Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Rebecca Marquez, and I'd like to welcome you to today's webinar on PMMI's Evolution of Automation Report. Over the next hour, we will listen to the findings of this report by author Donna Ritzen with DDR Communications, where she will discuss what's current, what's new, and what's changing. President of DDR Communications, Donna founded the company 25 years ago. DDR's business is based on a direct response methodology that delivers market research, business development, strategic alliance, and marketing intelligence to companies in virtually every business to business industry. DDR's experience is backed by over 35 years in marketing communications. A few housekeeping notes. Everyone on the call is muted throughout the webinar. If you have any questions that you would like to ask the presenter, please type your question in the chat box that is located in the bottom corner of the screen. At the end of this presentation, which will last approximately 45 to 50 minutes, Donna will be able to answer your questions. At this time, I would like to hand the webinar over to Donna Ritzen. Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you everyone for attending today's report on the Evolution of Automation. And as you can really see, what we're going to talk about today really is where is the technology today, and how is it changing, and where is it going? We've organized this report to look at the challenges, the opportunities, the advantages, the solutions, take a look at the future. So we'll go through all of that as we go through this here this morning. But certainly the technology is available today. Companies are beginning to adapt it. And you can see the key quote here on this page in 20 years. The plant manager at a food meat processing plant plans to be totally automated and IIOT deployed and active. And that's the goal where many companies are heading. So let's just take a quick look here at who participated in this report. So you've got a good idea of the voice of the industry and who is speaking throughout this report. We talked to end users the majority of the time. We talked in food, beverage, pharmaceutical, and personal care companies. We talked to some of the OEMs and we talked to some of the technology suppliers as well. And when we talked to the end users, we tried to reach large, medium, and small companies. Predominantly for this report, we talked to a lot of large companies. Those are the ones adopting the automation quicker. But we also get the voice of medium and small companies in this report. And digitalization is really, it's here to stay. We know that as consumers. We know that as business people. And automation in the manufacturing, processing, and packaging sector is really not just for the large companies. Medium companies and small companies are adopting and implementing many of the technologies that we're hearing about continuously in our emails and webinars every week that we're at work. We look at what do end users really want? Well, we know and we'll hear a little bit more about capital budgets are increasing. We've heard that in every market that we've studied for PMMI over the last 10 years even. Labor skills are lacking. That's something that creeps up in every conversation that we have with CPG companies. Engineering staffs in some instances are beginning to decline. Repetitive tasks are being taken over by robotics. A lot of co-bots are entering the workforce as well. In data acquisition, certainly a key component of automation today is continuing to advance quite rapidly. And all of this is to help the end users get a much more clear view of their operations, help them manage and analyze and transfer that data easier, and using that information to really help them take a predictive view and look at their company from an overall standpoint. And really where the industry is at in a big point right now is helping those CPG companies and those leaders of those companies really define what do they need to do, how do they need to get there, and how will they get there to be able to link their integration and their plant operations all in one. So if we look at this now, there's really six trends that are driving plant floor automation and six reasons similar to why there's just a gradual process. In this report got named the evolution of automation as opposed to a lot of what we hear is a revolution of automation, but it's really a gradual process. Some of the trends that are driving plant floor automation, as I just said, is certainly the lack of or difficulty in finding skilled labor, increasing demand that's going on in every market segment that we talk to and demand is increasing. And with that comes the need for more flexible marketing, I mean manufacturing, and also skews are increasing. Quality of the product is paramount and operating costs need to come down to be able to do this. And what's really helping that along is the smart technology and the co-bots that's coming out in the marketplace and being offered and available to every CPG company. And some of the reasons why it's I consider it or we heard it to be a gradual process, there needs to be education in the industry just in what do I do with this data, how do I collect it beyond just a manual collection, using it, storing it, and being able to apply it to the manufacturing floor. And now when I talk about automation throughout this report, I'm talking about both machine automation and software automation, and it's really a combined terminology of just automation. But certainly the legacy systems, the older systems that are out there are something that every company is dealing with. They have to make that decision. Do they upgrade it now? Do they buy new? How much of an older system can be upgraded? And then we do continuously hear about the convergence of the IT, the informational technology group, and the plant floor operational group coming together, and we'll hear more about that here in a few slides. Open platform standards is definitely needed in the industry. And just the security of systems is one of the hurdles that companies are overcoming and certainly an area where they continue to be, gain knowledge of securing their systems and being able to, both from a standpoint of product security and counter-fitting, as well as just the security of their data and their platform operations. So we were asked to try to measure where's the industry at today with some of these key technology adoptions. And really the best way to look at that, the process or the race of automation is the look at it as a marathon. We're going to put our best people forward in a marathon because they're going to reach the end line first. And it's the same thing in the manufacturing process. Those companies, and they're not all the largest companies, but the companies that are going to get to a fully industry 4.0 automation are your leaders in the industry. And everyone else is going to be spread out across that path. And that's exactly what's happening with automation adoption right now. Everyone is crossing the starting line, and they're over that starting line in terms of understanding they are in the race and they need to keep going. And how each company gets there in the timeframe in which they get there and cross that finish line to whatever finish line for them that is, it's definitely an evolution and it's a process. So when we look at where are we at today, the graphic on this page begins to show you where companies are at. Everyone is, like I had said, they've started over that beginning start line into automation. Some companies are much further along in what we look at a five-year and a ten-year mark. Some companies are already at that mark, particularly with machine automation that's much further along in the process. But as we go down this chart and we look at how many companies are actually fully IIOT deployed, there are some that we spoke to out there. Most of them are in the process and on the path to