The podcast episode titled “Unlocking Operational Efficiency In Your Supply Chain and Logistics Operations With Karthik Sundareshan” delves into the fascinating journey of Karthik Sundareshan, who transitioned from being a software engineer to becoming a supply chain transformer. The episode explores the challenges Karthik faced, the strategies he employed, and the remarkable results he achieved in optimizing supply chain and logistics operations through innovation and technology.
Episode Highlights:
Karthik’s Transition: The episode begins by discussing how Karthik made the leap from software engineering to supply chain management, driven by the desire to tackle complex challenges and create value.
The Supply Chain Conundrum: Common challenges in supply chain management are explored, emphasizing the importance of addressing them for operational excellence.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Karthik’s use of data to bring transparency and insight into supply chain operations is highlighted.
Process Optimization: Karthik’s approach to process mapping, automation, and collaboration is discussed, which led to significant cost savings and improved efficiency.
Technology Integration: The episode touches upon Karthik’s exploration of blockchain technology’s potential to provide transparency and transform supply chain operations.
Measurable Results: Tangible outcomes of Karthik’s efforts, including cost reduction, improved customer service, and enhanced supply chain resilience, are shared.
Karthik’s Legacy: The broader implications of Karthik’s journey for supply chain management and the lessons others can learn from his innovative approach are discussed.
The episode concludes by inviting the audience to join the Engineering Manager community on LinkedIn and explore opportunities with OpenTeams to enhance their knowledge and team.
Transcript Summary:
The transcript of the podcast features an interview with Karthik Sundareshan, who discusses his journey from teaching and software engineering to supply chain management. Karthik highlights his transition and early career, including his work at companies like Infosys and Target. He shares insights into supply chain challenges, advice for newcomers, and details of a successful project at Walmart, where he saved $3 million by optimizing reverse logistics. Karthik also touches on the potential use of blockchain technology in supply chains and offers guidance on implementing new technologies. He concludes by expressing his willingness to mentor and share knowledge with the engineering manager community. The host, Steven Tedjamulia, commends Karthik’s pioneering work and encourages listeners to subscribe to the Engineering Manager podcast for more inspiring stories.
Join The Engineering Manager Community: Are you looking to stay ahead in the dynamic world of engineering management and connect with like-minded professionals? Join the Engineering Manager community on LinkedIn here. Our community is a hub for the latest best practices, insightful articles, and engaging discussions tailored for engineering managers. It’s an ideal platform to expand your network, share experiences, and learn from industry leaders like Karthik Sundareshan.
How OpenTeams Can Help: If you’re seeking to hire expert engineering managers akin to Karthik Sundareshan, visit OpenTeams.com. Here, you’ll find a diverse pool of talented professionals ready to bring their expertise to your organization. Join us today to enhance your knowledge and elevate your team to new heights!
References
Transcript
Steven Tedjamulia (00:00.898) Hello everyone and welcome to the Engineering Manager podcast. I’m your host, Stephen Tijamulia. Today we’re thrilled to have with us Karthik Sudharshan, a remarkable figure whose transition from software engineering to becoming a pioneer in supply chain management. Karthik, welcome to the show.
Karthik (00:22.35) Thanks Stephen, it’s great to be here.
Karthik (00:28.046) Thank you.
Steven Tedjamulia (00:30.434) Great to have you as well. So Karthik, to get started, would like to know a little bit about your journey. What inspired you to move from software engineering to supply chain management?
Karthik (00:46.338) Yeah, that’s a very good question, Steve. So enormous challenges involved in tackling the huge complexities and the huge opportunity provided to solve problems while creating value was a fascinating enterprise. So this drove me to actually jump into supply chain management.
Steven Tedjamulia (01:09.042) And you know, before jumping into supply chain management, give me a little bit of background. So you started, where’d you go to school? Where did you start? How, a little bit your career there.
Karthik (01:18.241) Yeah. Sure, Steve. Yeah. So I did my bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from National Institute of Engineering in India, Mysore, my hometown. And then I started my career as a teacher. I used to teach math and logic and reasoning for students who wanted to get into MBA programs like IAMs and other schools, B-schools. And then as a teacher I transitioned into software engineering. That was my transition.
Steven Tedjamulia (01:59.469) Where’d you start? What was your first job in software engineering? Karthik (02:04.386) My first job as a software engineer was in Infosys Technologies. It’s a great company and I cracked the interview and it was a great feeling. It was my first job. It is always going to be a great idea to me. And there my journey of software engineering started. I learned a lot of programming, how to program, how to… code using data structures and algorithms and really helped me jumpstart my career. I’m really grateful for that.
Steven Tedjamulia (02:42.742) And when did you get involved in supply chain management? At what point did you, who was the first person that gave you a project to work on supply chain management?
Karthik (02:56.574) Yes, I still remember. It was while I was working in my first job in process that gave me a break. That’s where I started working on supply chain management. I still remember my managers were really very gracious to give me an opportunity believing in me. so that I can solve problems. So that is where my journey of sub-agency started around 15 years ago.
