Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'm Laura Azege, your course lead for the MITx MicroMaster in SEM program here at MIT CDL. I'm very happy to be co-hosting this live event with Mr. Kellen Betz. He's also a course lead here at the MicroMaster program, and you may know him already. And today, we are very, very fortunate to have here with us Dr. Milena Janiewicz, research scientist at MIT CDL, and she's leading the supply chain design initiative. Welcome, Milena. Thank you. Thank you for having me. We are excited to learn from you today. First, as you know, probably if you've been here before, we'd like to know more about our audience.  So I'm very grateful for having Jan helping us with the poll today. We want to learn why you're here today. We want to know if you're here just for network design purposes. If you're very excited about that topic, if you want to learn more about the MIT CDL research initiatives, if you are more into technology and you want to learn how to use it on supply chain or if you're all about optimization models, which is a topic we really love here at the MicroMaster program. So while we let that populate, let's go to Kellen and the agenda for the session. Awesome. Thank you, Lara, and hi, everyone. So for the next 15 minutes or so, Milena will provide some context on supply chain design, network design, as a strategic decision and share some examples of trade-offs involved in this process. Milena will also show us technology, how combining optimization, simulation, and machine learning methods enable visual analytics to better understand the end-to-end impact of our decisions. And then Lara and I will ask some questions after she's done with her presentation. We are prepared and we'll definitely save time at the end of the event as well for your questions. And so please keep those questions in mind and get them ready. And please use that webinar Q&A function, that little button on the bottom that says Q&A. And please use that Q&A function for those questions. And also be sure that you're logged in with a name. You won't be reading any anonymous questions. And so please be prepared to participate. We look forward to seeing your questions. And with that, maybe we can enter a poll here and take a look at some of those results and share those results there. Awesome. So the question was, why are you here today? It looks like majority of you want to see how visual analytics can help me improve supply chain performance. That's awesome. I'm also a majority of you are more than half of you. I want to learn more about supply chain network design in general. That's great. I'm also a similar result for I want to know more about using technology for decision making. And that's awesome as well. And good to see many of you in our micro-masters programs who don't miss any of our events. And as always, always fun to see that as well. Awesome. Anna Molina, if you have any thoughts on that first poll result or not. Yeah. So interesting results. I hope I'll be able to give you at least some of the answers to some of these hopes that you are all having. I'll touch upon the visual analytics and network design in general. And then I would also love to hear your questions at the end to see if there's anything we've missed and that you want us to cover. So yeah, interesting to have such a motivated audience. Happy to be here. Awesome.  Yes, yes, yes. Let's do it. So let me share my screen. All right. So you should all be seeing my screen. Perfect. So yeah, I will present in the next 15 minutes or so some of the work that we do in the supply chain design initiative around visual analytics in supply chain network design. So just say a quick reminder of what do we mean when we say supply chain design? As probably most of you know, in supply chain and management, we have various levels of planning, strategic, tactical, operational. When we talk about supply chain design, we are really at that strategic planning level and we are making decisions such as configuration of our network, number of facilities, what suppliers to use, how to coordinate flows between facilities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So typically when you think about these strategic decisions, they have a very high return on investment and therefore I'd say supply chain design is probably one of the most critical areas of supply chain planning. Now, when we design a network, we basically need to consider some trade-offs. Obviously, I cannot list all of them here, but just to give you an idea of the type of things that we need to consider, here I took one of the decisions that is, I'd say, a very critical and important decision to make, which is how many facilities we have in our network and I've analyzed, okay, how does that decision on the number of facilities impact various areas of performance? So on the left-hand side, you can see that, as I am increasing my number of facilities, my inventory costs are increasing, but non-linear fashion, I can see a slightly different trend in terms of transportation costs. So when you talk about inventory, when you talk about transportation costs, we are here really in the realm of typical things that we consider in supply chain plan. However, if you look at the right-hand side, you can also see two additional metrics. One of them is the response time and one of them is the market share that are slightly less traditional and that are not considered as frequently in supply chain topics. So as I am increasing the number of facilities, my response time is decreasing and then in some specific industries, for example, if you think about e-commerce or e-fulfillment that will, of course, drive market share and ultimately drive the revenue. So ultimately, if I take this very simple decision, which is the number of facilities, I can see that both on the logistics side and on the business side, there's going to be various impacts on the performance and so what I'm basically trying to do is design a network in such a way that it is going to balance between the ability of the network to capture the revenue and the ability to keep our logistics costs under control. And so it can become a quite complex problem. To solve that problem, there's a variety of things that we can do and first thing that we can do is obviously use various analytical tools. So I think that you've talked about optimization models quite a bit in the courses that are within the MicroMasters but there's actually various types of analytical approaches that we can use. I'd say the most basic one is using some descriptive analytics where we're basically looking at data and trying to figure out some trends and patterns based on what happens. So for example, try to analyze how the demand shifts and how that will impact our network. We can also use predictive analytics where this is typically in the realm of machine learning where I'm trying to basically anticipate what will happen. So basically I'm looking at historical data, for example, and trying to derive what will be the future of the demand and then we can use prescriptive analytics which are the focus of operation research methods and optimization models are a great example of this type of analytics. So we basically have this toolbox of things that we can do. We have all these various type of analytical tools that we can use either separately or combine them together. And now the question comes, okay, how do we select the best tool? How do we select the best decision support for our specific problem? Now there one basic premise between the supply chain design initiative that we just kicked off at MIT CTL is that analytics are only going to be useful if they can actually help us drive better decisions in organizations. And when you think about it, if I take a given model, let's say an optimization model and I get the results of that model while solving a model is not the same as solving the problem, right? And so if, for example, the results of my model are not understood or accepted by decision makers if they don't drive actual change in the business environment, well then that model is actually not going to be very helpful. And so what we do in the supply chain design initiative is we basically try to create ways for humans, for decision makers in the organizations to interact with our models to gain better understanding of what's driving these decisions, build consensus and basically allow a higher transparency between the model and the solutions that are being proposed. Few things that we do here, one of them is visual analytics. So visual analytics at the most basic level serves to analyze different data and to create a better understanding, common knowledge among the different decision makers on what are some of the issues on some of the problems. And that is especially important if you take into account supply chain design where we saw there are impacts on costs but there was also going to be impacts on revenue on market share, et cetera, et cetera. So if I consider this problem and if I say, well there are basically impacts that go beyond what we typically consider in supply chain management I actually need a way to engage with a much broader audience and that audience is going to be stakeholders from finance stakeholders from marketing from sales department that can also be important decision makers in these supply chain design initiatives. So that visual analytics basically allows to kind of create a shared situational awareness to share knowledge and basically create an agreement of what the problem is. The second thing that we do is we use what we call human in the loop analytics which is basically allowing interfaces between our models, quantitative models and the decision makers through these interactive interfaces. So in the example that you can see here on the slide you can see one screenshot from a visual analytics tool that we have developed and in this specific case it turned out that indeed the proximity to the customer was a big driver of market share. And so the company basically was trying to understand how many warehouses they need to locate throughout the US in order to capture most of the demand but also keep the costs under control. However, they did not have a clear idea on what the relationship between that proximity of the demand and the market share would be. And so what we did there, we incorporated into the analytical tool this type of slider, the demand slider where basically decision makers can define these different functions and see how sensitive the model is, see how sensitive the results are to the type of function that they have defined. So this basically allows you to understand if the type of solution that you get is robust or is very sensitive to the input steps you are considering. Now to give you one example of how we perform this type of visual analytics in a very concrete case. I will take an example of a project I worked on recently where we had one global manufacturer that was basically launching a new product in a new market and they were trying to decide between multiple channel strategies. And so they were considering free channel strategies, home delivery, traditional or direct transportation where basically they would buy best a number of steps and these are shown here on the chart. And so what turned out is that in their decision to basically design their channel strategies there were a number of elements that were important. Some of those elements were quantitative elements such as cost and inventory and those are the things that we can typically model and simulate