automation. And how are we going to get there? Terms here that we continuously hear about artificial intelligence, robots that can actually have some intuitive knowledge and can feel touch is going to be significant in terms of replacing menial or not menial necessarily, but manual tasks now that a cobot or a robot will be able to do. And smart glasses certainly to be able to interact with the environment, augmented reality technologies, allow them to be able to see a digital imagery overlaid on that physical world. So that's also something that is significantly involving. And this robotic shaft I thought was particularly interesting in just how it's changing the processing side of the line. And it's called April. And it's an automated processing robotic ingredient loading robot, which helps then loading those ingredients helps with consistency. It takes up less floor space. It has energy efficiency costs and just helps reduce the waste that can occur during ingredient adding at the beginning of the line. In some of the emerging technologies, and they're not necessarily just emerging, they're certainly being adopted and used on the software side. Digital twins, that's a bridge between the physical and the digital world that's really changing the applications and concepts of digital twinning is being used and evolving every day. Remote machine monitoring certainly brings us access for a far greater connected plant floor. Being able to have troubleshooting and data analysis and remote monitoring on networks is already underway. We'll hear a bit about that. Some of the drawbacks or hurdles to overcome from that certainly is the security issues that all companies are concerned about and rightly so. The digital or reality modeling is significant as well, allows for faster building times, earlier production starts, optimized layout of a plant floor, rapid model creation. This is being used and deployed by several of the OEMs that we spoke with directly. So if we look at start out with what are some of the challenges, integration certainly is an obstacle all in itself. So what are companies looking at and what are some of the challenges that they're facing? We broke this up because end users, OEMs and technology suppliers all come at it from a little bit different angle and what's their challenge. But it does all revolve around cost in the workforce and educating that workforce and looking at an open platform communications. But the end users say they are challenged with obviously capital expenses to advance automation. That's always going to be there. Although as we see in a couple slides ahead here, budgets are increasing and just developing that technical skill to be able to support the machinery and software and automation and looking to partnering with the right people and the right suppliers. And the OEMs talk about the challenges just being able to get the support that they need from their CPG companies at a top level so that some of those automation changes can begin to occur. And there's a growing application for collaborative robots. We see that in our news every day of companies that are showing improvements and process improvements through robotic and collaborative robotic usage. And then again, finding the right engineers to work on smart machines. It's not just the CPG companies that have that as a challenge. All entities in the manufacturing sector all have trouble finding skilled labor to run and operate and maintain smarter machines. The technology suppliers talk about moving, the challenge of moving to an open communication platform standard and an IIOT and architectural standard. And educating the industry. What's available? What can they do? How do they do it? How do they begin to move down that path? And then just to add a technical competency and willingness for customers to invest in automation. Similar to what the OEMs talked about is gaining that support at a high level so that the funding does become available to automate and optimize plant floors. And certainly one of the game changers in all of this is just the retail demands that are changing. The explosion in e-commerce for quicker delivery. These are all things that continue to drive automation forward. And there's a lot in these slides that I've put in here for a purpose. These presentations have a tendency to take a life of their own once the webinar is over. You can take this back to your teams and hence I put more information in these slides so that you can go back and have that conversation with your internal people as well. And here on this slide on page 11 we're looking at just the legacy systems and what can be upgraded. Certainly we heard about controls can be upgraded. Connectivity and motion. But again it's the decision of when do you upgrade a machine and when is it best to purchase a new machine. But certainly the new technology is not limited to just new machines. Program conversions can take place. Upgrades to the interface system as well. Allowing some bidirectional data exchange internally or with the cloud or with the Edge or with your mobile devices or tablets. Servo usage is certainly something that has the ability to just increase the smartness of the machine and help for reviewing torque cycles for maintenance information. And then we did hear about if equipment is 15 to 20 years old or newer or younger, it does have the capability to add some of the communication controls in there. So it really does become a fact of really looking at the machine itself and that's where a lot of the integration services are coming into play. Older systems can be upgraded with gateways to provide data collection, but newer systems do provide a greater level of security already built in and have some limited built-in access for users being able to access that data. So some of the newer machines are going to have all of that built into it. And then we did hear a lot about in our conversation this convergence that needs to take place between the IT and OT floors to really bring their networks together so they really can look at a smarter plant floor with a holistic view. And for the most part over half of the companies we talked to they said, yes, it's underway. Some companies felt that they had that already taken care of that their IT and OT departments were working closely together. But there's certainly, it's an evolution like everything else. It needs improvement. Some companies were not quite sure what their departments were doing and how that was being handled, but overall there's a movement in that direction in the entire industry. And some of the things that they're going to reap from these benefits, you know, reduce downtime, the reverse of that, certainly maximizing uptime is what every company is looking for, lowering operational costs, energy costs, certainly increasing operator safety, and then the whole preventive and even the predictive maintenance alerts that can be put on a machine to help companies understand when maybe a component is reaching its life cycle and should be replaced before it actually breaks down and causes downtime. And again we continuously hear the flexibility that's needed in changeovers, shorter changeover times, excuse increase. It's just something that CPG companies, it ends up on the top of every list in every conversation that we have with them. So if we want to look now at some of the opportunities, where's the equipment going to be going? How are they going to utilize big data and how are they going to accomplish some of the gains that this has to offer? Well we did hear two out of three companies are increasing their capital budgets. And as I mentioned we've heard that in the last five or six reports we've done with PMMI, capital budgets are increasing. Particularly we asked in this case, are they dedicated budgets just for automation? And yes some companies are dedicating a portion of their capital budget that will just be for increasing their automation. And if we look at overall up on the top right hand side of this slide