SDS PODCAST EPISODE 141 WITH ARTEM VLADIMIROV

Transcription

1 SDS PODCAST EPISODE 141 WITH ARTEM VLADIMIROV Show Notes: 1

2 This is episode number 141 with project leader at the Boston Consulting Group, Artem Vladimirov. Welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast. My name is Kirill Eremenko, data science coach and lifestyle entrepreneur. Each week we bring you inspiring people and ideas to help you build your successful career in data science. Thanks for being here today. Now let's make the complex simple. Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast, ladies and gentlemen. Today on the show I have Artem Vladimirov coming back for the second time. So, you may have heard Artem previously on episode number 7, where he was talking about his work at the Boston Consulting Group. Today we have him back. It's been one and a half years and you will find out exactly how his career has progressed over this one and a half years. I find it's a very exciting way to learn about people's careers when you first see them and that becomes only hear them on the podcast. That becomes like a checkpoint and then you find out what happened one and a half years later. So it's pretty crazy. It was on one of the very first episodes, episode number 7. If you haven't listened to it yet, I highly recommend checking that out first and then continuing with this one if you want that experience of seeing how his career changed and progressed. So in that time, Artem has had a promotion, he's moved into the space of supply chain logistics and he's had many, many more successes. So in this episode, we'll be talking predominantly about two things. We'll learn a lot about supply chain logistics and optimization of logistics and how data science can help there. How analytics, how Artem uses analytics to help his clients, or BCG's clients, optimize their logistics. Also we'll be talking about careers. How Artem has structured his career from the very start, how Show Notes: 2

3 he's made choices in his career and what it feels like to be a consultant in the space of data science and advanced analytics. All in all, very exciting episode. Lots of valuable knowledge, so sit back and relax and off we go. Without further ado, I bring to you Artem Vladimirov, project leader at the Boston Consulting Group. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the super data science podcast. Today I've got a returning guest, my dear friend Artem Vladimirov on the line. Artem, welcome back to the show. How are you today? Thank you Kirill. I'm good thanks. It's a pleasure for me to be a guest again at your podcast. So cool. I was just checking when you were here last. It was like the seventh episode. It was the very, very start of the podcast so it's been a while. That was October, So much has changed... has a lot changed since then for you? Yeah, quite a few things have changed, both professionally and personally, yes. Yeah, so last time we met at your podcast was October, So it's been a year and a half. And since that time you've done like 100 other podcasts. I hear them every day. No, it's just a once a week, with a guest once a week, a five minute Friday episode, yep. But, yeah, it's crazy, right, how time flies? Yeah. Impressive. All right. Where are you calling in from today? I'm in Chicago these days. Show Notes: 3

4 Chicago. All right. For those of you who haven't... for our guests how haven't heard episode number 7, Artem is a consultant with BCG, the Boston Consulting Group. He flies all over the world doing data driven projects. Can you share with us, what are you doing in Chicago today? Yeah. I have a project here in the US, in Chicago. It's about transforming client supply chain, particularly using advanced analytics methods and techniques to drive value in their supply chain business. Okay. All right, cool. Actually before we dive into the project, I wanted to ask you, in one and a half years since you were here last time, what has changed in your life? You mentioned quite a few things has changed personally and professionally. Can you give us a run down? What's changed? Yeah. From the professional perspective, I was promoted to a new role. Previously I was a consultant at BCG and I was doing lots of hands on stuff using advanced analytics, so things like optimizations, dynamic simulations, spacial modeling. Now I'm a project leader and I'm using all the experience and expertise that I've got in the past five years or so when I was at Deloitte and BCG, to mange projects which relate to these areas. Very cool, very cool. Yeah, you told me about that. But, again, congratulations on behalf of our listeners. That's a really cool promotion. Thank you. All right. What else? I started to travel more I guess. Even more. Show Notes: 4

5 Yeah, even more. Last time you were in six countries in one year, just for work. Yeah. It's become like six countries in three months now. No way. Crazy. Yeah. That has some implications on my personal life. So my beautiful spouse is doing her own project, like a web project, so she can work remotely and we're trying to travel together as much as we can. So far, while we're young, that works for both of us quite well. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Nice. No children yet so you can easily move around. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's very cool. What kind of project is she working on? She's doing... so she's a specialist in real estate. She worked in real estate in Australia when we were in Brisbane and then in Sydney. Now she develops a training website for educational purposes and the guide for people who want to invest in Australian real estate. The way it started is just now that we have a bit of savings, we decided... we are trying to find ways how to invest this money. One of the things we are looking at is real estate. So we started to dig deeper into it and then... it's a [inaudible 00:07:11] wide complex area. There are lots of things that as a novice, you can't know about and it's difficult to understand them. That kind of got us... brought us to an idea to create this educational portal or website where we can share what we already know about investing in real estate to other people. Show Notes: 5