through our different tools but then there were additional elements for example customer service level, customer satisfaction there were more of the qualitative nature. And so what we did is we basically made a tool that allows to simulate the performance of these different scenarios and also that allows us to make trade-offs between these different dimensions of performance that can be qualitative and quantitative. So as a first step, if I go into the simulation part again, you can see there's going to be a visual app where I can build my scenarios define different parameters, et cetera. And ultimately when I perform that exercise I end up with something like this. I have my free scenarios here and I have my four KPIs here and then I basically get a number which gives me the performance of each scenario according to each KPI. Now in this specific case, what you can observe is that none of the scenarios is all green or all red. So for example, my traditional scenario has the best performance in terms of cost. My home delivery scenario has the best performance in terms of service. Now the question becomes, how do I decide? How do I make trade-offs between cost and service level? How do I choose when I am facing a ambiguous situation such as this one? Now here, the approach that we have put in place is basically to allow decision makers to define the weights that they give to the different scenarios. And so in our visual analytic tool, we will have in addition to a pain that allows us to build different scenarios and define the parameters, we will have something that will allow us basically to adjust the weight that we give to different metrics. And so I can say, for example, my cost is the most important, I will give it 70% and then everything else, 10% of importance in my final decision making. And then we basically engage with the company, we engage with the stakeholders and say, okay, what is your assumption on what those weights should be?  And how does that basically impact the recommendation that we get out of our system? And so we ran a bunch of different simulations here. And so what we did here is we said, okay, there's really two things that are kind of key in our decision making, and that's going to be the trade off between the cost and the service level. And so we basically ran this exercise by varying the cost, the weight of the cost between 100% and 0% and same per service level between 0% and 100%. So it kind of ended up with a grid that gives us various ways of prioritizing different objectives. Now, in this specific case, when we ran that, what we were able to obtain is for each of these scenarios, a kind of a composite score, a final score now takes into account all of the different weights. And what you can see here is that in this specific case, basically unless I am in this very extreme areas where I only value cost or only value service level, the moment I am in the middle and I'm considering a mix between these different objectives, I have a direct path that is the most recommended one. So my model is actually not that sensitive to the type of inputs that I need to put in here in terms of the weights. And so with a great level of confidence, I can say that the direct path is actually our preferred path. In other cases, we will get a much more sensitive model. And so, for example, we will then need to really pay more attention in, okay, are we putting 20 or 25% on one criteria or the other? But in this specific case, it didn't really matter. So as a summary of this very quick presentation, so we have some trade-offs that we need to consider when we are designing our supply chains. We have a lot of different analytical approaches here I've talked about simulation optimization, machine learning at the beginning, but there's others that can act to support the decision-making. However, we believe that creating intuitive interfaces to these analytical approaches is really what is going to help us drive decisions in organizations. And there I've mentioned the role of visual analytics, the role of human-in-the-loop analytics. Ultimately, it comes down to saying that the quantitative models and the analytical approaches are decision support tools and not decision-making tools. When I'm facing a complex strategic problem, such as supply chain design, that's not something we can simply outsource to a machine. There's always going to be a human intervention that is needed to account for all the things that we need to incorporate in our decisions. So with that, I would, if you would like to learn more about the approaches that we put forward in our supply chain design initiative, I would invite you to go on our website, so scdesign.mit.edu. And on that website, you'll find a summary of what we do, but also you will be able to download a white paper that we just published. And that white paper was built with collaboration, so of Koopa, who is a provider of artificial intelligence and has extensive knowledge in supply chain design. And so we really set together and collaborated on kind of putting together what we see are some of the most common challenges that companies are facing and what would be some lines of action, what would be some opportunities to address in the future years in terms of supply chain design.  And if there is anything there that is of interest to you, please feel free to reach out and share your thoughts and ideas with us. And that will be all from my site. And now, I believe. Also, Milena, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. It was short, but it was very insightful. So thank you for all that you have shared with our audience. I find it very interesting this topic about the human-in-the-loop interfaces. We talk a lot about technology and how important it's becoming and when it comes to decision making. But the expertise and the knowledge of those experts that we have in every field will definitely bring the best insight out of any model we create. So it's very important that you bring this to us and that we share that with the audience because at the very end of the day, like as you said, and also Dr. Kabliss says in some of our lessons, people is the one that's making the decision. Like not the models, people do make decisions. So that's very important. Thank you for bringing that to the table. And one of the challenges and now to like go a little bit beyond what you just said, but touching on those topics, one of the challenges that company face a lot when creating those optimization models or any decision-making model relates to the number of variables you have or to consider when analyzing these trade-offs or the constraints they will have, how much of that complexity should they add on their models so that they are actually bringing good decisions because you can incorporate as many things as you want, but that doesn't mean you will drive a better result out of a model. So would you share some more about that on what you've learned on your research? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So indeed, I think one of the biggest challenges that we find when establishing optimization models or other models as well is how do we make choices? How do we make right choices to reflect the business decisions that are at hand? And when you think about it, when you design an optimization model or any other decision support tool, there's a number of things you can do. So first you can define the scope of your model. So I can say, well, I'm only looking at a regional level at one region, one country, or even one city, or I want to have an end-to-end supply chain design model where I look from the supplier to the supplier to the customer, my customer. So that's the first choice that we need to make. The second choice is going to be relevant to how granularly are we basically describing each of the components of that model. So for example, how granular am I in the description of my flows or the facilities or the processes? One example there could be, I can say, well, I can just take my customers and look at it in a given city and consider that to be a single point. Or I can consider a model that incorporates routing decisions towards each individual customer in my city. And there I can have hundreds of vehicles performing hundreds of routes per day. And I would need to incorporate that as well. And so ultimately there's a trade-off there. So if I have a very large scope of my model, I'm probably not going to be able to be as granular. And that's for two reasons. The first reason is going to be the solvability because we still don't have computers that can solve a full end-to-end supply chain design model with that level of granularity, but also for practical reasons because simply it will require us to gather too much data and wouldn't be practical to drive the decisions. So then the question comes, okay, I can have a wide scope or a narrow scope. I can be very precise in terms of transportation, inventory, production planning, et cetera, et cetera. So how do I decide what should be part of my model and still keep it within a range that is feasible and that I can implement in the time that I have at hand? Now there, I'd say what I've seen is that a lot of companies start by using kind of generic approaches where we say, okay, no, a typical supply chain design model is looking at transportation costs, inventory, et cetera, et cetera. And that's good if you have a generic supply chain, but if you really want to use your supply chain as a source of value creation there, it really comes down to identifying what are for your company, the main drivers of value, the main drivers of cost and really focus your model on those areas. So if I'm in the pharma space, I will probably have very high cost of inventory. I will probably have very high service levels that need to be insured. And so that's something that needs to be translated in the features of my model. If I'm in the e-commerce space, there probably I really want to make sure that my last mile part is going to be properly modeled. But it's really coming back to, okay, how can supply chain design drive value and how can we best design our model to reflect that for our organization? So that will be my advice. Thank you, Melinda. That's great advice. I really love what you just ended there on, you know, kind of focusing on the business instead of using more generic models, really using a model that's focusing on your industry or your particular network design and utilizing some of that business understanding and some of that business context, right? And just kind of a generic model. Maybe that also kind of then goes to the concept of, you know, that requires a lot of human intelligence, if you will, you know, human understanding of that supply chain. But something that you also mentioned briefly in your presentation was the concept of machine learning and AI, you know, so that computational intelligence or that artificial intelligence, if you will. So I'm wondering if you can maybe just touch on a little bit more on the use of and how AI comes into this context, you know, for that predictive and that prescriptive stages, how AI and machine learning come into these models and visual analytic app that you built. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I would say the most immediate application of machine learning and AI in supply chain design is going to be on the model inputs. So when we design a given model, that model is going to take in a large number of inputs and those inputs can be, for example, relevant to the demand. It can be operational metrics. It can be the costs of different elements, et cetera, et cetera. So there's going to be a very, very large number of inputs, number of parameters that we are considering. And what we see typically is that traditionally, companies have used very approximate values of those parameters. So for example, you know, if I'm designing a regional supply chain and I need to consider the costs between a point A and B, I will simply look at my historical data and say, well, you know, on average last year, it has cost me, I don't know, that many dollars per pound to connect to those two points and I will use that as an input to my model and then design my model with that in mind. Now, what we've seen is that in a lot of cases, if you take that very simplistic approach where you just basically approximate in such a rough way, some of these input parameters, that can lead to huge errors in those parameters. So typically, you know, one project that we worked on, we looked at that approximate approach where we take the average and then we compared it to the real cost. And we could see the differences were up to 60% of the real costs. And so obviously if you are working with this type of inputs, the recommendations that you're going to get outside from your models are not going to be very valid because you're not putting accurate assumptions. And so I would say the first role of machine learning or AI is really making sure that the inputs that we're considering are correct. And here, for example, in the case that I've just mentioned, what we did for that company is we build a machine learning model where we looked at a bunch of different features such as origin, destination, GDP of a country, where we depart GDP of the country where we arrive, the weight, the carrier, the time of the year, et cetera, et cetera, and came up with a much more granular description of the freight cost. And then we use that as an input to our optimization model. And that obviously yields much better results in the long-term. So I would say that's the first application. Now, some other application that I don't think I'll have time to touch upon today are basically replacing a part of your model with an AI component. And that can sometimes allow us to decrease the complexity. And then the third one would be basically using AI to analyze the range of solutions that we have obtained. And so trying to understand basically better what's driving the results of our optimization model if using AI. So there's a number of options. I think it's a really interesting area to explore. It's just starting to develop. And I'm really looking forward to see what comes out in the next few years. Thank you, Milena. And I will like to switch gears to touch a little bit on a topic that I know many of us in the audience could be interested in. And it's thinking on the sign-in for sustainability. So you mentioned the tools we can use. You mentioned the trade-offs we have, variables we can consider constraints or levels of complexity. And you touch upon the service level as one of the qualitative aspects you include in the model. I would love to know if you can use the same tool and the same approach to design for a more sustainable network. Can we optimize on those terms? And if you have seen that done, what would you recommend or suggest? Okay, yeah, thank you. So yeah, I think there's definitely a few ways in which you can approach that problem. So the first approach would be something similar to what I've just described where we have a limited set of alternatives that we consider. So in this case, we had three different options for our channel strategy. And we have a number of different dimensions of performance and those could be expressed through a quantitative or qualitative KPIs. And so I can have no cost service level, environmental impact, social impact, et cetera, et cetera. And then there we basically draw from the multi-quartier decision making field and what we do is we basically analyze how does the weighting of the different option impact the recommended solution that we get. So that's kind of one way. And that's very much in line with the example that I've shown. Now, the second approach is to basically embed different objectives in our optimization problem. And so there rather than solving for a given solution and then assessing it according to multiple dimensions, we are basically embedding in our objective function the different performance dimensions. And so there I can, for example, have now an objective function that will have one component that is cost, one component that is environmental impact and one component that is a service level or something like that. When we end up with that type of objective function, I would say there's basically two ways in which we can solve for it. The first one would be to say, okay, I can bring everything to some common measure, some common unit. So for example, that common unit would be cost. And I can say, well, I can convert one ton of CO2 into a dollar amount, or I can convert a percent of service level into revenue and therefore into a dollar amount, or I can use a different measure of utility or something like that. And in that case, if we knew that, what we basically end up is with just slightly more complex objective function, but where we now still have a single objective that we are solving for and that now reflects a multitude of different subcomponents that we have predefined. So that's the first approach. Now the second approach is to basically not convert everything to a single unit. And that can be either because we don't know how to do it because it's sometimes not exactly clear-cut what is the translation between a social impact and a cost or service level and decision revenue, or it can happen because we don't want to do it because we want to keep those trade-offs explicit. And there we will basically come into the area of multi-objective optimization where we are now explicitly in our objective function considering various dimensions that now are not at the same level. And that kind of allows us to keep those trade-offs more explicit. And I think from decision-making perspective, it makes sense because now the company is the one that is deciding, okay, how much value actually I'm putting at my environmental impact versus cost and not just using a standard that they might not be aligned with to start with. That's awesome. That's definitely an area that I'm very interested in is incorporating sustainability and some of these concepts. And so to have those two different strategies, either multi-objective, if you will, or trying to convert it all into a single objective function, I think that's a fascinating concept. And I'm kind of trying to keep an eye on time here. We're getting pretty close to wanting to pull in maybe some questions from the audience and maybe we have time for one more question here, Laura. I think we have prepared and maybe to build you off a little bit on what you just mentioned, where you kind of may have these two different strategies. And so the one question might be, well, then how do you evaluate the effectiveness of each of these different strategies or more just more generally, how do you evaluate the success or the effectiveness of a model? And so are there KPIs or are there strategies that you have in mind where you used to approach this concept of evaluating the effectiveness of a different strategy or a different model? Yeah, I mean, I would say the most elementary way of evaluating the model would be to say, well, I'm looking at my expected performance, I'm looking at my actual realized performance and I'm trying to assess what is the gap and I'm trying to basically see, okay, how accurately was I able to model my business problem at hand. However, I would be careful with evaluating the quality of the models as such because we know that models are always going to be wrong. We know that they are always a very simplified version of the reality. And so those KPIs should serve more to basically monitor the success of the model within our supply chain design process. So the objective is not to develop the best model, the objective is really to put in place a process that allows us to monitor how successful our modeling was, what areas should we focus on and reiterate on that and basically have a continuous loop where we are continuously learning from the implementation and allowing to adjust our assumptions, adjust our scope, adjust our modeling approach or adjust simply the environment in which we are operating. And so I would say that the success is more going to be in that adaptability of the supply chain design process over time rather than coming up with one model that is going to serve us until the end of times and be completely accurate. And by the time we develop it, it's probably already going to be obsolete and we'll have to renew it. So it's more about that continuous design process that we need to be put in place. Thank you, Milena for bringing that. And you're already answering some of the questions we have in the Q&A feature because we have this on how often should I review or revisit my network design. So thank you for bringing that. Before going to the Q&A with the audience, I would like if Chen can help us launch the second and last poll just to see where we are, what you have learned today from Milena's insight. So while we let that populate and so to learn what are you taking away from this event, I would like to go to Tarun Kumar's question. So I'm summarizing it because it brings a lot of different topics but I wanted to know based on Tarun's question, how do you treat outliers and how accurate a model can be when we have situations like the pandemic or a trade war? How do you incorporate or not the outliers or how to decide treating them? Yeah, that's a really good question. Let's think just about incorporating risk and uncertainty, for example. So I have two different types of uncertainty and risk I consider. I have my business as usual where I say, well, my demand is going to vary between 80% and 130% over this period. And I'm going to put in my play in place a model that is going to account for all of those different scenarios that's going to account for the probability of those scenarios. And basically I'm now looking at a wave of maximizing the expected value over a range of scenarios which are all within a given business as usual range, let's say. So that will be like one approach to treating where we don't have these outliers. Now, what happens if we have global pandemic what happens if you have a very high disruption, et cetera. So the problem with that approach is that if I take the same approach and I say, well, I have 0.01 probability that I will have this catastrophic event happening, that is basically going to get lost in my solution. The probability is just so low that I'm not going to actually account for that in the type of solution that I'm getting even though the impact might be catastrophic. And so there I would say what I would combine what I would do is I would combine the previous approach with more of a scenario planning approach where you're explicitly looking at some of these catastrophic scenarios and you're trying to understand how robust your model is to those specific scenarios. And there it really comes down to how do you define those scenarios, who defines those scenarios and what should be the ones that should be incorporated. And what might happen is that you might end up with a model that is slightly less cost effective in your business as usual range but that is maybe much more