Margie Hamlin Of Leaf Logistics On What We Must Do To Create Nationally Secure And Resilient Supply Chains

An Interview With David Leichner

Ensuring redundancies is a critical step organizations must take to instill resilience. A few years ago, many of us experienced difficulty finding toilet paper during the pandemic, and baby formula continues to be a challenge for parents to find. We’re seeing that more organizations are looking at ways to build supply chain redundancies to remove single points of failure.

The cascading logistical problems caused by the pandemic and the war in Eastern Europe, have made securing a reliable supply chain a national imperative. In addition, severe cyberattacks like the highly publicized Colonial pipeline attack, have brought supply chain cybersecurity into the limelight. So what must manufacturers and policymakers do to ensure that we have secure and resilient supply chains? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights from their experiences about how we can address these challenges. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Margie Hamlin, Lead of Strategic Operations & Account Management at Leaf Logistics.

Margie oversees Operations and Account Management at Leaf Logistics. At Leaf, she has helped build relationships with enterprise customers, built out operations, customer success and account management teams amongst many other key initiatives. Prior to Leaf, Margie worked in management consulting. She was a key member of Kearney’s Analytics practice for over seven years, where she led large consulting teams to solve operational problems and reduce supply chain costs across industries such as CPG, Retail, Finance, Entertainment and Chemicals. Margie holds a B.S.E. in Operations Research and Information Engineering from Cornell University.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

I grew up in the suburbs of Boston. I went to an all-girls school, which is where my love for engineering and the sciences developed. In the summers, I spent weeks living in a tent at camp climbing the white mountains and swimming in Lake Morey. I have a tight knit family that spent Friday nights having game night and time off traveling around the world. I’ve always been passionate about mentorship and working hard. I went to Cornell and helped start the school’s first chapter of Engineers without Borders.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I started out in consulting, and as a consultant, you work on a wide range of projects. There were two notable projects. The first was sourcing water bottles in China for a large water bottle manufacturer. We toured multiple factories and negotiated on pricing, materials and quality. I will never look at water bottles the same way, but learned a lot about what goes into making high quality products. The other project was working for a large grocery store and setting the strategy on how to buy electricity for all of their stores. Helping them calculate insurance premiums in case of spikes of electricity but also buying in the spot market to reduce costs, it’s a conversation that is very similar to the conversations I have with my customers today about forward buying transportation versus riding the volatile market.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Work Ethic — I learned very early on that it was important to be flexible in what I work on and develop a broad set of skills. Especially in a start-up it is often all hands on deck and no task is beneath anyone as we build a company. Having a strong work ethic and being open to learning is crucial. For example, we went to a conference and had to build the booth ourselves while most other companies hired teams to do the set-up and take down. At Leaf, everyone at the company from our CEO, myself and marketing were responsible for set-up.

Decisiveness — As a leader it’s important to make decisions and sometimes it might be the incorrect decision, however not making the decision and delaying driving outcomes is worse. An example was when I was working for a retailer in my consulting days, I was asked which distribution center to close because the company was looking for cost savings. My team’s analysis pointed to a potential answer, but it wasn’t super clear. With a nearing deadline, I reran the numbers and came to the same unclear answer, and I made the tough call to close that facility. Being a leader often comes down to recognizing that you might not have all the data, and you have to make the best possible decision with the information at hand, and commit to that decision.

Ask for help — Growing into new roles means you are stretching yourself and sometimes it can feel lonely. It’s important to ask for help as needed in order to drive to the best outcome. When I first became a people manager years ago, I leaned on my mentors for guidance, and I pay this forward today by sharing what I’ve learned with the individuals who I’ve come to mentor.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

At Leaf, we’re focused on transforming the truckload freight industry using AI and machine learning to coordinate and schedule at scale. Today, 30% of the trucks driving on the road are empty due to a lack of coordination, so we are currently working on the first ever multi-shipper dedicated fleets, called Flex Fleets. These fleets allow us to improve truck utilization by coordinating shipments across multiple shippers, eliminating empty miles to save shippers money, allow truck drivers to earn more, and remove unnecessary carbon emissions associated with empty trucks. This improves upon the existing model for dedicated fleets that have a one-to-one relationship between a transportation provider and shipper, leaving the truck empty on its return trip. We use Leaf’s AI to identify patterns in shipper data to coordinate round trips between multiple shippers and fill those empty miles. I’m excited about this offering because it benefits all parties: our shipper customers save money, our transportation providers are able to generate more revenue, and we’re helping the planet by removing unnecessary empty trucks running on our roads.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. In order to ensure that we are all on the same page let’s begin with some simple definitions. What does the term “supply chain” encompass?

This is something we talk about a lot at Leaf. The supply chain includes everything from manufacturing to the movement of goods and how they get into consumers’ hands. At Leaf, we’re focused on one “link” in the supply chain — transportation — but it’s a critical link. As we all saw during the pandemic a few years ago, supply chains are vulnerable when one link in the chain breaks down. We’re committed to making sure that doesn’t happen again.

Can you help articulate what the weaknesses are in our current supply chain systems?

There are three main weaknesses in our supply chain: it is composed of silos, the supply chain is not adaptable to changes, and there is a lack of technology.

