ecosystem, you're going out and meeting sitting down with your suppliers, having get off the metrics for a second. Talk business, talk environment, because that's to your point, that's where some really powerful Eureka moments can take place. And then, better yet, action and outcomes can come out of them. Huh?
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E
Yeah.
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D
I'll tell you a funny story. So one of these events, I think it was one of the Vegas events, you know, obviously wear these badges to tell us who we are, right? And I had this gentleman come out to me. I've been looking for you everywhere. I'm like, what can I do for you? Like, you know, and. And the super nice guy. And he was one of these mom and pops ran a warehouse. He serves probably five or six different vendors that we service. And my thought all along, running these four centers is that, well, I'm sending product directly to the main vendor, so. And he's like, hey, you need to do me a favor. I'm like, what can I do for you? He's like, you're sending me a load every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Can you send it to me on one of those? I don't care what day to send. I'm like, why would I do that? I don't do that. I'm like, I don't do that. And I swore up and down I don't do it. And he went through again. I'm like, what do you do? Like, what is your role? He's like, why service? He named off the five vendors. I'm like, oh, I know exactly what I'm doing to you because I pick by vendor, not by address. And so just a simple conversation like that, so we could easily say for that I can switch that to pick by address, and you'll get to one load a week instead of one pallet a day for five days. And so those are the things that just come out of these events that again, we're not talking metrics, we're just having conversations. What can I do for you? What can you do for me? Type things.
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A
I love that example. And I tell you, the power of dialogue. Some folks listening to me say that may roll their eyes, but really what's old is new again. And as powerful dialogue communication, having different conversations. And I love this takeaway for me from what you're sharing here. So, Troy Campbell, I'm looking forward to the rest of the programming here. Some more conversations we've got teed up. How can folks connect with you? And first off, appreciate you serving the RLA and being a part of these conversations, but how can folks track you down in case they're like the gentleman out there in Vegas?
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D
So, yeah, so look at. I say link. I know everyone says LinkedIn, LinkedIn. And I'll be honest with you, I'm not. I log on LinkedIn, I have 35 messages that are of them are three months old. So just email me. My contact information is within the rla. So you log on to now, it's nr, My information's on there and I'll have my email. It's the easiest way to do it. Right, because the LinkedIn, it's going to be a delayed response. And if I'm not the person that's going to help you, but I can send that information off to. It may be your sustainability question, it may be a liquidation salvage question, maybe a merchant, you know, policy driven question. I can help you at least get that to the right person.
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A
So folks, the power of being a member of the rla.
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D
All right, My information's all over their, their website.
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A
So folks, check out rla.org and of course, check out some of the cool things that the NRF organization is doing as well. The National Retail Federation. Big thanks to Troy Campbell, director of Reverse logistics with the Home Depot. Troy, I'm gonna have to. I look forward to getting out at one of your next tours.
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D
Get you to Pittsburgh. Yes.
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A
Let's go to Pennsylvania. It sounds like a fascinating facility. Would be awesome. Well, Tor appreciate you being here. And folks, stick around for as we continue our coverage here of the RLA Leadership Summit 2025 here in beautiful Dallas Fort Worth, the Metroplex. Stick around.
- [17:18]
D
Thanks, Scott.
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A
Folks, I'm conducting interviews here, continue some great conversations at the Reverse Logistics Association Leadership Summit 2025. That is a mouthful. But it's here in beautiful Dallas Fort Worth, the Metroplex. It's the center of the universe for All Things Reversed, at least this week. And I'm joined for this conversation with Glenn Ritchie, Harvard eminent scholar with esteemed Auburn University. And Glenn is editor of the Journal of Business Logistics, amongst many other things. Glenn, how you doing?
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E
Hey, I'm doing great. Thank you for having me here today.
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A
Great to see you. You know, you've interviewed on Supply Chain now years ago with Corinne Bursa.
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E
Right.
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A
Who's done big things in Supply Chain and she's Auburn alumni.