it talks about just a continued growth in overall US manufacturing output. Increasing 10% for now for the next couple of years. And even further out than that until 2025 which it seems far away but it's not that far away, 25% increase. So overall just the increasing, keeping up with demand is one of the most important things that's really driving the investment in automation. Like we said on the previous slide, worker safety, reducing costs, just either replacing labor or the difficulty in finding labor, preventing waste in the entire system. If you've got new products, a lot of times new products we hear are building new lines and those new lines are being automated. Just again the whole green initiative in reduction in packaging and certainly new packaging designs as you know flexible packaging continues to gain ground as well as just new shapes, unique interactions with packaging and hence automation is really driving a lot of that. We look at here, this slide is a little bit busy but what we looked at and I'll walk you through this is we looked at what kinds of smart or machine technologies or end users looking for and how is that being provided by the OEMs and technology suppliers. If you look at it really from the top down the interactive, intuitive HMI, smarter sensors, safety improvements are all at the top of the list but they all have an important role. And so what's coming out in the marketplace, certainly more intuitive HMIs with a dashboard type view, more mobile connectivity, more HMI smart phone on your smart phone or your tablet, getting that information instantaneously regardless of where you could be. Sensors are certainly moving forward, that's one of the greatest data collection points in terms of bringing that smart technology into a more visual view. Open safety, so there's a fully automated safety communications platform certainly with more flexible line production, more programming, intuitive software, more compatibility in the software, achieving more production with less maintenance. Rapid changeover, as I mentioned earlier, that's always on the list in terms of faster changeover, faster clean ability to allow for more flexible production. Self-tuning and self-calibration where a machine can be smart to know how to begin to make corrections and communicate those corrections that need to be made. And digital simulation, we talked about that earlier in terms of the whole digital twin and the reality monitoring and augmented reality. And just greater access of information analysis for real-time efficiency and OEE which certainly the OPEX group has helped put some parameters around calculating OEE. And then we talked about robotics as part of our conversation, how are they using robotics now and will it continue to increase? And the answer to both of those is yes. 90% nearly every company that we spoke to has some robotics somewhere along their plant line and they predict that that will continue to increase. And if we look at some of the statistics coming out from the IFR, robotics are increasing 32% in North America just in the first quarter of this year. So significant growth and a lot of that growth is occurring in other industries besides packaging and processing but it's also got a big chunk of that is now showing up in the packaging and processing lines. And where on the line are they increasing? Certainly at the front of the line, there's robotics being added for depalitizing and in many industries just the cutting, coating, feeding process of the beginning of the line. And then when there's direct product handling at the filling, dosing, pick and place areas, there's more robotics being introduced as well. But the lion's share of some of that robotic increasing at this time is at the end of the line. Secondary packaging and palletizing areas. And what are end users looking for? Again, equipment that's easy to use. It communicates along the line and certainly having the support services is paramount in needing support from the OEMs and technology suppliers. So three out of the five manufacturers, they do require customized machinery and oftentimes that customized machinery, if it's automated, it oftentimes requires customization. And when we look at a collaborative effort, end users for the most part, we do hear they continue to use their internal engineers most often for support but really it's growing into a more collaborative effort to be able to achieve remote diagnostics and data management as we've heard. Integrating that machine along the entire line really does require an effort of outside services as well as inside services. Then we look at how many companies really have lines fully integrated. Really only when we look at it from a machinery standpoint one of five lines is fully automated. And then again using the analogy of a marathon, every company beyond that has a mix of some machines might be 50% standalone. There might be some machines that are still remaining in process of being integrated. There might be a couple of machines on the line that are integrated. So every processing and packaging line is at a different stage of integrating and automating that intelligence. And we did hear the 3D model-based engineering most and many of the OEMs that we interviewed are using this process certainly to improve design, improve time delivery, and being able to certainly see things in augmented fashion before it becomes in the physical fashion. And then some of the automation advantages, machine data and automation. This one quote here on this page I think is very telling data by itself is useless. It really has to be collected, displayed, and analyzed to become useful. And what we did hear is many, most of end-user CPG companies are collecting at least some data and that does include manual collection. So they do feel that they're in step with beginning to gain that intelligence on the plant floor. Some of the expectations they hope to find on operational improvement, certainly once they are fully deployed with data collection is increasing uptime. Again, that's always at the top of the list. Being able to manage their production schedules much more efficiently, being able to understand change over quicker, and processing those schedules much more efficiently.  Certainly this is the basis, this is where companies are starting. If they want to know where do we start with automation, data collection is one of the places that they're starting. And what are the top five also improvements that they want to achieve once they're automated, run multiple sizes. They want that flexibility on a line that has fast changeover, automated changeover, reducing labor. Even though skilled labor is getting difficult to find, they're also looking to replace tasks that can be automated. Line efficiency, again, to maximize uptime and shorter runs with the whole customization of our products that we're looking at. Companies are looking at shorter runs, particularly, we see this in some of the beverage runs where they're customizing beverage bottles and then minimizing change over time. All of that comes down to more personalized service to the consumer. They need to be able to have changeover time that's extremely quick. We did talk about total cost of ownership. About half of the participants are calculating total cost of ownership. But in the same breath we would hear that some companies say we don't think we calculate it very efficiently. We have our own calculation of how we do that. So certainly helping companies understand how to get at the total cost of ownership really can be a beneficial differentiator in how they're choosing their machinery in the future. So some of the automation solutions, technology in the years ahead, just being able to embrace automation is significant for smarter machines on the plant floor. The characteristics that really are involved is having a machine that's really a smart machine, being aware, being able to collect data, manage that data, communicate that data. It's a safer, more secure operation, certainly both for cybersecurity for the plant worker and just having a safer work environment. Flexibility, we hear about this continuously. Lines need to be flexible. Machines need to plug and work. I thought that was an interesting statement. I'd not heard that before. One of the people that we interviewed said it's not just plug and play, it needs to plug and work. Modularity is certainly important in the flexibility in developing a flexible line and having something that you can reuse again, a recipe that is on the HMI that they can use or they can model a line and be able to replicate that easily.  