robust in terms of those very high disruptions. But you almost need two different ways of looking at the problem to be able to come up with the recommendation that will be robust against two types of uncertainties and solutions. That's a great answer. I love that answer just kind of reinforces this concept of bringing in the human loop in the modeling process but also just the focus on the analytics serving the purpose of decision making and really bringing in that human side of it. Because these models often like machine learning models for example are often built on historical data and if something is really low probability event historically it's not going to predict that to be very high probability in the future either. And so you got to bring in that human intuition and that human insight. So that's a fascinating answer. So maybe if we could just enter a poll real quick here and we'll take a look at those results and then we'll pick maybe one or two questions here to wrap things up. So again, the question was and what was the most interesting part of today's session for you. And so thank you again for everyone who answered. We have lots of answers to our poll here so appreciate you providing the answer to our polls but it looks like many of you are interested in expanding your knowledge just generally in your network design which is awesome to see understanding how technology can enhance collaboration which is awesome to see as well, it's very interesting. Anna Molina, if you have any thoughts on some of those results of that poll there. Yeah, yeah. I think this is, I think understanding how technology can enhance collaboration and supply chain that's a very, it's a very wide topic I think we could probably spend not one hour but several days discussing that. Again, I'd love for those of you who get a chance if you can download the white paper and read some of the things we've put there and come back with any thoughts you have. And I would love to hear your feedback and learn from your experience working in company and organizations that are actually performing this, how does this relate to you and what are some of the things you find are interesting or are missing. So I invite you to do that. Thank you. Thank you, Milena. We do have one more question if you are okay with it. We are on time but we don't wanna leave the audience without sharing some of their questions. They wanna learn about how to design for reverse logistics. Do you have any recommendation on including reverse logistics? Do you plan for it in advance or you just incorporate afterwards when you need it? What is it that you learn so far on that? Yeah, I think it's a very interesting question. It's a fascinating topic and it will really very much depend on the type of reverse logistics system that you are putting place. I think one of the key differences in the reverse logistics systems to our typical supply chain design is that we are now incorporating a much larger number of stakeholders and actors that are often outside of the organizational boundaries. So if I'm for example, taking reverse logistics for plastic bottles, et cetera, I will have obviously the company that is ultimately going to be using those but then I will have a network of processing facilities located throughout the country that is now under the public governance. And so I think how do we establish that interface between those different supply chains that are actually connected but often governed by different bodies? That is one of the most interesting topics to me. In other cases, a company will have a much more control over its entire supply chain including the reverse logistics. And so there the question is basically how do you just extend the current model to incorporate these reverse flows? But I think depending on the type of situation you're in, you will get a very different, you will need to have a very different approach. So yeah. That's fascinating. Is there a different area that I'm very interested in as well as reverse logistics? I think there's lots of opportunity there. And we're running very short on time but maybe Laura, if you have one time for one more question, it's probably a pretty quick question. And it really kind of summarizes there's a number of questions in here. I'm just kind of grouping it all together. It should be pretty quick but a number of learners seem to be very hands-on. They're very interested in what tools you're using. So what software you're using for some of these new models and the visual side of the models as well. I don't know maybe if you have any tips or tools that you might be able to share. Sure, sure, sure. So I mean, basically the tools that we develop, there's always going to be a front-end part which is basically develop on a framework that is developed by the computational and visual education lab, the cave lab at MIT CTL. So they've developed basically a framework that allows us to visualize all kind of network data and other things as well and that we are heavily using in our projects. And then on the back-end side, it's going to be typically Python and then solvers that can even open solvers or Ruby or whatever you want to use but basically those would be some of the tools that we're using. Thank you, Milena. So we invite everyone to check the cave lab and the supply chain design initiative at MIT CTL website. You will find it there if you look for it. We appreciate your time, Milena. With us today, we learned a lot and we are sure our audience has taken a lot of great insights out of this event. We want to remind everyone that this is a webinar series. So it's not only the first live event for SC2X and SC4X, but it's also a webinar series. So we look forward to having you all joining us. Kilin and myself will be hosting those too. Coming next in also technology and connecting with network design. I don't know, Kilin, if you have any final words for Milena and our audience. Yeah, Milena, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate you sharing your insights and thank you everyone in the audience for participating in our event. We have lots of questions, you have way more questions we have time to answer. I appreciate you sharing your questions and your participation in our polls. So thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you, Milena. We'll have you again soon, I hope. Thank you. It's been great. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.


It's hard to believe that more than 40 years have passed since the dedication of the LBJ Library. Nothing would have pleased our parents more than to know that the library would be opening new exhibits for a new generation. The 60s was a decade defined by change. Vietnam and the space race put America in the global spotlight. Almost every aspect of public life, from healthcare and housing laws to education and civil rights, was touched and transformed during the span of our father's presidency. Like many of you, we remember those years as if they were yesterday. But to our children and grandchildren, they're just a chapter in a history book. We invite you and your families to visit the LBJ Library and explore the library's website to experience firsthand the most dynamic period in our country's storied past and to learn more about the 36th President of the United States. Enjoy all of our new exhibits here at the LBJ Library.


All right? And you guys all know this from your own experience.  What do you want to do? I want to pick up my phone and throw it across the room. And hopefully they're in the room so I can throw it at their head. Because it's so annoying. Do I really want to have a conversation about my weekend over text? I hardly want to have that conversation in person. Like when someone, hey, how was your weekend, buddy? Oh, it was good. You know, we did some cool stuff. How was yours? Oh, it was good too. Great, awesome. Cool.  So don't have those conversations during text because it forces someone so she doesn't want to be mean. She wants to be polite. She wants to be respectable. And if you force someone to have this conversation, she has two options, either not to respond at all or to have an annoying, boring conversation.  And she's not excited to get text from you. It's a drag. It's something she has to respond to. She's already busy. She's doing stuff. The last thing she wants to do is have a boring conversation via text. This is the last thing you want to do too. Don't feel the need to do this. So you'll see where this goes. This looks good, right? Oh, look, she's responding a lot. She goes, hey, Smiley, I just got off work. Ha-ha-am. It was busy and crazy and fun. Ha-ha. No, no trouble. Ha-ha. I worked yesterday morning and at night. I had to go to the Miss Bell Garden's pageant, where I sadly passed on the crown to the new queen, ha-ha. It was happy and sad moment, ha-ha. How about your weekend?  She says, ha-ha after every sentence. And she uses 10,000 emojis. And this looks like he's in good shape, right? They're going back and forth, having a rapport conversation. But that's exactly what you do not want. You do not want to have this conversation over text. It's boring. How about your weekend? Then he writes the novel. Where do you work that's so busy, crazy and fun? Where do you work that's so busy, crazy and fun? It better not be Walmart or something, ha-ha. My weekend was busy between going out and working.  Going out to grab drinks with me. You can tell me all about your glory days. So more boring rapport type conversation followed up by another request for a date. What do you guys think she's going to respond to this with? Ha-ha, I work at a family restaurant, but the fun part was a pageant not work. Where do you work? I will let you know what day by Tuesday, promise, ha-ha. And sounds like fun for sure. The real kiss of death is the promise. By her saying promise, you know that he's really chasing her. She feels obligated to give him a date and time. She feels pressured and it's clear that he's dead. There's no way he's getting this girl out. She already flaked and now she feels badly that she can't give him another time. As humans, we only flake if something better comes up or something more important or urgent comes up in the meantime. If we really want to see someone, we'll make sure to see him, right?  Nothing, I'm free. Didn't matter that you had a presidential dinner or something like that. You might skip that to go out with a supermodel. You will make time. When girls flake, it's almost always because they're not sold on you. So he says, ha-ha, I see. Pageant does sound better than work. I'm a waiter at Lucille's, a barbecue place on second and PCH, cool. Ha-ha, definitely way better. Oh nice, we both work at restaurants, ha-ha. He thought he had a chance with this girl. When I saw it and I read through it, I knew he was done. And that is the number one way that guys screw up their texting interactions. They'll start out with something fun and then they'll go logical, boring, rapport type of conversation. That is a kiss of death. Do not ever ask boring questions that you wouldn't even want to ask in person. In fact, you don't need to really ask questions at all. I'll show you guys how to do it instead. Scheduling a date slash telling her out. So one thing that I like to make the distinction when it comes to asking women out versus telling a woman out, when you ask for a date, you're putting yourself in that traditional kind of the way society creates these dating norms like please will you go out with me? Can I take you to dinner?  