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E
She's a huge Auburn alumnus and fan. And yeah, yeah, it's a great supporter.
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A
Small world. So some of our audience may remember that interview that was probably right after the pandemic or right around that. But of course, for our newer audience, we're gonna get to know you a little better and I will start with a little fun warm up question. You're on the heels of a big trip. You just went to Australia three days ago or something, right?
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E
Yeah, yeah. So doing a bunch of research down there with a number of the faculty at the University of Melbourne. And so we scored a grant that took me down there for four weeks. And so I'm four days back and trying to realize what time zone I'm there.
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A
But four weeks In Melbourne. Were you able to take family with you or was it solo?
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E
Yeah, my wife was able to come down for a couple of weeks, so. So that was nice. But yeah, definitely the other side of the world, but obviously the very important place when it comes to returns, logistics, sustainability, all of those things are hot on their minds. And when you're that far away from everything else, a lot of supply chains running to that country that we could.
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A
Probably learn a lot from what's going on in Australia, I think.
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So they do some things really well and hopefully we were bringing some things down there that we do well that we can exchange. So.
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A
Awesome. All right, one last I got so many questions about your trip.
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E
We're going to have to have you.
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A
Back, but how long your flight would your flight look like?
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E
Yeah, I mean, it's gotten faster over the years. LA to Sydney is about 13, 14, can be 16 hours depending on the winds. But it's a good time to do some reading, that's for sure.
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A
Right.
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E
So you catch up on things.
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A
All right, so a lot of our listeners may be familiar with your great work at Auburn University. A lot of the great supply chain prowess comes out of there. But tell us, for folks that may be new to the Glen Ritchie, what do you do within the program there?
- [19:44]
E
Auburn, yeah, I've been at Auburn now for 11 years, getting close to 12, and was brought there initially to help build out the program and also build out the research side. So since I've been there, we've become our own program, sort of standalone, you know, department with 14 faculty and a good number of additional support people around us that make things hum. So I work obviously teaching the master's programs there. But my. But I'm also doing a good bit of research and support our PhD students, one of which is also here at the event doing some presenting some of his research as well.
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A
So outstanding. And what was his name? I think I met him a minute ago. What's his name?
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E
Drew Hildebrandt.
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A
This is Drew Hildebrand. Drew, shout out. Look forward to your presentation later. And he's going to be a PhD.
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E
Yes, yes, very soon. So outstanding. Fingers crossed.
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D
Right.
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A
Okay. I got to ask you this. Whenever I think of Auburn, I think of Bo Jackson and Frank Thomas and Corinne Bursa. But there's gotta be an awesome supply chain analogy from Bo Jackson. The guy could do it all right and do it so well. Yeah, yeah, he would wear lots of hats.
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E
He was pretty good at making the delivery. Right. Or getting the home run.
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A
So Bo and Bo Knows if he knows supply chain. Okay. Now you've mentioned research a number of times, and that's there's a good reason for that. You've been conducting research in this space, in the reverse and returns management space since 1999. That is outstanding. So what I want to ask you is here in 2025, when you examine what's going on in really innovative space that's come so far since 1999, what's a couple of elements taking place right now that you're really intrigued with?
- [21:21]
E
Scott I think the biggest change that we've seen from 1999 to now is that originally we were trying to reduce returns, right? And so we were doing all kinds of things with quality and incentives and that type of thing to try to reduce the cost side of that. Over time, we push that towards the really big opportunities for innovation and to try to bring value back to the customer and to the companies involved. And now we don't talk about it that way. Now we're talking about maximizing your returns. Right. So we used to think of kind of a linear process. It's coming back. We don't necessarily want it. The packaging's going to be strange. Hopefully it wasn't damaged. Can we resell it, remanufacture it? And now we're thinking about, well, this is moving towards a circular economy. And when that type of thing happens, then you've got to encourage returns in order to participate in the circular economy. So it's a little bit different world where you have to go to your CEO or CIO or chief operating officer and say, hey, we need to encourage this product to come back to our business. That's not the normal way of thinking back in 1999. So it's a different mindset completely.