When we talk to the OEMs, we're trying to find out how many machines are considered smart machines that are ready for IIOT. In about a third of the OEMs that we talked to said their machines are 90 to 100% ready. So the technology is available, the machines are being developed, and certainly the adoption processes is moving forward. And I think here it's an interesting quote from this copacker as well. It gives you an idea of the advancement. He talks about his growth in the past seven years has been unbelievable and they've gone from pretty much zero automation and now they're 70 to 75% automated. So he looks at it from their standpoint, it's just simply hard to get labor. So then now we move on to the next question we kind of get involved in in our interview process is what standards are CPG companies looking for? Top of the list communications protocol that's been at the top of the list for a couple of years ever since even when we did the robotics report several years ago. And what's gonna drive some of these standards? Certainly a cooperative atmosphere in the industry adhering to some of the principles that are needed. And again, just a collective availability in adopting these standards that are gonna begin to emerge. And it really is a natural process and it's really being driven because machines need to communicate the disparate control platforms that are out there and the legacy systems and the legacy machines that are out there in order to achieve industry 4.0 or an integrated line. And many of these different control systems and safety systems and standards on data collection and HMI and even cleanability. We heard a lot about that from particularly the more wet processes of meat and poultry processing where cleanability is just paramount in terms of them having a quicker change over process. And we really looked at well then how many companies are really transferring data now? How many are utilizing the cloud? About half of the CPG companies that we spoke to are transferring data over the internet but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to the cloud. But a fourth of the end users that we talked to are transferring their data into the cloud. They've achieved cyber security. They feel secure in what they're doing but it certainly does remain one of the hurdles to overcome with a continued need for education for all of us in terms of what are the new systems that are being developed that can help secure that data and move that connectivity forward. Then we look at remote connectivity. This is a conversation that we've talked about quite a bit over the years and it is steadily moving forward. Again it's that connection and that openness. A lot of them have VPN connections and secure connections to allow someone to come into their system on a short term basis. And so we tried to get an idea of where's the industry at and it kind of split up here in this pie chart in a fourth of each segment. There's a fourth of the industry that has about 50 to 100% of their machines are remote ready. Then you've got a fourth of them who don't even allow remote access at this time in another fourth of them that have about 15 to 30% of their machines are remote connectivity ready. And then another fourth approximately that have very few machines that they have remote connectivity on today. So it's again broad spectrum of where companies are at with allowing remote connectivity and even having the machines available to do that. But about everyone that we spoke to does predict that that will continue to increase in the next five years as automation takes over, data collection takes over and that information needs to be transferred and certainly helps with troubleshooting and just the overall operational visibility of the plan. Some of the advantages we know of remote connectivity just the whole optimization, preventive maintenance, even predictive maintenance and troubleshooting, and then downloading recipes even from within plant to plant. So if we took a look now at automation where's the future of automation going? It's certainly here to stay. The early adopters as I'd said earlier when I gave the analogy of a marathon race, they've identified what some of these competitive advantages are, what new business models they're creating that are really helping them to increase their revenue, cut costs and improve customer support and service and that's exactly what CPG companies are looking for. So if we look at this from a standpoint of opportunities in the industry, where are they? Certainly offering intuitive maintenance and having machines that are integration ready and again this flexible to changing with manufacturing demands is certainly at the top of the list. More robust equipment with minimal maintenance that's required to be able to achieve line integration and really be able to have optimal run performance. Flexible machinery, again we continuously have heard about this. It's really having the design strategies that are needed to provide machine flexibility for variances in packaging sizes and packaging styles and smarter machines, intuitive HMI and troubleshooting and remote access, all the things we've just heard about in the previous slides to really provide enhanced diagnostics and data sensors. And then this convergence of IT and OT, it is one of the hurdles we talked about but that interface on the plant floor between OT and IT certainly will be able to bring together a more creative collaborative process. Then if we look at providing what services are they looking for, really again it's training, education and consulting and we heard that at the beginning of the presentation. Really helping CPG companies understand how to utilize their data better. Training tools that help with and assist with maintenance and troubleshooting. And really just as we've heard in many PMMI reports, understanding their individual needs is really paramount to, again if you look at the analogy of a marathon race, where is the companies at that you service, where are they at in their automation process, what do they need help with? Are they really looking to help understand the TCO, the total cost of ownership and the OEE and are they looking for predictive maintenance and even preventive maintenance. So helping them get to those levels is really important. And again then back to the education piece. Just helping them educate what's available, what is best for their systems. There's so much that comes at us every day in terms of, like I said earlier, webinars and emails and how to's and white papers and the five steps to getting started and there's so much information coming out. Helping them decipher that information is really important. And we have heard, we heard from several people this was particularly a director at a technology supplier. Said that the US really does need to step up and be more competitive in a global market. Europe's operations are at a higher level of automation and flexibility and their equipment and their operations. So something that CPG companies here certainly are moving towards. And when we look at the future, in terms of jobs, we continuously do hear that robotics are taking jobs. While that is true, there's also the element of new jobs that are out there. The new automated technology engineer certainly is gonna have to have much more expertise in CAD programs and PLCs and just critical thinking and overall global