6 Oh, okay. Okay. That's very cool. Good luck with that. And if anybody is ever interested, we'll definitely include the link to that on the show notes. Let's move on to your new role. So you're now more of a managerial role at BCG. What does that involve? What kind of projects do you manage? Yes. Just to give you an idea, my current project involved four different work streams, all related to supply chain, but one is inbound side, one is outbound side. Another one is warehouse management and the final one is more like strategic footprint optimization. We have people who were like me in the past, consultants working on that from the analytics perspective. We have a classical BCG consultants working on it from business and business processes perspective. I'm managing four work streams, looking after the analytic works to ensure that what we do is fit for purpose, answers the client's questions and we are on track in terms of [inaudible 00:08:43] of progress, etc. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Interesting. So how many people... so you're managing this whole team if I'm understanding correctly. How big is this team? I'm not managing the whole project team. There are three other project leaders and principals who manage their corresponding work streams. I manage four people currently across four different streams. Okay. All right then. So, it's an analytic project, right? So you do analyze data in the process. I mean, the team analyzes. The big portion of that is analytics, yes that's right. Okay. So what kind of analytics is involved in supply chain? Without going into any details that you cannot disclose. I would be interested to learn is it arrival/departure time? Or Show Notes: 6

7 is it roots and stuff like that? What is analytics in the space of logistics? Yeah. It's a very interesting topic for me, supply chain and logistics. There are lots of stuff you can do in supply chain with advanced analytics. Many companies that we source out for [inaudible 00:10:00] these capabilities, that's where we bring our expertise. Specifically, for outbound logistics for instance, that's when you're dealing with your products from a factory or from your warehouses to a customer. What we can do... we can do things like routing optimization to design routes that your trucks take more optimally so that you minimize your driving distance and therefore, you minimize your transportation cost and deliver on time as well. So you can take different constraints into account. Things like what time do you need to deliver this by for this particular client? What day do you need to deliver this for this particular client, etc. Then you use mathematical optimization techniques to design the best routes that you possibly can in order to minimize this distance and the cost. That's just one example. You can do the same thing for inbound as well. Inbound logistics is when you deliver materials from vendors or from suppliers to your factories or to your distribution centers. So you can do routing optimization. You can also do some advanced analytics in simulations and like war gaming and exercises to understand, let's say, what's the... what other trade routes between owning your own fleet versus outsourcing transportation to three PL's. So three PL's is a body logistics provider. So in theory, three PL's should be cheaper than owning your own fleet just because that's what they do on a day to day basis. That's what they specialize in. Show Notes: 7

8 They have, let's say, [inaudible 00:11:36] on their side. But, on the other hand side, what happens here in the US at the moment is that the freight market is very tight. So there is lots of demand for transportation, but supply is at the capacity pretty much. The carriers, three PL carriers, often reject capacity to their customers just because they can earn more money sending a truck to a delivery on a split market. Then what happens is that when our client has a rejection in terms of capacity, then they have to go to the stock market and sells and pay high price for an urgent delivery, just because they don't want to compromise service levels as well for their customers. So they have to pay more and then brings this idea of a trade off. So on the one hand side, if you own your own trucks, it's more expensive for you from the cost perspective, but at the same time, it gives you a bit of less exposure to this volatility in terms of [inaudible 00:12:40] market versus contract. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, I see. It's a very interesting problem. Yeah. I thought if a client wants to have a certain capacity, they just sign a contract and then the 3PL provider has to deliver that capacity. How can they just [crosstalk 00:13:02] Yeah. [inaudible 00:13:05] they don't have to. So they just sign the contract which specifies yes, these are standard deliveries, let's say on Monday. We pick it up from you at 9:00 AM, etc. and you should bring it to our warehouse or distribution center by 5:00 PM. Then what happens, they don't have penalties if the carrier doesn't provide capacity. That kind of incentivizes carriers to do [inaudible 00:13:30]. Show Notes: 8