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A
So there's revenue. One of the big primary drivers there is you got great revenue generation opportunities, right?
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E
That's right.
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A
And the better you can plan and optimize for that, the better you can realize and have less dropout. Like, I'm not probably oversimplifying, you know, a lot better than I do, but that makes perfect sense to me. And I think one other factor there that's probably fueling this, I hate to say paradigm shift, because I feel like I need to be a PhD to say that, Glenn. But with the re economy blowing on, there's lots of new revenue generation opportunities, right? Yeah, yeah.
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E
I mean, I think it's really interesting, the parts supply and those types of things that are going on and being able to strip out components from technology has become a massive business for a number of the companies that are here. It has a sustainability side, it has a rare earth mineral side. It's. It's a great place to be.
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A
So, man, I love it and I'm glad we got programs that continue to expand like at Auburn, and lots of more actionable research being delivered. I like the great work you're doing. So. All right, we covered one thing I think you're intrigued with. I think the other thing that we were talking about pre show was the continued application, especially of there's lots of AI at work, right. It's fascinating, but in particular generative AI Tell us more about what you're tracking there.
- [23:44]
E
So let me start with when we talk about Ms. Bursa and kind of what we talked about was we were coming out of this period of extreme optimization when we hit the COVID disruption guys. And what we really found was we'd really pulled the thread very tied around optimization and costs. And so a lot of the things that the customers experienced during COVID were related to that extreme optimization tightness. So continued to be pushed to try to get costs down. And so we saw a lot of companies go to zero inventory models, just in time models, those types of things. And as we went through the COVID debacle, we had companies that kind of built that paradigm, to use your phrase, right around the Toyota model, right. Of Kanban MRP2, just in time, get it there when it has to be there. And even Toyota came back and said, we can't do this anymore. Right? The system has to have more slack. We need to be adaptable, agile, flexible. We need to have structures that can be adapted. We need to have policies that can be flexed across the system. And we need to have processes that can be agilely adjusted depending on what we run into. And so we've been working in that area. Now when you start thinking about disruption, if it can happen structurally, policy wise to the flow to equipment, all kinds of crazy different things, trying to predict what's going to happen next means crunching inordinate amount of data, right? So that's where generative AI comes in for us, is to be able to look at the environment, look at the weather, look at demand patterns, look at consumer behavior, which is unbelievably difficult to predict a lot of times and be able to put all of those things together into real time models that managers can use from a dashboard setting. So it's a big task, it's a huge task, but literally working with a number of different people around the world and companies around the world to try to build out those models to hopefully make us more effective in big time disruptions, but also in surprise things like disaster recovery, that type of issue.
- [25:45]
A
I love it and I tell you I'm a big fan of simplicity. But as you're sharing that continued application and it's offering up scenario driven inventory decisions amongst many other things, I think of the three bowls of porridge, right. Hot, really, really hot, really, really cold. But we have more and more of our opportunity to have that just right when it comes to inventory. Powered by. I mean, it's amazing when you take where the craft has emerged, you know, the human driven craft and process and thinking, and you're marrying that with the rate of innovative technology and that continued evolution. And to your point, it is offering up more and more options for those companies that don't want to have a really hardcore JRT approach to inventory. Right, right, right. And if I can take that one step forward, when you run really lean warehouses that are really tied closely to how we're predicting demand, that can be a really tough thing to manage and put you really close to the. The edge of letting the customer down. We've all learned time and time again how we can't do that amongst any of beyond anything. Right.
- [26:57]
E
And for good or bad, the customer knows what's going on now. Right. They understand the rudimentary elements of the supply chain and the systems that are out there. And so when things break down, they want to know why. Right.
- [27:10]
A
Glenn, that's such a great point. And that communicating with the customer proactively. I think we've also learned in the last four or five years just how critical. I learned a new acronym not too long ago from my friend Lori over at Easy Post Wismo. I think what's a virgin? Wismo, which is where's my stuff? Here's my order is what it is.