perspective and an overall view of their plant floor. And the technology operator's gonna have to have more control and more understanding of robotics and research and just the whole electrical networks and mechatronics. And your machine technician is also gonna have to have a much greater intuitive learning tools to help them through the HMI and help them understand what needs to get done and where is it going. And then this whole interaction of data exchange between the computers and the robotics and out to the edge into the cloud and to mobile devices, this is all gonna take maintenance and understanding to get there. And it was interesting as career builders noted that 68% of the companies that create new jobs after they automate. So there are new jobs to be had. There's new jobs in the future that we aren't even aware of what those new jobs would be. So that kind of brings us to the end here of taking a look out at the future. And this is 20 years ago this was predicted. These farm scapers that taking old skyscrapers or abandoned skyscrapers and turning them into food production areas. And if we look at the United Nations prediction that by 2050 we need to increase our food production by 70%, automation is gonna help us get there and automation will help us continue to deliver on the needs of the global food production needs of the future. Well, companies are really, we really didn't hear that companies were striving to do lights out manufacturing where it's fully automated and there's little human presence even on site.  And I think one of the biggest game changers we're gonna see and we all saw this at PAC Expo was e-commerce as we know is continuing to increase in significant leaps and bounds. And now having that delivery done by a drone and possibly a driverless vehicle is really a game changer we're gonna see as we go forward and continuously automation will allow that to continue to happen. So I do encourage you to download the full report. I have only highlighted really kind of given you an idea of what's contained in this report. There's far more detail about the challenges, the obstacles that companies are facing in upgrading legacy systems and the opportunities out there certainly with capital budgets increasing and customization and automation, automation often causing customization of the machine and the advantages of data collection and the advantages of machinery automation, what some of those solutions are, we get into much more detail in the report of what some of those solutions are. As well, the report what makes these PMMI reports really unique is not just the interviews that we have with CPG companies, but we go out and we reference and we bring in the collective intelligence of the industry. So there's a lot of references in this report really to be used as a resource guide as well. And so that does bring us to the conclusion of our presentation here. There's certainly more fact-filled resources that you'll get from your PMMI Business Intelligence Group. And so we thank you for attending the webinar today. If there are any questions, Rebecca, I'll turn this back over to you. Donna, thank you for the insights you've provided on this latest report on automation. And as Donna said, we'd like to open up the session for questions. If you have any questions, please feel free to type them into the message or chat box at the bottom of your screen and we'll give it just a minute to see if anybody comes through with any questions. Okay, Donna, we do have a question. There's a lot being said in this report about the need for customization and really, really custom products for end users and how the information that OEMs should have has to be pretty detailed so they can provide that customization that works. Is there anything that you can tell us that you talked about the nature of the relationships between OEMs and end users changing to sort of be more collaborative? Definitely, they're definitely being brought to the table sooner. And if you look at the food processing report, we got into that in a little more detail specifically in the food processing report because we wanted to understand that exact relationship and when are they coming together collectively at the negotiation table? And we looked at it from a standpoint that really has evolved because if we go back in time in some of our previous PMMI reports, really almost half of the OEMs now are being brought in at the onset of project development and a good next third of them even at the initial design stages. So it really has moved up that relationship is closer now between the CPG companies and the OEMs and the technology suppliers to come together in a collaborative effort. So yes, very good question and we do see that those relationships changing. Thanks, Donna. We do have another question. One of the audiences asking if, well they're asking if PMMI has this information but I can put it to this particular report, does the full report have any information on automation growth opportunities specifically as they pertain to palletizing and secondary packaging? We did not follow growth trends in that area but we did know that particularly in robotics, robotics is growing at a faster rate at end of the line for packaging and palletizing, case packing as well. I do believe, Rebecca, there is some very good statistics that can be had from the state of the industry report on specifically different segments and machine components. Okay, thanks and I can reach out to the person who asked that question with further information on that. We'll leave it open for questions for just another moment. Okay, it looks like that's probably all the questions we have for now but I would like to remind everyone in the audience that if you do come up with something that you have a question about, you can feel free to email me at my email address and that's rmarquez at PMMI.org or Paula Feldman and we will make sure to get with Donna to answer your question for you. So. We can just get one more here, Rebecca. Yep, I see that now. Okay, so the question is, do we think that product package sizes, bottle shapes, et cetera, will be affected by the trend in automation? Is that something? Make it easier to automate the two and require to run them. Just from what we know and what we've heard, automation is not just because someone's automated and has now made it easier to retool. Yes, it could definitely move a CPG company in a direction that says let's look at a different shape because it's easier for us to implement that shape now into our process. Yes, that could definitely be an outlier of automation but as we know, a lot of the container and the materials and the shape are really dictated by the product itself but yes, to answer your question, that could definitely be something that will affect that going forward just because automation is going to allow a more flexible line and faster changeover and ultimately maximize uptime. Okay, so we can, if there's any other questions, we'll just leave it open for another moment and again, you can feel free to type them in the bottom chat box of your screen. Okay, well if there's no more questions for the day, again, you can always feel free to email us at PMMI and we will make sure that your question gets answered if you come up with something after you're mulling over the information that you've just received and we would be happy to help you and get you an answer to that question. So on behalf of PMMI, thank you so much for participating in today's webinar. As a final note, you'll each receive an email to complete an evaluation for today's webinar. We really want to give you the best content and best webinars that we can so please complete the evaluation as soon as possible and let us know if there's anything we can do to improve our webinars in the future. It's a very brief evaluation and Donna, once again, thank you so much. This was a great webinar, really good information and the full report is available on PMMI.org so you can download that today.