Silos exist across the supply chain. We see this with silos in regards to how a shipper operates, the fragmentation of trucking capacity options, and many different systems that don’t talk with each other. This creates inefficiencies and competing priorities resulting in a lack of trust, transparency and coordination.

Supply chains are not adaptable, which is an issue when networks, markets, or available resources change. If supply chains could react to new constraints or changes, then more coordination and adaptability could occur allowing for supply chain constraints to be alleviated or avoided faster.

There is an overall lack of technology in the industry. While there are some technologies to address different pieces of the supply chain, more often than not a lot of the supply chain is manual. This makes it difficult to identify trends or patterns, and it becomes challenging to coordinate across the industry.

Can you help define what a nationally secure and resilient supply chain would look like?

The concept of supply chain resiliency is something we’re hearing more and more. We’re seeing more manufacturers explore near-shoring as an option to introduce additional supply chain resiliency, and reduce the impact of future shocks to the supply chain. In transportation, shippers are looking to solutions that can lock in reliable trucking capacity so that they gain more certainty around future costs and service. This helps our entire national supply chain when shippers are confident that goods will get to end consumers in a timely manner, and they’ve locked in those transportation costs, so consumers don’t see any additional costs passed along when supply chain friction occurs.

My particular expertise is in cybersecurity so I’m particularly passionate about this topic. Can you share some examples of recent and notable cyber attacks against our supply chain? Why do you think these attacks were so significant?

Famously, Colonial Pipeline faced a cyber attack in 2021 that forced the provider to shut down its pipeline while it worked to recover from the ransomware attack. This affected many communities across the United States, leaving many without access to gas for their cars. While the issue was eventually fixed, it highlighted how a cyber attack can bring an entire supply chain to its feet.

What would you recommend for the government or for tech leaders to do to improve supply chain cybersecurity?

While I am not an expert in cybersecurity, data security is something we take seriously at Leaf, and it’s why we voluntarily pursued SOC2 compliance to ensure the security of our customer data. At Leaf, we deal with transportation data, but the supply chain as a whole handles data that is sensitive to each organization. With this in mind, my recommendation is for supply chain leaders to partner with organizations like Leaf that have met strict compliance requirements in order to best handle your sensitive supply chain data and reduce your risk of cyber attacks.

Ok, thank you. Here is the main question of our interview. What are the “5 Things We Must Do To Create Nationally Secure And Resilient Supply Chains” and why?

1. One of our greatest threats is climate change. We face this nationally, but also globally. Supply chain professionals need to examine each part of their supply chain to identify opportunities to reduce their environmental impact. This ranges from the materials used to manufacture products, to how they are transported, and everything in between. While some areas may require longer term investment, such as replacing all packaging with recycled materials, transportation is one area that can have an immediate impact on reducing carbon emissions and the threat of climate change.
2. Ensuring redundancies is a critical step organizations must take to instill resilience. A few years ago, many of us experienced difficulty finding toilet paper during the pandemic, and baby formula continues to be a challenge for parents to find. We’re seeing that more organizations are looking at ways to build supply chain redundancies to remove single points of failure.
3. Introducing technology and modernizing the national supply chain is something that must happen. Technology has arrived at many parts of the supply chain, but most systems don’t talk to one another — even within an organization’s own supply chain. This leads to silos and bad data that impact the quality of decision making. As the supply chain becomes more technologically enabled, we’re going to see better data to anticipate and proactively manage supply chain shocks, so that the end consumer experiences no change.
4. In addition to siloed communications within a single manufacturer’s own supply chain, it’s tremendously difficult for multiple organizations to communicate with each other. This leads us to another step that organizations must take: coordinate with each other and across the industry. This unlocks new opportunities to bring down costs and improve overall customer service.
5. Building on all the above items, we’re seeing more manufacturers coordinate with their suppliers or customers to establish manufacturing facilities near one another to reduce the time between “links” in the supply chain. For example, two of our customers are a bottle manufacturer and a beer manufacturer. These two have co-located their facilities to reduce the time spent in transit and increase resilience in their supply chain. This not only reduces a point of supply chain weakness, it also encourages better communication between facilities to anticipate disruptions on either side.

Are there other ideas or considerations that should encourage us to reimagine our supply chain?

Look not just to modernize old ways of doing business by implementing new technology to replace paper and phone calls. Instead, look to new technologies that are taking an entirely new approach to supply chain management. These are the firms that will help you transform your supply chain and introduce resiliency and cost savings in a meaningful way.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

A big reason why I joined Leaf early on was because our work is so closely tied to reducing the environmental impact of the transportation industry. 30% of the trucks driving on our roads today are driving empty return trips, spewing unnecessary carbon emissions into our world. We’re using advanced machine learning to coordinate across shippers to fill those empty miles and eliminate unnecessary carbon emissions. Yes, corporations should look at all levers like replacing their packaging with recycled goods to reduce their environmental impact, but they should not overlook opportunities to use technology in a new way to drive an immediate impact like we’re able to do at Leaf.

If I could inspire one movement, it would be to make global corporations examine each part of their business to see where they can implement new technologies to reduce their environmental impact today, while continuing to run after those longer term and more ambitious initiatives.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can keep up with the latest from Leaf Logistics at: https://leaflogistics.com/blog, and you can find me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/margueritehamlin. Let’s connect!

This was very inspiring and informative. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this interview!

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.