9 Interesting. Interesting. Okay. That's a classic logistics issue right now that you're facing. Is that right? Yes. There are also other things that we are looking at, particularly how to better schedule labor at your warehouses, which consists of some [inaudible 00:13:51] exercises of how you can better predict the volume that's coming into your warehouse. And coming out of your warehouse at each particular day. Given what you already know on the historical demand and what new information that you get on an hourly basis like in terms of, let's say, new orders coming from customers. And that will help our client to better schedule how many people they should have at the warehouses on each particular day. Also, using analytics to identify what's optimal level of inventory should be like at your warehouses as well. So that you don't have too much inventory because that's your working capital costs. So the money which you could have spent somewhere else, but at the same time, you don't want to have too few inventory just because you can compromise on the service levels. So if you get an order unexpectedly from a customer and this customer expects it to be delivered in one or two days and you don't have this stuff at your warehouse, then it's a problem. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. You mentioned that you've been to lots of countries already in the past three months of this year. Are logistics problems different in different regions? Or is it always pretty much the same thing? Conceptually, it's very similar, but then the nuances and the details are always different. And because we have different industries which operate in a different way, like even for different clients within the same industry, things can be Show Notes: 9

10 different. Things can be different within different geographies. So for instance, when I had a project, like a logistics, supply chain based project in India. They have a very interesting [inaudible 00:15:44] when apparently if you are sending out stuff from a warehouse, which is located in one state, and your customer is located in another state, you have to pay some kind of a tax. And that impacts the way how you would locate your warehouses. Oh, because it's not just about... so the problems you address are not just about dealing with existing infrastructure and optimizing transport routes, it's also about placing the infrastructure, like warehouses. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So we are solving the problems on a broad spectrum of decision making horizons starting from an operational decision making, which is what are the actual routes that you have to have on a day to day basis to more tactical things like what your inventory should be like on a month to month basis. Or what your production plan should be like. For instance, two or more strategic level decisions, which is like, let's say, two to five years on the horizon. Which is where should you place your warehouses so this is... or if in factories, if you are planning to build a new one, in order to minimize this logistics cost and place it optimally. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. That's very cool. What are some of the industries that you've worked with? I'm really curious about that. Mostly I work in manufacturing. Mm-hmm (affirmative). I have done lots of projects in steel manufacturing. I have done a few in plywood. Energy as well. So there is also Show Notes: 10

11 logistics involved in energy. Let's say if a client is owning a distribution network and they have to repair it from time to time. Then they have to have warehouses located at certain places which hold materials for their repairs and fixes. So they also have logistics and logistics problems as well. Distribution, some things like food distribution for instance. When you purchase food from vendors, how [inaudible 00:17:53] then distribute this food to restaurants, schools, hospitals, military bases, whatever it is. Mm-hmm (affirmative). I did some projects for financial institutions, for banks. Again, related to network mostly, so identifying best locations for branches. But I actually talked about this in my last podcast, right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, interesting. I actually heard this about New York City that it's so busy, like the traffic is so bad there that the delivery of products for restaurants can only happen after midnight, in the deep of night. So restaurants are actually open all the time because of... during the day they're working and during the night, they're accepting these new products and stuff. Have you heard of any other crazy stories like that? No, that's sounds about right. Another thing is that sometimes they don't deliver on the weekend, so I can not have deliveries on Wednesday... sorry on Saturdays and Sundays. But anything is for restaurants, this is the busiest days and you would have lots of deliveries scheduled for Friday, which impacts your warehouse operations and your transportation. Then you will have lots of deliveries on Mondays as well because they are now empty. Show Notes: 11

12 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. All right. I've got you. Another thing I'm interested in is, the optimization processes. Let's say I'm an owner or a CEO of a company. Let's say as a CEO of a manufacturing company or a restaurant listening to this, or a director or an entrepreneur. They've set the processes up, things are getting delivered and so on. It's kind of working. What is the benefit of optimizing logistics? As a rule of thumb, what would you say by doing logistics optimization, what kind of cost savings do you normally deliver? Or are you aiming to deliver on a project? Again, if you can share that information. Yeah. I guess the benchmark roughly is 10, 15% cost savings on logistics. And very often for the largest companies, we see that logistics constitutes a very large pocket of their costs. Depending on the client, logistics can be $500 million dollars per annum. If you save 10% on that, that's already 50 million dollars savings potential, which is a lot more than our fees, for instance. And that's per year, right? That's not just [crosstalk 00:20:34] Yeah. That's per annum, that's right. And then, cost savings is the largest lever that we are pulling and another one is possibly increased customer service levels. If you're not operating optimally now and let's say,... that would be be something particular for one of the clients that we had that they didn't deliver on time often and they suffered low service levels. And that was very important as well because it was a utility company. They wanted to repair the network and if you don't repair network in time, if you don't deliver repair materials to your work sites on time, then a bunch of people will be without power for a day or so. So that's kind of a very important, was very important for them and that's another thing we looked at, how much inventory they should have and Show Notes: 12