Hello everyone, welcome to this course on supply chain digitization. This course is offered from I am Mumbai by 3 faculty members including myself, Professor Priyanka Verma, Professor Sushmita Narayana and Professor Deva Pratadas. So far in our previous sessions we have been focusing on analytics in supply chain and this week particularly we are talking about network optimization. If you remember in our last session we have referred to a supply chain network design problem and we have tried to solve that problem using two different heuristics. Let us have a quick review of that problem and we will see that how that problem can be solved in a better way using optimization method. So the problem was all about a company which is using two manufacturing facilities, three warehouses and four retailers to distribute a single product. Both the manufacturing capacity has got a limit which where it is mentioned that manufacturer 1 cannot supply more than 1,50,000 units and manufacturer 2 cannot supply more than 120,000 units. The production cost is assumed to be same for both the manufacturing facility. Similarly, all the three warehouses have got the same handling cost. So these are some strong assumptions with respect to the supply chain network under consideration. The retailers demands were also given to us and it was around 45,000, 35,000, 68,000 and 70,000 units respectively. The shipping cost are also given to us for all these combinations of manufacturer to warehouses and then from warehouses to the retailers and this is given in the form of the stable over here. So this was our supply chain network which we have referred in our previous session also. We know that any manufacturer can supply to any of the warehouse and similarly any warehouse can supply to any of the retailer. So just for demonstration purpose these arrows are drawn over here to indicate the possible movement between every manufacturing plant to every warehouse and similarly from every warehouse to every retailers. Now going forward we have used two different type of heuristics in our previous sessions and we have seen the cost that we have obtained following the two approaches. We will be now trying to solve this problem using optimization method and we will compare the solution of optimization with the previous solution. So our objective if you remember is all about finding out the best strategy for distribution which helps us in deciding the quantity of flow from the manufacturers through warehouses to the retailers and finally to ensure that the retailers demand is fulfilled and the total distribution cost is also minimized. So to solve this problem using optimization method we will be following the linear programming approach. Let us refer to some of the basic requirements of understanding a linear programming. The first thing is we need to decide the decision variables which we are going to use in this particular problem. So let us see what are these decision variables as our supply chain network is all about manufacturers that is two manufacturers, three warehouses and then to the four retailers. We have to see the quantity that will moved between these manufacturers to the warehouse and then to the retailers. So here we are deciding the decision variables as QM1 to W1 this is QM1 to W1 which is nothing but the quantity of product that will move between manufacturer 1 to the warehouse 1. So this is what is represented over here in the form of this decision variable. Similarly all possible combination of product flow variable between the two manufacturing plant and the three warehouses are also shown over here. So you can see that we have got six decision variable related to the product flow between these manufacturing plants to these warehouses. Going forward we also have to decide that how much unit of goods should move between the warehouses to the retailers. So we can see that there are three warehouses and four retailers this will land into 12 combination of possible movements and that is shown to you in form of these 12 decision variable. If you check XW1 R1 is the quantity of product moving between warehouse 1 to retailer 1 and similarly all this 12 combination of movements are assumed and their corresponding decision variables are also taken over are also decided particularly for this problem. So we now know that we have to take a decision that how much quantity of product should move between each manufacturing plant to the warehouse and then from warehouse to the markets. So our objective is always to find out the cost of transportation between these combinations of facilities such that this total cost of transportation is minimized. So when we multiply these quantities with their respective per unit shipping cost we can calculate the total shipping cost very easily and this becomes our equation for calculating the total shipping cost in the given supply chain network and this cost needs to be minimized. This helps in deciding the objective function accordingly. Going forward now in the next stage we have to decide the constraints. Our constraints are very interesting if you have observed we have got two type of constraint. The first constraint is the supply constraints and this is because your two manufacturing plants has got a upper capacity or upper limit beyond which they cannot supply.  So here we know that the first manufacturing plant has got a capacity of 150,000 and similarly the second manufacturing plant has got the capacity of 120,000. If you remember our network which has got two manufacturing plant three warehouses and four retailers we can see that from manufacturer one to the warehouse one, warehouse two and warehouse three this arrows are indicating the possible flow from manufacturer one to these particularly three warehouses which are QM1W1 plus QM1W2 plus QM1W3. So when we add all these flows from the manufacturer one we know that these three flows cannot exceed the available capacity of manufacturer one and similarly it applies for manufacturer two as well. So together it becomes our supply constraints. Going forward we have got in a similar way the flow balance constraint which ensures that at every warehouse suppose in warehouse one we are getting product from manufacturer one and manufacturer two and this product whatever warehouse one has received will be distributed to these four retailers that starting from retailer one to retailer four. The same is expressed over here in this equation and it is referred as a flow balance constraint which ensures that the total quantity which a warehouse is receiving the same is redistributed to its corresponding retailers and the same expression can be seen over here very easily. This is about warehouse one the similar manner for the other two warehouses also we will be writing the flow balance constraints as well which are shown in these two equations. The last constraint is about the demand constraints and as we refer to our network once again which has got two manufacturing plant three warehouses and four retailers if you remember. So for every retailer this can receive the product from any of these three warehouses warehouse one warehouse two or warehouse three. So if we add these three quantities which is expected to be received from the three warehouses the final objective is these three warehouse should fulfill the requirement of retailer one and that is considered over here in the form of this demand constraint. In a similar manner we will write these demand constraint for all these four retailers. So these four constraints are shown to you in the form of these four equations over here. The question is how to solve this problem? We know that this has turned out as a linear programming problem which can be easily solved using the solver function which is available in Excel. So let us refer to our Excel sheet and try to solve this problem through that. So this was the problem that was given to us and this table we have seen earlier as well. Here you can see the different shipping costs which are given to us and the corresponding supplies from possible from the two manufacturing plants are shown. Similarly the demand of these four retailers are also shown to us. Now assume that so this is the table where we are going to define our decision variables initially it is assumed that all these decision variables are 0 means that we are not aware of how much quantity should be moved from each manufacturing plant to each warehouse and then from each warehouse to each retailer. So initially all these values are taken as 0 and correspondingly the total units of shipped from the manufacturers and to the retailers are also coming as 0. So this is our decision variable we will be using it to write our objective function and also to write our constraints. So here let us first write our objective function. Our objective function is very simple this is nothing but this is the product of the shipping cost and the decision variables that is the quantity that we have to find it out from this problem. So if I simply use this function called as some product we can simply multiply the all the shipping costs with the corresponding decision variable and it will give us the total cost of distribution over here. Going forward let us try to write these constraints. Here we have got three type of constraint one is the supply constraint the second is the flow balance constraint and the third one is the demand constraint. So for writing the these constraints we need to add these decision variables and for more details you can go back to the formulation that we have discussed and accordingly you can calculate the both the sides of the equations to write your constraints accordingly. So here we have added the total units of shift for from the manufacturers and similarly the total quantity of products being supplied to the retailers this will help me in writing my supply