Robert and I are going to sit down for virtual chats with people using technologies developed by IBM to deal with the unique challenges the world is facing today.

In this episode we'll be focusing on how consumers, retailers, and supply chains adapt in the midst of a pandemic.

And for this subject, we're going to be in conversation with Luke Nehazi, the IBM Global Managing Director for Consumer Industries and Carl Holler, who is a partner at the Consumer Center of Confedency at IBM.

If you'd like to hear more episodes of Smart Talks, the Tech Stuff podcast is already released the first four episodes of the series in its feed.

You can find them on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast, just look up Tech Stuff and click on the episodes labeled Smart Talks.

And stay tuned for upcoming Smart Talks episodes here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, which will be published in our feed in the coming weeks.

And now straight on to our conversation with Luke and Carl.

Alright, well I guess probably the best place to start off would be to have you each introduce yourself. So Luke and Carl, can you each introduce yourself and just talk a little bit about your background?

Yeah, hi, I'm Luke Nehazi. I'm the Global Managing Director for Consumer Industries for IBM.

Consumer Industries are retail, consumer products, and the agri-business. And I have the pleasure of leading that for IBM globally across all of the things that IBM does.

That's everything from our research through our technology and our services and our industry platforms.

And I'm Carl Haller. I'm part of Luke's team and lead our consumer industry center of competency, which is part of the IBM Services Business Unit.

And we work me and my team. We work with clients around the world on some of the more challenging issues that they're facing that require deep industry skills and expertise.

Well, we really appreciate you joining us today. So one of the main things that we were going to focus on today was supply chains and how supply chains are adapting during a pandemic.

And so to start off, I think we should think about what supply chains are. They're one of the many features of our world that I think can remain mostly invisible to us until they break down.

It's only by their failure that we suddenly notice them. Can you provide a little background on how normal shopping behavior, like buying a frozen pizza or buying a pair of jeans relies on supply chains?

So first of all, in terms of the fundamentals of supply chains, when you buy something at a store, it's there because it's being distributed to the store.

That means it's traveled from somewhere and it's got to where it needs to be. But behind that, it's been made somewhere.

And that means there's been a factory where it's been made. And to be able to make it and let's take that pizza example, then the ingredients that have gone into that pizza have got to have been sourced.

And so that's what we start to get into the kind of the fundamentals of the supply chain because that means the bits for the dough, the tomato base, the herbs, the cheese, the toppings, they all need to come together from a range of suppliers.

And those suppliers can be very broadly distributed. And so you're getting more into the unpacking of that product and then going further back, well, actually all of those things need to be either produced or grown if they're natural, they're grown, but if they are artificial flavorings and they have to be manufactured.

And so that simple thing of buying a pizza and getting a pizza has to go through all of those stages of the retail, the distribution and the logistics, the actual manufacturing all the way through to the sourcing of materials.

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