Steven Tedjamulia (03:37.534) And so if you were to give us a little feel for problems from your first encounter with supply chain management to Walmart, because that to me was you worked for, you know, one of the best ones in the world, but what kind of problems did you start out solving? All right, and then how did that lead up to what you were doing for Walmart?
Karthik (03:46.24) Yeah.
Karthik (03:53.239) Yeah.
Karthik (03:56.73) Yes, definitely, Steve. So initially when I was working on learning the complex web of supply chain and order management, they were
Karthik (04:10.966) specific business problems that need to be addressed. For example, downgrading a shipping method to save shipping costs from let’s say next day air to ground when the number of days were equal for both, but the costs were high for next day air compared to ground. So this actually made me curious while I was learning like. There is so much innovation that is possible. There is so much value to create. So this was the starting point when I was hands-on working on solving order management problems. That was my gateway to supply chain management.
Steven Tedjamulia (05:03.002) And then how did you evolve from there? What was the next project that led you to go work with Walmart?
Karthik (05:11.494) So next I worked for a short period of time for
Karthik (05:22.158) Target as well and there I was part of the auto management team as well and during those times when I was there Target.com was going live and it was a great opportunity. Yes, so I witnessed T.com go live and it was huge and I was grateful for the opportunity to learn how.
Steven Tedjamulia (05:36.782) That’s a big deal.
Karthik (05:51.322) Dot-com site is launched how the order management for end-to-end Was being implemented. So that was my second stint in supply chain management and retail and Then finally it gave me an opportunity to work for Walmart one of the biggest and one of the greatest retailer and It was an amazing experience. So every step I got, I was grateful for the gracious opportunities I got to learn from people and contribute at the same time by creating value.
Steven Tedjamulia (06:35.278) Now, to do a successful supply chain management project, it’s not just an engineer alone, but you have a team of people that are involved in operations. What makes a successful team to pull off, supply chain management projects that are efficient, cost saving or revenue producing?
Karthik (07:00.53) Yeah, that’s a very good question, Steve. So I believe having an eternal mindset of a student and engaging all the key stakeholders, bringing them on the same page, unifying them, unifying the ideas, unifying the concerns, bringing everybody onto the same table, and having open communication channels. And… That’s how we build trust in the team and providing a safe environment for work, learning and innovation and making the team members feel like they are the most important stakeholders for this journey of value creation.
Karthik (07:53.803) This is how I feel that a team, yeah, I have experienced.
Steven Tedjamulia (08:01.134) That’s great. That’s good. That’s good insight. Now, I’m sure you bumped into your, and you’re doing your path to some problems or issues. What are some of the challenges you think that people will face as they’re engaging from, you know, as they’re entering into the supply chain industry and optimizing that as a developer? What are some of the challenges you think you’ll face and what are some solutions that you or feedback you would provide? or advice you’d provide to them. So challenges and advice.
Karthik (08:33.738) Yeah, so the main challenge is our own presuppositions and presumptions, like trying to bridge engineering and supply chain, two different domains, and challenging day in and day out, and our own presuppositions and presumptions, and having an eternal mindset of student, and communicating,
Karthik (09:04.338) and unifying all the departments of the supply chain and for all the starters studying the great life and achievements and struggles of great human beings like Sam Walton who started Walmart. What can we understand? How did they build from scratch? What did they do? What were their struggles? And then start small by solving a small problem. And then you can scale it up later. These are the generic advice. And always try to meditate on key concepts of supply chain management and trace back the first principles of supply chain management. What is the ground? Yeah.
Steven Tedjamulia (10:00.913) And what would those key principles be for those that are listening that are important for them to remember?
Karthik (10:09.586) So they can start very small, like the key principles will be like demand and supply. So it starts from understanding the customer. That’s a key principle. And then how do we define demand? How do we define supply? And how do we match this? And what are the trace back the key principles of forecasting? How do we plan? How do you define planning? So these are some of the general topics when you’re a starter that one can meditate or one can think through and spend some time before getting into solving really complex problems.
Steven Tedjamulia (10:57.334) Sounds good. Now we talked about the problems, challenges, advice. I’m sure you had some successes, many successes on helping save companies money and improvements. Would you mind sharing any of those with us today?
Karthik (11:15.074) Yeah, sure. Steve, so thank you for that question. So one of Walmart’s leadership teams, the great leadership teams’ initiative was to help gain from returns and reverse logistics process optimization. So I was grateful to be part of the team that implemented a new palette management via third party management called Genco. And the goal was to unify. the retailer’s dot com items to the retailer store items through unified pallet handling. So what this means is earlier, prior to this initiative, the items were handled in different pallets and the cost incurred was double. For example, store items were on one pallet and the dot com items was on separate pallet. So it was a great initiative to unify these two so that the time to refund and the entire return process was dig deeper and looked into and try to unify and optimize. So this initiative actually brought about $3 million in savings across the retailers, Walmart’s return centers, and thereby increasing the operational efficiency at return centers. So I was grateful to be part of this initiative, Steve.