and demand based constraints followed by this we also have that flow balance constraint which ensures that the total quantity coming to a particular warehouse is equals to the total quantity going out of that warehouse. So this is accordingly written over here and we will be using this part of cells to write our final formulation. In order to solve this problem using solver we can use a function we can use one special function which is available in excel. You can go to data and you can see that there is a small tab which is mentioning solver which can be used for particularly optimizing this problem. In case this is not available in your excel you can install it by following very simple steps for that you have to go to file option and over here you can go to the last tab which is mentioning options over here you can again go to this next step which is on add-ins and when you are here you can see at the end there is manage excel add-ins. If you go to this part you can see the possible add-ins which you can install in your excel these are freely available as we require solver add-in check that whether it is already installed in your system or not if it is not there just select it and go press go for this it will take small amount of time and this add-in will be available for you in the data tab. So let us go to data again and go to this add-in called a solver we have already installed all the parameter over here which is helping us in setting the objective function telling us what is the nature of the objective function should it be minimized or maximized as we are trying to minimize the total cost this radio button of minimization is selected when we go to this particular tab which is saying by changing variable cells means here you have to write your decision variable cells which are initially unknown to us and on solving them we are trying to find their solution subject to the constraints means here you can add the constraints in the form of the equations that you have calculated you already have prepared your sheet accordingly and thus you can simply use these functions to add your constraints for that you can go to add function and here you can see you need to add the left hand side of the equation followed by the inequality sign that particular constraint is having and the RHS side of the constraint. So in this way you can keep adding your constraint in corresponding to your formulation keep on adding them unless you have added all your constraint once it is done you can go back to your model like this and here you need to ensure that this option of making unconstrained variables non-negative is selected and next step is because this is a simple linear programming model there is no non-linearity over here we can use this solver called a simplex LP and after this just go for this option of solving the problem when you will solve this you can see that the solver has found a solution and also it is giving you a message that all the constraints and optimality conditions are satisfied this is an indication that the obtained solution is the optimal solution. So you can keep solver solution as the final solution and then once you have solved the problem you can see that the variables are have taken up some value and now you can also find out that how much quantity of products are moved from manufacturer 1 to which warehouse and similarly from which warehouse to which retailer all these values are coming over here which you can see and decide about your supply chain network design finally the total cost is also calculated which can be used for comparison with your previous approaches. So if you remember using heuristic one we got the total cost as 961000 using heuristic two we got the solution as 757000 we can see that both these approaches are giving us higher values though heuristic two is giving you a solution better than heuristic one but when we solve the same problem using linear programming we can see that the cost is coming better than heuristic two approach and we can compare the solution with heuristic two which is 757000 and the linear programming solution which is around 689000 we can say that the solution obtained through linear programming approach is the best solution and also it is optimal solution it turns out to be the minimum cost. So here to summarize we can see that this is our final solution by following optimization method the total cost is coming as the minimum compared to the other heuristics and this is the power of optimization which helps us in getting the solution with minimum value compared to the heuristic approach. So this way we have solved our problem of supply chain network design using the two heuristics and using optimization approach this can be further extended to large and complex supply chain network design as well and many problems in different industries related to distributions can be easily solved using this approach hope to see you all soon thank you have a nice day.


Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon. My name is Amir Ben-Yamed. I'm the CEO of the Jeune Afrique Média Group and chairman of the Africa CEO Forum. The World Policy Conference and Thierry de Montréal has kindly asked me to chair this panel. It's a very big responsibility, especially since we're the closing panel, after three days of heated debate. So we have big responsibilities to keep you alert for this last panel, and it's a very big responsibility because we will try to answer as simply as possible a question that is not so simple to answer. So it's not so simple first because from Johannesburg to Alger, from Nairobi to Lagos, these countries have different issues, different challenges, and they will also are facing, they are also facing some new geopolitical change, a new geopolitical landscape that is shaping the world for the next decades, and we still have some difficulties to understand how it will affect Africa. And we have also some cross-cutting issues, such as climate change, such as artificial intelligence that will be critical to the standard of Africa, to the standing of Africa and the rest of the world. So it's a very important, very complicated question to answer, but it's a very important one, probably because Africa has one of the most important targets in terms of development goals, but it has also some of the most promising resources to capitalize on it to reach these targets. They have renewable energy, they have minerals, and most importantly, they have human resources. We have spoken a lot about the demographic dividend. Africa is finally capitalizing on it. So to answer this difficult question, we have a great lineup of experts, and I will switch to French now because most of our panelists are French-speaking, are Francophones, so I will start by introducing Yonelle Zansou. Yonelle Zansou is the co-manager of Southbridge. She is one of the first banks of business dedicated to Africa. Yonelle Zansou has also been the director of one of the largest investment funds, PAI Partners, and also has an important political career since you were the Prime Minister of Benin. On the left, we have Bertrand Badré. Bertrand, you are the founder and director of Blue Like One Sustainable Capital, which is an impact investment fund. You have also been the head of the World Bank, you have been the general director and you have been the financial director. We have General Francis B. Enzin, who will be our security minister today. You have this heavy responsibility, you are a specialist in security issues, you are an former commissioner at the Africa Bank, and you have been the director of the World Bank, you are a specialist in security issues, you are an former commissioner at the political affairs within the CDAO, and you are now president of the World Bank, of security professionals, and of defense for prevention and fight terrorism. On the left, Jean-Michel Severino. You are the founder of IEP, an investment partner. You are one of the oldest private equity companies in Africa, and you have been the general director for almost 10 years, I believe, of the French Development Agency.  We have two very eminent representatives from the Benin. Welcome everyone, thank you for your participation. So, you will have a heavy responsibility to answer this question, which is very complex. I will try to... Some of the moderators have imposed between 10 and 7 minutes of response, I will be a little more drastic, and I will try to impose 4 minutes of response to allow you to talk regularly and to exchange, and to become the number of topics that make up this question. We will start with a little general question, which is that, since the 2000s, Africa has been inscribed in a narrative of a continent with strong growth, with strong potential, with a private sector in full expansion. This narrative has been spread by excellent figures that Lionel will be able to cite us, because I know that you are, you can all cite us by heart today, since the 2000s, until the COVID-19 episode. And the COVID-19 episode has somewhere marked a pause in this narrative, almost a reversal, since we are now facing a situation in which there is a reinforcement of security problems. We have had 5 main costs of state in the francophone region, conflicts, civil war in the South, in Ethiopia, and therefore this narrative is once again spread by a certain number of retreats on government issues, on security issues, on economic issues, and now we are in a global economic crisis where the question is how Africa will continue to finance this development and I would like to ask each of you a fairly simple and general question, what is your current perception of the continent, what is your current perception of the evolution of this narrative? Are we in a growing crisis? Are we in a pause, in a kind of transition? How can you explain to our audience what you perceive of the situation of the continent today?