And it puts you behind the eight ball versus if you tell her out in a really confident way, you're now standing out from the pack, right? This is wrong. Hey, what are you doing Wednesday? Or do you want to do X on Tuesday? The worst thing you could do for yourself is to propose a date on a certain day because odds are she's going to have plans already. Beautiful women have lots of opportunities to do lots of cool stuff. And I guarantee if you ask her on a Wednesday what she's doing Friday or Saturday, she's going to have other plans. And unless she really, really likes you, she's not going to break them. And then the worst thing is if you say, hey, I've got tickets to this cool thing, are you free Wednesday? And she says no. Well, then you have to say what? Oh, what about Thursday or about Monday?  So don't do that. Don't ever ask for dates on specific days, especially first dates. If you've already slept with her and you guys have some sort of relationship, then this rule no longer applies. You can ask for a certain date, but first, second, third dates, don't do it. Hi, Jenny, may I please take you out to dinner on Saturday night, a gross barf. These are the text shoes getting from that guy that I showed you the slides of in the beginning. The hey, how's it going? Hey, I like your shoes. Hey, how you doing? Why aren't you responding to my texts? Don't be that guy. So here's how I like to ask women out. Just take notes on these. These are great lines. What does your week look like?  Figure out a day you're free. I'm taking you out. I can guarantee a 33% chance of a good time and C minus conversation. So why do you guys think that works? Low expectations, sort of, not really. Essentially what most guys do is they try to oversell a girl on a date. They make it not about the connection, not about the time between him and her. They make it about this thing that they're doing. Hey, I wanna take you to the Super Bowl. Have you heard of it before? It's awesome. She doesn't care about going to the Super Bowl with you. I mean, if you ask a girl to the Super Bowl she'll probably say yes, but that's not gonna help you get what you want. If you ask her out for coffee or drinks and you keep it casual and you make it known that you're having fun, you're amusing yourself, it's not that big of a deal if she goes out with you or not she's gonna be way more likely to see you. She's gonna feel less pressured.   Anyone who says that has to have A plus conversation skills because that's a humor.  Okay? Couple more examples. Dear Julie, I'd like to take you out on a formal date and by formal, I mean beers, tacos, and darts. How's your schedule? How's your schedule? We're hanging out. I wanna take you out to a nice dinner. Chipotle or something. Times are tough. When she gets these texts, when she sees the recall humor or the standard protocol line or the flip the script followed by one of these texts, the first thing she sees is like, oh, I remember this guy, he was fun. He was cool. He was crazy. He hit on me at Starbucks. And now he's asking me out and he's taking me to Chipotle. This is awesome. You're not actually gonna take her to Chipotle but it doesn't matter. She knows you're kidding. And then there's memes. On a scale of one to America, how free are you next week? There's so much I wanna say. We could spend an entire hour talking about the genius of this. All right? And you guys are gonna see a lot of memes and why they're so great. It's hilarious. It's witty. And she's never been asked out before with a picture. I promise you that. Unless she's talked to me or some of my clients.  She'll probably screenshot this, send it to her friend Julie. Can you believe this guy just asked me out via meme? This is amazing. She's gonna be really excited to go out with you. And anytime you have this great back and forth via text with a girl, you're way more likely to have an awesome date. She's showing up to that date with a lot of enthusiasm. She's having fun. She doesn't feel the standard sort of pressure that she would feel if a guy said, hey Jenny, it's really nice meeting you. And when are you free this week? Cause I wanna take you out to dinner. You're gonna fall into that boring, stereotypical, awkward date. It's not what you want. Find out, find it on the YouTube channel. But you can find him at interconfidence.com and his name is Robbie Cramer. Let's come on up. Yes.  There's no way he's getting this girl out. She already flaked, and now she feels badly that she can't give him another time. ABC, or tell you to jump off a bridge, which is funny. She doesn't feel that pressure to have to, you know, she doesn't have to feel bad about letting you down. And if you can get a girl to, if you can create a situation where she doesn't feel pressure to let you down, you're going to do amazing with women and you're gonna give them options and they're usually gonna pick the option that you want.


When Adventure Time can go from an episode like I remember you where we are given this deeply tragic and emotional back story to an Episode like the eyes where a creepy horse just stares at Finn and Jake for 11 minutes I begin to understand the appeal of Adventure Time. It balances so many ideas and blends so many genres It goes from just plain fun to existential dread from detective BMO and BMO noir to downright horror In no one can hear you the amount of love and care that is given to every single episode and every single character Whether it's a character who shows up for one episode or one who grows throughout its ten seasons They are each given the same amount of attention and that level of care shines throughout Adventure Time has so many episodes and layers that can be dissected So in order to focus this video I want to look at how this series tackles the ideas of change growth and acceptance Mainly through the lens of Finn as well as moments of Ice King, Marceline and Princess Bubblegum Adventure Time is an adventure time without its protagonist and that's where I'll begin The maturity of this series is a very slow and gradual one and it happens mainly through the lens of Finn the human Because Finn is so young and so naive It works as the show unravels all the nuances and complexities of life and the land of Just as he does when I think of Finn and his journey It's a slow journey into the character. We see at the end of the series As his journey begins with a very narrow and childlike view of the world This is reflected by the tone that Adventure Time carries It's a kid's show and its protagonist is a kid a hero and his best friend tackling the villains of Having fun doing it But as Finn falls in love and gets his heart broken twice the second as a result of his own flaws It's here that the world begins to develop and the world of who begins to expand as he loses his heroic immunity Finn doesn't have flaws that aren't actually flaws or that can be turned into good things No, Finn is very much a flawed person. He is a great person with a great heart who can do bad things We learn over the course of those first three to four seasons that Finn can be self-centered and manipulative It's illustrated quite well in all the little people where he manipulates people for his own doing or in Storytelling where he bothers and destroys lives to try and heal a sick Jake in Jake suit where he dismisses Jake's pain But Frost and fire is his most egregious where he not only manipulates ice king, but flame princess as well Using personal information about her to get her to do what he wanted This episode had important undertones of sexuality Implying that he was having a wet dream Finn was unable to control his desires and it came at the expense of flame princess This episode was uncomfortable. It was hard to watch, but it was such an important episode for Finn's development At the end of the episode Finn apologizes believing that it will solve everything when it doesn't he replies I said I was sorry a remark that really shows his immaturity. This breakup is a realization that Finn's actions have consequences in The very next episode he is trying to fill that hole left by her with Princess bubblegum Again showing off that immaturity Finn is finally stripped of that heroic immunity and his life begins to take a turn for the worst as He meets his father who is then responsible for Finn losing his arm and abandoning him This show is unafraid to challenge its characters and more importantly to challenge its hero Adventure Time tests Finn's character his heart is resolved But it also demonstrates that even those with the most unshakable morals are still people at the end of the day They still struggle with the same things everyone else does Finn after losing his arm shows another side of himself. He gets angry Vendictive Finn sings about how he wants to rip his father's arm off in the tower He tries to exact his revenge, but it doesn't exactly plug the hole that's left in his heart So he decides to withdraw from all of his emotions instead as a response As sad of a response as it was from Finn I loved it because it was so human in this moment Finn like many others would shut down to shield himself from any further harm and the loss of his arm began The loss of his innocence His overall light his joy has dimmed in breezy. He tries to find it through other people in the most PG way possible Finn hooks up with random princesses to quote-unquote fix himself. I remember thinking how uncharacteristic this was But it wasn't unrealistic It's human nature to want to distract yourself from all the pain that you're going through Especially if it's so unbearable Finn has never felt this way before. He's a 16 year old who's depressed and who's been through a traumatic experience His life used to be rather simple Now he has to navigate all of these different emotions all these complex ones Turning them awful always seemed like the easiest solution Finn was searching for healing in the wrong places and this episode showed him that healing might be a personal journey But others can and will help if you let them It took breezy someone who we never see again to care about him in the way that he cared about others and It took him to remember the love he had for princess bubblegum and for everyone else is what makes Finn Finn Breezy is the episode that I can always think of when I think of this show's maturity to follow its Protagonist a kid so depressed that he decided to abandon all emotion and in order to regain it He looked to meaningless sex and this episode explores why that doesn't work all in 11 minutes Show don't tell is a method employed in all types of storytelling and adventure time shows us what growing up is like Through all the embarrassment the shame and the depression it communicates a realistic portrayal of what it is to grow up the ups and the downs How it is to age to hope and to create new versions of oneself and After everything he went through and his father abandoning him again It changed him Finn began to even empathize with his father Trying to understand why he does what he does in pajama war in that very same episode He learns to appreciate princess bubblegum for her love as a friend as Finn continues to grow he begins to question the world around him He begins to question why things are the way that they are and astral plane saw Finn question the importance of his own Existence with globs explosive response Finn somewhat understands which leads him to the comet When offered by the comet to go to an existence free of everything he's experienced love hate friendship isolation Etc Finn ends up choosing and accepting his own existence He learns