13 not enough to compromise your inventory service levels. Which resulted in a bit higher cost for them, but the trade off of the high service levels. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Okay. Got you. So do you often come across companies that haven't done a logistics optimization? Or is just a matter of you need to re-optimize logistics occasionally because cities grow and things change? It's a bit of both. What we see a lot is that companies usually do it the way they did it ten years ago and they're very conservative to changes. So they're not keen to change anything and most of the planning is done manually, which is very sub-optimal, especially if it involves complex decision making and trading of a very public constraints. Yeah, you can benefit a lot from using this new technology that's,.like optimization for instance, mathematical optimization. It has improved so much in the last ten years just in terms of... not even in terms of computing power, but in terms of efficiency of algorithms. And there are things that you couldn't do ten years ago, especially in terms raw optimization for instance. Now optimization has become so [inaudible 00:22:46] that you can literally create you [inaudible 00:22:50] in real time if you want to. Big chains like UPS for instance or DHL, they have developed their own in house optimization engines, which... they can have a look at their trucks real time. They know exactly where they are located. They can change their routes real time, depending on a new order. So it's very advanced. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. That's pretty cool. You'd think that DHL would have to be on top of these things right. It's very competitive. Show Notes: 13

14 Yeah. And they are. Okay. They're not our client, by the way, for the disclaimer. As far as I know. Yeah. Okay. Tell us about the tools that you use. What kind of, I don't know, algorithms? You mentioned some mathematical optimization. What tools do you use for logistic optimization? Yeah. Just, I guess, I'll try to talk broadly about mathematical optimizations. We use similar technology for, not just for logistics optimization, but for things like production planning optimization. What's the best production plan that you have or what's the best sales and preparations plan? So we use a broad range of tools, starting from very general purpose packages. Things like Complex engines or [inaudible 00:24:16] engines in Python. Or in... what else can it be? Or in Matlock, for instance. So you can use these tools to pretty much formulate any problem that you like. You can create generic constraints, very customized solutions and that works for us very well because we work across different clients, different industries. And very often we need a customized solution, but it comes at the expense that you need to develop this from scratch and it often takes a lot more time. There are also... on the other spectrum of that, you can use off the shelf products, particularly we are using Llama Soft for supply chain optimization. This is a tool that's already has models embedded into it which allow you to put in the data, set up some constraints that they already have embedded in this Show Notes: 14

15 software. So we don't need to build them from scratch and optimize in that work for instance. It's relatively easy to use, so it's much faster to use as well. But it comes at the expense of you can't build your own customized constraints or business rules if you want to. There is a bit of a trade off. There are some tools, again, in between the spectrum. So we particularly use AIMS, for instance. So that's a tool that's not a low level coding tool like Python of Math Lab. It already has a platform which makes things a bit easier for you, but it's relatively flexible and you can customize a solution and you can build your own constraints into the problem. And that's a trade off we often make. So the [inaudible 00:26:04] project, we need to decide which tool we're using depending on what we think the problem is, how feasible it is, how customized we need it to be. That's an important decision we need to make. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Okay, yeah, that's pretty cool. So at the start you decide which tool. Out of the ones you mentioned, the only ones familiar to me would be Python. There's a bit of light there, like a light at the end of the tunnel for those data scientists who are not familiar with logistic optimization. If you know Python or if you're learning Python, then there's some opportunity there, I guess. What about data preparation? Do you use any special tools for preparation? How does it go down? Is that a big thing in this domain as well? It's more about, I guess for us it's less about data preparation [inaudible 00:27:05]. So like across we do data preparation to kind of have the data in the right form for our models. We use either [inaudible 00:27:16] or SQL or sometimes even Python for that for data preparation stuff. It's not like a big thing in Show Notes: 15

16 logistics. It's not like customer data that you can have for like banks or for customer companies with like billions of records. They do have large data sets and especially in terms of shipments, but that's probably about it. Okay. Okay. Got you. All right. Well that's interesting. Is there anything else exciting that you can tell us about supply chain before we move on to some other topics? Let me think. Probably nothing that jumps straight out of my head. It's a very interesting topic. It's a very broad topic as well. You can do lots of things in supply chain. Yeah, so. But I don't have anything very specific to say. All right. Okay. Then I wanted to ask you more about the career direction, because this is a careers podcast and it's designed to help people understand where they want to guide their careers and get a feel for different areas of data science and data related professions. So what... how did you choose to guide your career into supply chain? Because when you joined Boston Consulting Group, did you join specifically for supply chain? Or is it something that you identified for yourself over time? Yeah, it's probably the latter. So I joined more like an expert in just spacial modeling and simulations. Then when I started doing projects in different areas, and in different industries, I realized I like more working in industries which have some kind of substance behind them. So like something material, so like manufacturing. It's like you have a plan to produce stuff, you move the stuff around using trucks or rail or whatever. Show Notes: 16