- [27:32]
E
Yeah.
- [27:32]
A
And as long as we're communicating especially proactively, we can really mitigate.
- [27:37]
E
Right.
- [27:37]
A
Those hopefully few and far between opportunities where we are.
- [27:41]
E
Yeah, yeah. And so the reverse system, of course, is very different. Right. And so communication and information support is different than what we're used to in the direct planned approach. Especially when the product comes back in, it might be diverted to different supply chains that you never expected. And so new players get involved that maybe we haven't seen before.
- [28:00]
A
That is an excellent call out. I was just talking with Sean for AT B Stock earlier about how the cool things we can do with reverse planning these days is remarkable. All Right. So I wish I had a couple more hours to spend with you, Glenn, but I want to ask you this. You're no stranger to these RLA events. You speak at a lot of them. We're here at a leadership summit, which is a bit different than their big annual conference, which is open to the public. This is kind of more focused on their board and industry thought leaders and supporters. But what's a couple of things that you can't wait to talk more about in this esteemed group of industry leaders here?
- [28:35]
E
Yeah, I think every year we get a little closer to the world, recognizing that reverse logistics is the foundation of sustainability. Right. It literally is the operational component that gets. Gets this type of stuff done. I mean, certainly you could look at some, maybe IT markets where there isn't a product, but really anywhere there's product or material that flows with a service, reverse logistics has to be involved. And so I spend a good bit of time talking to executives and researchers about the fact that we've talked a lot about sustainability matters. I think we're past that right now. We need to talk about how do we get it done. We got to move off of kind of the corporate plan and put those things in implementation and operation. And every time I go to one of these executive meetings, these folks are on top of it. Right. So for me, it's fantastic because it gets me out of the ivory tower and puts me in front of what the new innovative things are that are going on. So these folks are working through all kinds of different things. Conversations about how will the tariff application impact the reverse logistics, supply chain and sustainability, and those types of things could be a positive, could be a negative. So it's really interesting to hear some of those. I mean, I think these events that are the big event, don't get me wrong, it's fantastic. Right. Really good.
- [29:46]
A
The inner conference you're talking.
- [29:47]
E
Yeah. With a lot of. A lot of folks. And of course, NRF has events that tie in as well that I definitely encourage people to get involved in. But these events are maybe a little bit quieter. Maybe you can say some things to colleagues that maybe you wouldn't say on a stage somewhere. And especially a good opportunity to talk about innovative ideas and share those ideas without giving away your competitive advantage. Right.
- [30:08]
A
So I got to ask you a billion dollar question. Given all of your industry research going on, I'm going to show you my South Carolina math here, let's say since 1999. So it'll be about 26 years. That's a lot of Research. What do you think is the. Let me ask you one, because they're probably number for those companies out there that are really good at taking proven, vetted research and pulling into the organization and acting on it and driving returns with it. What's one thing you see leading companies.
- [30:36]
E
Do to make that happen? Yeah, I mean, I think consumer insight and that's something that we were talking about today, trying to understand, you know, what encourages the consumers to do the things that they do. You know, we've had a big boom for a while there where buy online return in store was so huge. I mean, during COVID we outsourced. You know, we used to have customers come pick up and handle that part of the delivery. Now we're doing it for the customer. But yeah, I think the application honestly of generative AI and being able to get a little bit deeper into the consumer behavior aspects of what we do will help all of these different companies. I also know that there are lots of conversations about when it's reverse logistics, it's going to have the right NAICS codes for the different companies that are held in the different areas. That's something that we're on the verge of now and so very hopeful that we can get that through and made important across the country and that'll allow us to do all kinds of different research that's really not split out from traditional supply chain management.
- [31:32]
A
Really quick, Glenn, for folks out there that aren't familiar with the code standardization effort that's underway, in a very small nutshell, what will that do and why is that important?