that life is filled with unpredictability Unanswered questions. It's incredibly bleak and nihilistic But also filled with an abundance of life of love that he's experienced and no matter what happens good or bad Life is worth living his life is worth living through the heartbreak and the disappointment and people are worth understanding He even comes to the mature conclusion that Martin is someone who is unwilling to change Who was unwilling to face the bridges that he's burnt and so he runs away from every inconvenience He has no bonds to love to friendship or to any of those things that the comet mentioned Which is why he's able to choose a world free of these things Finn has no choice but to accept Martin the way that he is I Said that the show is unafraid to challenge its own hero and throughout Finn's development the way he approaches conflict And how he deals with it has changed Just as he began to develop an even greater empathy for the world around him It also changed the way he operates as a hero as he was knighted back in breezy He's become a more mature hero veering away from simply mindless violence and moving more towards understanding in peace I Think three buckets and the wild hunt were two episodes that illustrated this perfectly and it conveyed some of the show's interesting look at morality In three buckets we see the efforts that Finn is making to understand fern and his non-violence is a demonstration of that understanding As fern locks him up to steal his identity instead of fighting He looks for a solution trying any way possible to talk fern out of his decision And when he does fight him he tries to restrain him and again talk to him until he accidentally kills fern and The final scene of this episode is heartbreaking In one single moment. You can see how devastating that moment was for fin Finn has come to value life. He spent half a season pondering existence searching for the meaning of it all For his will to live he knew and fully understood that fern was only trying to be who he was supposed to be his whole life And now he took that away from fern and while yes fern did act quite maliciously the show doesn't demonize him for it In that final tussle with fern not only was he fighting for fern's life But fin was trying so hard to not be abandoned again by someone that he grew to appreciate and to love Finn in this episode kills someone that he used to be Another version of himself that didn't change and grow and it's traumatizing Again that look on his face is so heartbreaking that guilt it stays with him It stays with him in the wild hunt. It's an event that he will probably never forget I think a younger fin would have killed off fern without even taking the time to try and understand him and Without feeling for him that scene doesn't happen if fin doesn't grow Finn has been through so much and still emerges out of all of these hardships as an even greater hero than he was at the beginning of his story Simon Petrikov is also someone who gains a great deal of acceptance not because he won't change but because he can't Ice King who began as the silly antagonist if Finn and Jake turned out to be a shell of his old self In Simon and Marcy the flashbacks indicated that it all happened 996 years prior Simon has spent over 900 years alone Losing his mind in solitude until it was Simon no more no Betty no Marceline no friends This explains why he's so drawn to Finn and Jake and their friendship He's incredibly lonely It's because of Betty why he's after the princesses ice King goes through these stages where he's so angry and sad He's so volatile and he doesn't even know why he just can't help it These moments of sadness are so heartbreaking even more so when we consider that Simon is still in there And he's the reason for these sudden shifts In bespoken for after Simon and Betty's failed date while the culparts comedic It's so sad as he's on the ground crying and I remember you he's full-on wailing begging for love He wants to be loved so badly, but after the series unravels what happened to Simon He might be the most noble and heroic character in the entire show He knew that in order to save Marceline He needed to keep the crown Marceline needed him and he was there for her even if it cost him his identity his sanity in His song and I remember you Simon writes. I need to save you, but who's going to save me and Here a thousand years later. No one has until Marceline does Marceline was the first person to be his friend to dedicate the time to truly be a friend even when it hurt her She was probably the first person in over a thousand years to invite him out to play basketball The first person to love ice-king to accept ice-king in his current state Ice-king has a mental illness and Marceline treated him with patience She even began calling him Simon and had Finn and Jake and even Princess Bubblegum open up to him and accept him as well Marceline was frustrated and I remember you she was grieving the Simon She knew an incredibly intelligent brave man who's changed a lot a man who saved her life But she's still able to accept him and to love him Marceline knows that he wants love and she provides him with friends that give that to him His story is so tragic and so moving Which makes it even more apparent when Betty is unable to accept Simon as ice-king Betty is so desperate for Simon back and she can't accept this new version of him no matter how hard she tries The relationship they had the time they spent was much different for her than it was for Marceline with Betty We see the duality of love Specifically how love can corrupt and turn someone selfish how Betty threw her own life for Simon Betty brought gallb to ooh if it meant getting Simon back and in the end sacrificed herself for Simon an Act that was selfless Betty was grieving and this is how she responded even love has its faults But while Betty might not accept ice-king the series does They recognize that these are two separate individuals and closes off their stories with their separate Existences Gunter's wish is to be ice-king someone He's grown to love fondly and who showed him love and Simon has been released from the thousand-year labyrinth that is ice-king This series demonstrates that each of us are flawed in our own ways and we all have things to work on But at the same time it's important that we accept that we will never be perfect and we cannot expect that from our peers Jake for example is an amazing friend and brother to Finn. He's wise and caring But he can be aloof reckless and irresponsible sometimes he used to be a criminal and While he is one of the better Adventure Time fathers He still has considerable faults as a father Princess bubblegum is another character that demonstrates the complexity of Adventure Time's characters Behind that unassuming name and aesthetic she begins off as a pure princess But she actually rules the Candy Kingdom with an iron fist She's a benevolent dictator who will always put her people first no matter what even if that includes doing morally ambiguous things She spies on her people. She's committed genocide and rattle balls She does it all for the goodness of her kingdom and her methods have been proven to ultimately benefit the candy people But again, they are questionable Over time she loses a bit of that ruthlessness that she once carried and she begins to learn of her wrongdoings and does try to change And when she loses her kingdom she grows even more She shows sympathy to ice-king and environments She finally breaks down and explores the fact that she drowns herself in responsibility So much so that she pushes people away Princess bubblegum says that responsibility demands sacrifice and she sacrificed everything her relationships even her emotions to her duty So many people sacrifice their well-being for their responsibility and Adventure Time presents the ramifications of that She's so tired and she's lost out on a lot of good things and good people because of it But it's never too late to change Bonnebel is someone who is learning to open up to others and to ask for help and Environments we see how important that is even after 800 years and we see how important Marceline is to her the only person who'd be able to get the scientists to open up in such a vulnerable way Speaking of Marceline everyone's favorite emotional vampire when it comes down to those that she loves She's incredibly loving and defensive and when considering everything in everyone that she's lost it does make sense Marceline has a hard time believing in people and believing that they will change as someone who's been living for over a thousand years People have failed her time and time again, and they will continue to forever Because of that she shells up or deflects when it comes to her emotions With the growth of Finn came the development of who and all sorts of people it came with all sorts of ideas Adventure Time forced its audience to question the world and morality The creepy ice king who willingly gave up his sanity to ensure Marceline survival the lich evil incarnate Who's been turned into sweet pea finn killing fern from lemon grab all the way down to Martin and Betty all of these characters exist in the gray areas of morality and Adventure Time navigates this gray area constantly For its core five specifically Adventure Time doesn't deben eyes them for making bad decisions It forces them to sit with these decisions and either accept them and accept their nature or to change I think it matches up quite well with Adventure Time's philosophy of change and growth and evolution Something that it preaches something that I think can be encapsulated by Marceline's song and stakes Everything stays I've always read into it that especially for the main cast physically. They've all stayed the same for the most part But as people they've changed so much Marceline's immortality has led her to a narrow view of people and of herself But bubblegum Simon Finn and Jake they've all taught her that change while often inevitable Can be a choice too as she chooses to mature and to grow from these experiences We all have a duty to those around us not only to change and evolve But we have to accept the change that happens to those around us as well We cannot beat prisoners to a certain image that we have of someone or of something We can only accept and move forward with their newest form that they present to us Because people are forever changing and as people change ever so slightly daily and nightly we do too I think Finn is the clearest example of that His change was gradual and one that took ten seasons to become into the hero. He was meant to be It took Marceline a thousand years to mature and to alter her view on the world and people as Jake says It's our natural state as people to grow Growth happens not only for these characters individually, but also in their relationships and Adventure Time appreciates all types of relationships What I really enjoy is that they value romantic relationships familiar ones and platonic ones all with the same respect that they deserve Whether it's Simon and Marceline, Marceline and PB or Jake and BMO this series spends time nurturing these relationships and it shows them evolve Relationships are delicate, but even in the face of conflict. They can still survive a Marceline and Princess bubblegum are the perfect examples of that Sometimes it takes two people to grow on their own to bring them back together And they deserve to be fought for and are important and friendships are as well I Always think about Breezy when Finn is urged by PB