10 ways to deal with a broken heart. Moving on from a breakup is a difficult process. Following the shock of the initial separation are feelings of anger, sadness, and grief that is often crippling and mind-numbing. The pain of a breakup is so profound that it sometimes leaves us not knowing what to do next. Though there's no one pill medicine to soothe out a broken heart, there are certain ways that will help you move on and heal faster. Here are 10 ways to help you deal with heartbreak. 1. Steer clear and keep distance. After the initial shock of a breakup and on occasions the somewhat empty promise to remain friends, it is important to remember to distance yourself from them. No communication whatsoever, including calls, texts, and IMs. Even contact with the same friends or families should be avoided. It doesn't mean that you have to avoid them forever. But it is important to keep away for a while in order for you to heal your heart and move on. 2. Surround yourself with support. When hurting, it is easy to distance yourself from others and just keep the pain away. You begin to question your self-worth. Are you really good enough? However, it is important that you surround yourself with positivity and people who will support you fully. Not only will this help you in moving on from your ex, but it will also be good for your bruised ego as it reinforces your self-concept and rebuilds your self-worth. 3. Manage your anger and avoid lashing out. People deal with anger differently. Some people deal with it with grace and passiveness that epitomizes maturity. There are also people who would burn clauses worth of clothes, destroy furniture and memorabilia, cut out and shred album after album of photos, lash out at friends who mention something triggering, and on occasions, come up to their ex and make a scene. It is important to find a way to deal with the anger of a breakup. Some can easily fall the deep end and resort to alcohol and drugs. One healthy way of coping is to try and write a journal of everything negative in the relationship. This way, not only are you letting out your hidden frustrations and angers, it can also help justify the reasons why the breakup happened in the first place. 4. Feel your emotions and deal with them. It's a natural reaction to push everything down and pretend that nothing happened.  After a breakup, it is important to remember that as humans we feel. The anger, the pain, the confusion, the frustration, and the worry that you are not good enough and you may never be happy again. Acknowledging these emotions are frightening. However, it is necessary to face them, sift through them, and deal with them in order to move on. Set time to grieve the relationship for what it was and what it should have been. Cry and mope, but don't let the negative emotions consume you and hold you back from living your life. 5. Talk it out. There are certain days where the overwhelming feeling of pain and loneliness reaches its limits. You feel hopeless at the same time you feel like your chest is going to burst. Many people are capable of bouncing back from a breakup on their own, but this isn't possible for most. Some people have trouble coping with their emotions and will need someone to talk to. It can be a parent, a friend, or in most cases, a therapist. While it is painful, talking about the relationship and the realizations after the relationship is quite helpful in sorting out emotions. If you're having trouble coping and feel that you're depressed, seek help immediately. 6. Self-Reflection. Even if you're enjoying each other's company, something probably went wrong along the way. Thinking of the reasons why the relationship failed can help you realize the mistakes you probably made and help you understand where and why the relationship didn't work out. This can also help avoid making the same mistakes in future relationships. By this time, it is important to take good care of yourself. Take a look in the mirror and learn more about yourself. You might realize something you never thought possible. 7. Organize your living space. Seeing things the two of you shared will bring forth torrents of fears and painful memories. To remedy this, you can change things up and redecorate your environment. It can be as simple as rearranging the sofa and coffee table to painting the whole room a different color and changing the drapes. Remove painful triggers that remind you of the past. Regardless, if your home reminds you of your past lover, it is important to acknowledge change. Embrace it and accept it to learn from it. 8.  Sometimes it's easy to forget that there is a whole world outside of your own.  Eat meals with your family. Go outside and hang out with friends. Jog around the block or just meet new people and dogs out in the park.  9. Be aware of rebound relationships. Rebound simply doesn't work most of the time. For some people, jumping in on another relationship just shortly after a breakup is simply a way of masking the negative emotions. It may sound nice to be embraced and appreciated by another person, but ultimately, when the relationship fails, the amount of negative emotions you have to deal with will double. It is important to settle things first and remain single to reflect on yourself and the relationship before jumping in on an unsteady relationship.  10. Stand by your decision. Regardless if it was you or them that chose to end the relationship, it is important to stand by the breakup and respect the decision to separate. It is easy to focus on the good side of the relationship and completely dismiss the negative side. However, it is a balance of looking at the relationship with objective eyes that can help romanticize the breakup. Cherish the good moments you had with each other. Learn from the painful mistakes you did together. Accept the situation and move forward with your life. Greater things wait for those who strive. Remember, a broken heart is a painful ordeal that affects us at one time or another. It is perfectly normal to cry, mope, and feel depressed about it. However, one must always remember that there's always a rainbow after the rain.  Each heartbreak is a chance to learn more about yourself and how you deal with it. If you liked this video, be sure to check out our other social media for more content. And don't forget to subscribe. Thanks for watching.