- [31:41]
E
Yeah, I mean, it's just when you think about all of that secondary data that's out there, whether we're using it for research or whether companies are using it for market research, supply chain research, those types of things, it's just not split out in the databases that are out there today. So what you have to do is some type of surrogate. We think this is 4%, but it's not accurate. Right. So depending on the industry, I mean, you could have industries that have 50% return. You could think about automotive, where some products have 100% or near 100% return. All of those industries would different. So if we can get those separations, we can do some really interesting stuff.
- [32:15]
A
So kind of codes by sector.
- [32:16]
E
Yes, gotcha. Exactly. I also think you're going to see, and we're doing work Auburn University and our colleagues are doing work with Trauma University in Sweden on how the AI application to reverse logistics and logistics itself is going to change the Skills that employees need to have. So, you know, you turn on the media today and you see a lot of, where are these people going to work? What are they going to do? Are they going to lose their jobs? And those are serious concerns.
- [32:41]
A
Sure.
- [32:42]
E
One of the things we have to get ahead of is what types of skills do these people need to have now? So, you know, maybe it's not moving things down the conveyor belt like it used to be. Right. Maybe those things are being handled by robotics and AI. It's being able to look at the data that's connected with that and manage those different things. If you talk to the trucking companies today, they'll say, well, we have drivers in the vehicles today. Ten years from now, we're probably going to have one driver looking at 10 vehicles at one time. So they go from driver to coordinator. And so those are things that we need to get ahead of. And one of the things I've been talking about is recent study that came out that looked at young men that drive around in the US and have their GPS on all the time in the car, and we found that they lose spatial reasoning. Right. So that thing that we grew up with, where you look at the map and you make those connections, well, you don't have to do that anymore. So you kind of turn your. And I'll be honest, you know, I go to the grocery store and look down and the GPS is on automatically. So we don't want to lose those skills as we start to automate some of the decision making. And we especially don't want to use those if they lose those skills if the decision making goes down. Excellent point.
- [33:44]
A
Excellent point. Gosh, we could. We could spend hours just on the skill trends and the talent preferences. And it goes without saying, if we can't find a way in certain specific functions to win the talent battle, we're going to have to get more done.
- [34:02]
E
With more technology and less people. Right. And those skills will build up into what the new jobs are. We don't know what the jobs are yet.
- [34:08]
A
Right. So despite some folks claim they've got crystal balls, I haven't found 100% accuracy there, Jim. All right, so this is a great segue. Well, first off, I'll go back if you heard Glenn talking earlier, and one of the big common themes there was what's old is new again. The customer is still king and queen.
- [34:28]
E
Absolutely.
- [34:28]
A
Their insight still power a lot of the best innovation across industry in the reverse space, too. And now fast forward, we're just talking talent and bringing People in. And I'm joined by Mark and Maddie from the esteemed TCU program.
- [34:42]
E
Yes, you're right here.
- [34:44]
A
Today you've got an enviable job though, because you get to connect with these bright minds. Some of them are already in industry earning advanced degrees. Some of them are getting that first degree. What do they think in general terms about the reverse and returns management space?
- [35:00]
E
Yeah, I mean, it's an understudied space, unfortunately. Typically a major program will have maybe a couple of weeks of reverse logistics in their program. There are some other programs out there. We'll have a full class, but we don't really have like a track or a set of courses that fall into that area, which is something we should. Right. We really at the very least should have, you know, a four or six course kind of section that's defined out. And I think you'll see that. I think RLA has been a champion organization and Rich Bulger and his folks getting that done and moving that along. Academia moves a little slower than industry sometimes.
- [35:37]
D
Right.
- [35:37]
E
You got to give things through the administration and agreed by on for a school like us, by the government. But you can see it coming, especially with relation to sustainability. It's got to be there. We could do a better job. I think you'd see most of the major programs around the country say they're thinking about it and they're trying to find ways to do it.