in the song to let love be his guide Bonnie's friendship her presence in his life is important And he will always be her hero an idea that comes up in hero heart and hall of egress and more These two as well as Finn and Jake most prominently Represent that platonic love is to be celebrated as well if Finn and Jake support each other through everything And I think they are a perfect emblem for a healthy friendship to people who not only help each other grow But they have a lot of fun doing it to reiterate for the final time Adventure Time to me is a series about acceptance and growth about the human experience and From Finn's perspective, it's learning how to do these things and how to properly love those that he cares about Even though the majority of these characters are not human the show exudes a very unique Humaneness about it. It touches on creation, existence, philosophy, love, loss, even sex The fact that all of these characters are so flawed and have done bad things But still grow and change and can forgive themselves and each other and Are accepting of each other's changes is admirable and it's human When I think of Marceline and Ice King again, I feel that she's presented with this shell of a man Who's volatile and who has some terrible faults, but she consistently shows up for him These are not ideas that you'd expect from a kid's show But if you've been watching Adventure Time from the goofy adventures and to this now fully developed land of ooh It's not much of a surprise anymore. It's expected. I Always come back to the comet when Finn chooses his current existence and his reality I also think it's a reflection of the overwhelming love that he's experienced Despite everything he's been through at that point and for the rest of the series He sees love in action in all of its forms the unconditional love and friendship that Jake shows him The patience given towards Ice King, Bimo and Neptune's love of life He learns that despite our tiny existence Because of all these people that he's learned to love Life has meaning Before sacrificing themselves to save their Martian super society in response to Finn asking What does one do after birth? Glob says that it's not enough to have created something amazing, right and them sacrificing themselves illustrates that Protecting these creations despite the inevitability that things will end and allowing them to flourish are just as important These bonds are our creations. They are worth fighting for and protecting Marceline PB Simon Finn and Jake This core of Adventure Time have had their fair shares of pain of trauma Loneliness abandonment heartbreak. They've all been through so much. Hell some of them have even seen the world burn They've seen apocalypse But despite everything instead of choosing to give up on the world and on each other They choose to believe in one another and continue to love they continue to grow and to change And I think that's why I came to love and appreciate Adventure Time even if I am 12 years late


have no responsibility to have a sewer line that flows downhill? Because we, you know, there is potentially flaws from here to wherever this pipe goes. Is that really the contractor who happens to have to connect to its problem when it is underground, unknown, installed incorrectly in the only available evidence would have to indicate that it would have to go in a certain direction to flow? I thought we heard from Chris that it was working. I think you heard from Chris that it that it's broken pipe, that it's working and that there are worse places. But when you heard from Adam that when they open this up, as I understand it, there's affluent pooling around these pipes and the invert part of the reason maybe that the pipes are crap, part of the reason it sounds like, and again, Adam, correct me if I'm wrong, because I wasn't there when this happened, but I've been trying struggling to understand this and look at the evidence that that part of the reason that's pooling is because those pipes are not installed in a way that it flows downhill. There's like a bump in it. So it's sort of a compound problem is that you have like this cracking and the elevation. Was that right, Adam? Am I misspeaking? Yeah, I agree with that. Yep. Yeah, it doesn't have proper pitch. So it's building up in certain areas. Sounds to me like this is a problem that if it wasn't discovered in this instance that we would have had problems with this at some date in the not too distant future. And given the age of this line to begin with, it's probably going to need to be replaced or would have need to be replaced in the foreseeable future. And once it does get replaced, it's going to be good for another 100 plus years. It sounds like a good faith effort was made to do the right thing. And right now, if I'm not mistaken from the notes that I read earlier that we're looking at sharing the cost of replacing this line with our ACDC and that the cost of doing so is actually somewhat mitigated by the fact that all this equipment is already on site. So I think it seems pretty reasonable for us to share in the cost of replacing much of this line. So Larry, let's play that out. I'm a private business and I go in and I have the same situation. Are you going to do it for me too? Possibly. I mean, if somebody comes in and they send, I mean, I've had contractors do work for me where they, you know, they may give me an estimate based upon their best guess of what they think is going on. And then they come back later and they say, well, this other thing happened that, or we discovered this other thing that we could not possibly have known about and, and they want more money to do it. And I've worked with them on that. Yeah, that's definitely happened to me in a private situation. That's not what's happening there, right? I think that is what's happening. I don't think this is knowable in advance. I don't see how it could have been knowable in advance. I mean, how could it have been knowable? I suppose they could have run cameras up the lines and stuff like that. But if, but there's, my guess is that there's sort of standard practice about how these things are done and what you do to determine pitch and stuff. And if you're doing all best practice, you, you should be like that should be good enough for us. Yeah, I believe this is a line that's probably been installed for over a hundred years. That's just an old age line that really is in need of repair. And while it hasn't failed yet, it's definitely on the verge of failure. This is very, Chris, we're still here. There's the potential for failure. It's more nuanced than that based on our conversation, but I don't, I'm not an expert in these so I'll be out over my skis.  And if you think your system is a hundred years old and you're really not sure what the condition and whatnot is, you do a little more than locate two points and draw a straight line between them. So we run into this all the time. And that's for the engineer. I'm not the engineer. But what I'm saying is this goes back on to your firm that did your design. You know, if you knew the system was as old as it was and in the condition it was in, more than locating two dots and drawing a line is what they should have done when they did these plans. How would they know the condition it was in? They said they went back and looked at the paperwork of when it was of the as built was which showed how old it was. Yeah, but that doesn't mean condition because there is old lines that are still in good condition. This is just to be clear in case there's any question. This wasn't our system. This is a municipal system. This is a part of the municipal system that we weren't supposed to have to touch. We were just supposed to connect to something that was flowing and this, you know, like a standard elevation change that a municipal system should have to live up to. This is not our system. This is something we're tapping into a municipal system because we had to move one line. I understand what you're saying, Treaty, that sure, if this were our system, we owned it and we just ran into this situation and it was our system, we have to fix it. But this is a municipal system. There's a bunch of other places that are using this line and we just happen to have to move one line from one connection to another. The rest of this is not ours and it's affecting more and if it is flowing backwards, which it appears to be from what Adam discovered in in the excavation, then all of those other people's effluent are now saturating our property. So it's just not a good situation regardless of who owns it. We happen to be in a situation where we think it would be in the best interest of everyone to try to fix it. And I don't think one affordable housing project that use happens to use the line is necessarily responsible for the municipal use of that area. I'm not sure what the options are on the town side. I just know that we want to be part of the solution. We just I'm not sure it's fair for us to be the only part of the solution. So we don't have an actual proposal on the table. Is that correct? Well, we have an estimate. Those are the estimates from Neller and Breen and Estee Ireland that you attached. Right. The materials are incorporated into the estimate. So the photograph, Julie, that accompanied the email that you sent showing a contractor standing in an excavated site. Is that on public property or on Randolph House property? That's Adam, by the way. And that's on Randolph House property. And there is probably a, well, I shouldn't say this because it's so old, but typically there would be a sewer line easement to the town to enable them to do improvements or maintenance and repair over our property. But this site in the photograph is not where you would be. Is that where you would be hooking into the town? We're just not clear what we're looking at in this particular photograph. Are you asking if that's where the structure is located? Is that where this three-foot bump that we keep talking about, where is that in relation to what's in this photograph? That's roughly halfway in between the two existing structures. Okay. A little bit south towards Prince Street. Right. Well. Does anybody have a proposal? Are we talking a 50-50 split? Do you want to hear it, Pat? Yeah, let's nail down some numbers here. So a 50-50 split would be, I think, okay with, I mean, yes, I think a 50-50 split would be okay with us. I guess for us the question of timing was equally important that how quick, because we want to start this now. So getting resolution quickly is important. And if the town would split it, that would be, we would pay the rest, because it's also benefiting our flows. It's just not only benefiting our flows. You referenced earlier that this also entails several other properties flows. Are those immediate properties immediately adjacent to or in the village center? Do you have an idea of who the other? They're coming from Main Street, as I understand it, one near the library. And is it the other one on the other side, Adam? I just don't know who's, how many buildings are connected to, you know, it could be more than one building. The line that comes from the north, I believe, serves the library. And I can't say what else up there. The one from the south is the one Chris is describing has two-thirds of the flow of the city coming through there. So there's a lot of flow coming through those two points. So in that sense, I mean, Trini, to your concerns, I mean, the town does have a stake in the game here. I mean, it's not just RACDC and Randolph House. It's, you know, as we've heard, it's the library that's utilizing this as well, a public facility. It's not an exorbitant amount of money. I mean, I know we want to be responsible stewards of public funds, but we're talking 50-50 split of $20,000 here. And for an important housing resource for the community, immensely important housing resource for our elderly population. So it feels to me like it justifies the town taking some accountability for it. How long a section did you say this was? At 130 feet. Okay. Yes. Is that a motion, Tom? Yeah. Before I make a motion, let me ask, and I think I know the answer because neither Pat nor I have any skin in the game here financially. But is there anything, both Pat and I are members of the board of RACDC. Does that pose any conflict of interest in terms of our voting on this? I don't think so, Tom. Okay. I just want to, you know. No, that's great. And I think it's important that you put it out there that you do have that relationship. I think it's really great that we should have that kind of transparency. But normally a conflict of interest in this kind of case would be only if you were to have some sort of direct financial gain. Right. Like if I worked for Estee Ireland or Neller and Breen, for example. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to make a motion that the town of Randolph split the cost of this repair work for the RACDC project based on the estimates from Neller and Breen and Estee Ireland that we split the cost. And the only other concern I would have, and maybe we can deal with this, if I get a second and we go into discussion is do we have contingency funds available in our wastewater accounts to cover this? Yeah. We do have money available on the sewer improvement fund that would cover this amount without disrupting anything else. And if you'd be amenable to adding to the motion that you're essentially authorizing a sole source procurement, one of the other things is when you get into our purchasing policy and some dollar amounts, it would just provide clarity that because of the, it's more than $10,000. We weren't sure if it was going to land over the 25. You get to a certain dollar amount. There's an investigation I have to do about whether or not it's necessary, the timeliness element, etc. and so forth. So if you can just include in there that you're essentially authorizing this sole source procurement with Neller and Breen that provides an extra level. I will amend my motion to say that we are also authorizing sole source procurement given the time factor and the essence of doing this in a timely manner. And I might add that I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to include a dollar amount that it will not exceed? Not to exceed, let me add these, not to exceed $20,000 contribution from the town of Randall. That should just about be 50%, might be a little bit shy, but I think that's fair. Cap. I'll second that. For discussion, Trevor, to meet the procurement requirement, you have to document the reason why. And I think your reasoning on this should be based on using contractors that are currently on the site and that the work that they're doing was bid by RACDC according to whatever the procurement requirements were for their funding source. So it shows there was a competitive process to get the contractors on site, but that the, you know, to bring in a separate contractor and all that has an impact. And we can provide you with those if you need them, Trevor. Your procurement document. Thank you, Julie. Any further discussion? Yeah. I have a motion. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Post abstain. I'm curious. Next up, we have a manager's report. Sorry, did that, did that pass? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear. Yeah, it just passed. It did. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. We'll be in touch. Into the manager's report. Town reports are available. They came in today. We've got spiral bound copies for you. I hope we figure out to get to you. And then we're just waiting on the PDF to be able to put those online, but that should be here in the next day or so. We're available digitally. I made aware of some plowing issues at the Pleasant Youth Cemetery. We contacted Orange County Sheriff signing that we've undertaken. Harold needs to plow in there. It's usually just said to access the vault. Somebody took it upon themselves to plow in a more wide ranging way. And so we'll have some grounds repair as a result of that activity, but we're trying to keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn't happen again, or we can figure out who did it. It's snow removal and maintenance activities from last Thursday, Friday storm, more or less concluded today when you think about everything through snow removal and the final cleanup. And they are going around and pushing back and shelving and different banks create a little more space. I got the Maple Street traffic analysis and cost estimates just the other day. So we'll loop those in for certainly your next meeting. I haven't had a chance to read through either one of them yet and to make sure that the cost proposal is to see exactly what they include. It does look like at a minimum for the road and sidewalk related stuff. I don't think the water waste water and I have to check the storm water piece that's supposed to be in there. We're talking about a $500 or $600,000 component. But that project component being somewhere in that range, depending on the one way or two way designs, it's actually the two way design was the cost effective option of the two, but that was a very quick cursory look. We'll get that out to everybody. Could you, after you've looked at it, could you get that out and swim out at any time? Yeah, we can send that, send that along sooner than later. We've given off a lot, a couple days before just like to have what we can. Yeah, we continue to work on process improvement with the board packets. Ideally, we want to get you everything on Fridays. This one, there was enough leak emerging stuff tied with a few other things that we haven't hit the marker for better. We'll keep trying to push it back to see it more time with the stuff. Even if we don't get the full packet, if we get some sort of a reminder of the board or something like that. Yeah, those are all that I had. You have just a reminder, we've got the informational meeting related to the Australian ballot pieces on Monday the 21st. It's five or five 30 p.m. We'll do that hybrid style, much like we are now. Check really quickly in my handy town report. Five p.m. Wow. The energy audit such a mention here. Yep. Do we do the bidding? Yeah, we'll probably coordinate the bidding. Stephen's tip is along toward the end of last week. I've got to go through them, mark them up. We've got some background information to add related to each of the buildings under consideration. So some of them just as simple as age, any renovation timelines, a few different pieces like that that we'll have to block out. But he's done nearly all of the heavy lifting in terms of setting up the different components. And that was covered under funding that was available with the two rivers. So that was a nice moment of synthesis between what they had available and what we were ready to do. And then the open meeting, a lot of training and get a chance earlier to talk about it while we're looking sometime late March to early April. The LCT is just looking at their post town meeting calendar and onboarding for a new attorney. It sounded like an additional one, not a replacement. So we'll have four. We should be able to set that up. We'll know next week, Gabby, who runs the municipal assistance center said that next week we'll have a date in time or at least some options for that. We'll probably do that hybrid as well. So we are moving forward there in the energy audits. They may help with whatever projects are identified through some of the rebate and other programs. We'll have to come back and see what's in there. And there is some money in the capital plan. Those pieces will be available and there might be other sources of funding out there that we could tap into for both implementation and because the RFP was, we were able to use those other resources, there aren't going to be any costs really until, I mean, other than the publishing or distribution of the RFP, those types of real small soft costs, but otherwise we're pretty well set. I think in the past, Christmas in a modern state for part of the audits. Oh yeah, sorry, I was thinking the RFP, yes, we'll see some funds for the audit. Trevor, did you say we're having, I missed this slightly. We're going to have a meeting, a pre-town meeting meeting on Monday the 21st at five? Yep, there's a public information meeting where we'll go through essentially the chance to kind of cover all the things that are on the ballot for Australian ballot. So we'll do a little, you know, everything from a small budget presentation on through to, you know, the questions at the end related to Randolph Center fire exemption. But people have a chance to at least discuss, obviously can't amend or take any action, but it provides an opportunity to learn more and to ask questions and to have that conversation. That's required as part of the temporary authority to make the switch. I would give that information. I think your idea of using this in turn, about that, President Warcraft. Yeah, he's going to be great. I think Will Weiss came in Tuesday and was he in? Yeah. And he's president of the Ski and Snowboard Club. So Harry, you need some research related to labor for the right price. We've got a guy for you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This kid's a he's good. He's a go getter, philosophy major. So he said, he's like, basically, I'm thinking whether or not to go to law school because there isn't much with that on its own that you can go do. But it's a common background for law school, I guess. So yeah, it seems like we got hooked up with a good one. So. And he'll be with us through. They've gotten to the end of the semester early May. He's a senior. We're going to try to structure his project so that he's through a little bit earlier than that so that those final weeks can be thoroughly enjoyed in whatever form is appropriate. I do have one more question. Well, what did you eventually find out on the trees cemetery? Oh, yeah, it sounds like that was a subcontractor that maybe got a little rowdy and a little ahead, because even Kevin from Green Mountain Power wasn't sure exactly what happened. I've heard any follow up on there about that. They did say it. I haven't had a chance to double check with Harold, but they were going to go out. They did leave some mess behind as well. That don't need to clean up. And the hope is to get it now, because if we try to get it when everything softens up to separate set of fouls. So coordinating them, making sure that the cleanups don't appropriately get to the tree. It sounds like somebody got a little autonomous rowdy into a little quicker than they were maybe supposed to. All right. So do we need to go into executive session, Trevor? All right. Just got a couple of quick ones. I don't think it'll take long, but I can give you an update on the collective bargaining agreement. There was some movement there, and then just give you a quick updates on a couple of personnel things just so you know what's happening. All second. Motion in a second. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. We will be back in about five minutes in executive session.