Steven Tedjamulia (12:38.238) What kind of technologies did you use? What was involved to make this successful, right? From if you dissect it a little bit to, you know, yeah, give us a little bit more experience that you had to go through to make this happen.
Karthik (12:45.144) Yeah.
Karthik (12:53.77) Yeah, sure. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, technology is the key to solve problems. So the foundational layer of data was being stored in SQL and NoSQL databases. So this was a database technology. It was very important. And then Java was used as a technology because of its various purposiveness, multi-threading which really helped us to process millions of items in multiple threads when.com had to send items to the stores. And definitely web services, whether it is an order lookup that happens at the store or order return information that happens at the return center, definitely the machine-to-machine transaction. through web services. So this stack of technology, DEF, was really helpful. And we were able to solve as well as scale.
Steven Tedjamulia (14:06.222) Now, that’s great. I know when you’re managing the pallets and in the sector of supply chain, food and pharmaceutical traceability is crucial. Have you used blockchain technology to help enhance the transparency here?
Karthik (14:17.326) Right.
Karthik (14:25.854) That’s a very good question, Steve. So we did not use blockchain per se, intrinsically, but definitely I’ve been thinking on those lines because definitely there’s a transition that is going on. I mean, we are talking about AI, quantum computing, LLMs, and definitely the future looks like it’s decentralized management and blockchain. Definitely we thought about these things especially the chain of custody which is a very important factor that comes that comes into picture when fraud theft and Returns are involved so blockchain can actually reduce the cost involved in these three areas by maintaining immutable ledgers and transaction traceability to pinpoint the location of the goods or the missing goods and the general ledger part of the money as well the transaction along with the chain of custody and it can reduce costs. And I think Walmart is such a great company with its great leadership is best position to pioneer this transition. So definitely we talked about it, but never got an opportunity to implement it. Still I dream and meditate on blockchain solutions, especially for returns where I… got the opportunity to work exhaustively. Definitely, thank you.
Steven Tedjamulia (15:59.01) Okay, let’s talk about that a little bit because implementing new processes or technology can be really hard for a company to do. How do you manage that with your executives and teams to get them to align to do that, right? Because you have a lot of good ideas around blockchain, but any advice you have on what works to get new technologies implemented?
Karthik (16:08.302) Yeah.
Karthik (16:25.339) I think We need to first establish and define clear roles and responsibilities. And we need to evaluate the current tech stack and we need to understand what are the shortcomings, what are the trade-offs and what is going to be beneficial, what are the good things that the new technology is going to bring in. without jeopardizing the existing systems or without inducing a regression kind of a thing, without jeopardizing. So we need to get the buy-in from the key stakeholders and everybody has to have, all the stakeholders have to be on the same page trying to completely understand what are the benefits, what are the trade-offs, what is the transition. what is the value that we are creating.
Steven Tedjamulia (17:28.532) Yeah.
Karthik (17:30.434) So with that as a foundational layer, we can build on top of that after having a thorough understanding of the existing systems and what the future systems are going to bring and what specific problem it is going to solve and create value that the current systems are not doing. That would be the key.
Steven Tedjamulia (17:52.33) And that’s, no thanks, that’s a great way, right? Putting together and helping them manage upwards with information and identifying what resolutions you’ll get from the process and investment. Now, as we come to the end here, tell us a little bit where you are today, what are you doing, how can you help those in our engineering manager community?
Karthik (18:07.851) Absolutely.
Karthik (18:23.551) Currently, I’m working as a software engineer. I’m taking a small break. Karthik (18:34.47) I hope to help everybody to succeed, even helping customers to succeed as well as businesses to succeed. I would love to help others by sharing ideas, by transferring knowledge, by empowering people with knowledge so that they can think. Create and innovate.
Steven Tedjamulia (19:05.134) Karthik, that’s great. I, you know, for those in the engineering manager community, Karthik is available as a mentor on the Open Teams Network to provide services, help support. Your thoughts today were credible. You’re a truly pioneer in this space, you know, working for Target, Walmart, having been your whole career doing a lot of work on the supply chain, maximizing efficiencies, thinking in the future with blockchain and other technologies. and helping executives implement those. So pleasure having a show, Karthik.
Karthik (19:38.114) Thank you so much, Steve. I’m grateful for this opportunity. Thank you so much.
Steven Tedjamulia (19:44.774) Oh, you’re welcome. So thanks everyone for that. We’ll be tuning in to the engineer manager podcast. Join us next time to explore the journey of remarkable professions, professionals in this field and meeting others such as yourself that contribute. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcasts and more inspiring stories. Thanks for listening.
Karthik (20:08.75) Thank you.