- [35:55]
A
I agree. That's what we see. And I think we're trying to here at Supply Chain now to play the role of getting the word out. And you know, look, these students these days are so much brighter than when I was going through school. They're so much more aware and connected of the. They're able to make the connections like system wide, upstream and downstream. But to your point, we still have a swath of industry. There's a reason why Tony calls it the dark side. Right. Because it's still unfortunately a bit of an afterthought. And we've got to educate, make more folks aware so we can bring people in and fuel more course in education, industry development.
- [36:35]
E
Right. Yeah. I think that the nickname is shadow organizations right there, you know, you know who the major players are. You can see them on the dais and that type of thing. But maybe you don't know the people that are converting product or reselling it on the market or bring it to retailers and that type of thing. So I remember 1999, my father asked me what was I doing in this PhD program. I said, but one of the things I'm doing is I'm looking at information support for reverse logistics. And he said, what? What is that? I explained what it was. And he said, so you're getting a PhD in being Fred Samford? And I said, you know, that's not exactly what I'm doing, but I will say that, that I think at that time period, there was a lot of that type of activity, and now it's a major professional career. Maybe it wasn't just buying lots and trying to resell them back in the day.
- [37:20]
A
I like that analogy, though. Yeah, like that analogy especially it comes with the soundtrack. Okay, so I got just two final questions for you. Number one, when students do. When they're aware of the reverse and return space and wrap their head around it, do you generally see a lot of intrigue? Yeah.
- [37:37]
E
Oh, yeah. It's a lot of interest. And, you know, these. These young people obviously are interested in green business practices and supporting the environment and supporting social causes. Right. And this is obviously a space that makes a lot of sense along those lines. Undoubtedly.
- [37:51]
A
Okay. All right, so Glenn Ritchie with Auburn University, also editor of the Journal of Business Logistics. I really appreciate what you do for industry in this book, in this space, in the broader sense, between your research and your written content, your keynotes, your academic work. How can folks connect with you and be a part of your universe?
- [38:13]
E
Well, obviously, I'm out there on. On LinkedIn social media. It's easy enough to find me and my work just by typing in Glen Ritchie in Google. It should pop up. There are not too many of us out there. There's a dentist somewhere and the former mayor of Daytona beach, but I'm the other one, so. So, yeah, I'm pretty easy to find that way. The Journal of Business Logistics also has a LinkedIn page where we from time to time exchange new information that we've discovered and put up there. So you'll actually see that University of Arkansas is going to be taking over that part of the Journal. So you're going to see that grow. So we'd love to have people connect that way, but look me up. It's easy. Send me an email, give me a call. Love to be involved. Love to connect with people. And Scott, I got some Australia trivia for you.
- [38:56]
A
Okay, I'm ready.
- [38:57]
E
There are only three states in the country that you can own a kangaroo without a license, and one of them is South Carolina.
- [39:04]
A
Okay, that's a great piece of trivia. Let me write that down real quick. All right.
- [39:10]
E
What are the other two? I. It's Wisconsin. And I can't remember the third was, I think, a small New England state. I can't remember the third.
- [39:16]
A
Regardless, S.C. yes, it is.
- [39:19]
E
I don't know why, but, you know, maybe it goes back to the mini bottles.
- [39:23]
A
Maybe. So that's all. That's an interesting discussion, too. Well, Glenn Ritchie with Harvard University in the Journal of Business Logistics. A pleasure to have you folks. Connect with Glenn, find him on LinkedIn, if of course, you can Google a lot of his great work. And Glenn, thanks for being here today.
- [39:38]
E
Thank you, Matt.
- [39:39]
A
Folks, stick around as we continue our coverage here at the Reverse Logistics Association Leadership Summit 2025 in Dallas, Fort Worth. And you can find Supply Chain now and all of our interviews wherever you get your podcast from. Stick around, folks.
- [39:54]
C
Join the Supply Chain now community. For more Supply chain perspectives, news and innovation, check out supplychainnow.com subscribe to Supply Chain now on YouTube and follow and listen to Supply Chain now wherever you get your podcasts.