17 So for me, it's just very interesting to work on these types of projects. After a year or so I started to specialize in supply chain. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. You started to specialize in supply chain. What did you do? How did you go about it? Did you tell your manager that you wanted to do more supply chain or did it just happen naturally? Did you pick the projects? Like how does somebody take control of their career and decide which way to direct it? Yeah, you absolutely should have... you should take control over your career. For instance, in my case, I said to my team managers and my team leadership, this is what's interesting to me and this is what I would like to do. Of course there is a trade out with when, like if you don't have any other projects and you have a project for, let's say, financial institution, which in particular is not my area of interest, but then there is not nothing else on the plate. And of course, I'll do it. And then if there are a couple of projects in pipeline, then I have this flexibility to choose the one that suits my career development interests. That's why I like working in BCG is they kind of make it more flexible for you, so you can work on projects that work for you from the developmental perspective as well. Okay. So how did your team leaders take your request that you would like to work more on these type of projects? The market for advanced analytics is very tight as well, [inaudible 00:31:01] the right market in the US. So there is lots of demand for the work that we do and honestly, we just, like we are tight on capacity. We are hiring more and more people, but the demand is so high that we are always staffed Show Notes: 17

18 on projects. I always have several projects that I can work on at any particular time. My team leadership was very, very understanding and very keen to help me work on the projects that I like. And they were very supportive of that. Okay. That's very cool. You mentioned... could you repeat again, why exactly do you like logistics optimization? What is your favorite part about this domain? It's about making a change that you can actually observe. So let's say you optime your warehouse locations. In three to five years, so if the client takes this path, then they will actually move the warehouses to new locations and they will observe some efficiencies out of that. So you will see a warehouse in different locations. You will see how things change in operations and that's what I like, the substance. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. So it's like observable outcomes Yeah, exactly. Observable outcomes. Not only in terms of cost savings or increased customer service levels, but also things changing in real world. Okay. All right, cool. But it takes so much time. Like three to five years. Does that bother you that you won't see the changes for so long? Kind of yes and no. So, yeah, of course it's a very long time horizon, but at the same time we do lots of more tactical and durational [inaudible 00:32:58], which the clients can start changing straight away. So for example, we did a project for a steel manufacturer and we did... we optimized their production plan so that on a day to day basis, they actually have to decide which skus they need to produce and they're a very complex operational rules regarding, like this SKU can Show Notes: 18

19 go after this one and you have to have this SKU at the end of the shift or rundown. So there are lots of these operational constraints. The way they were doing it before was a bit more manual. We developed a semi-automated tool for them which involved genetic algorithms and mathematical optimization stuff, which helps them to make better schedules. Because they're using these schedules, they actually generate the scheduled each day, then we saw the difference that we make pretty much not from the day one, of course, but after we developed this tool. The day one after we developed this tool and that was pretty cool. Mm-hmm (affirmative) okay. Wow. That's awesome. The client must have been happy as well about that. Yeah. And we saw... so after we piloted this new tool, they actually saw the difference in terms of more rundowns that they can schedule so they can actually... they could schedule more stuff to be produced within the same time period. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. So, speaking of tools, you mentioned before that this industry is changing or has changed in the past couple of years because of the advanced computational power, advanced capability of the algorithms and the schematic optimization algorithms. Do you see any new technologies that are out there disrupting this industry? You know, like we're talking about AI, deep learning, block chain, machine learning, all these trendy words that are out there. Do you think anything will change this industry even further? Yeah, absolutely. Artificial intelligence is a big thing now and you can use artificial intelligence to create more visibility in Show Notes: 19

20 your supply chain to kind of predict orders and make better planning. Then block chain is becoming a big thing in supply chain as well so we are currently exploring and have few projects on how we can use block chain in supply chains to increase visibility again on the supply chain. So to understand where did this product come from and track it along the whole supply chain. Hmm. That's really cool. I've also been looking into block chain applications. One of the examples that I've heard in supply chain is, for instance, coffee. Coffee, how do you know when you go to a shop and it says this coffee is from Ethiopia or somewhere. How do you know it's from Ethiopia and it's not from your neighbor's backyard? That's where block chain can come in and help with logistics because it provides a facility to hold these immutable certificates. So once the certificate is issued, nobody can tamper with it, nobody can change anything and it really creates that traceability of where products are coming from. So, is that about right, for block chain? Yeah. That sounds right to me and yeah, I think that's a good example. So you can create unique signatures for your coffee boxes or whatever you use for coffee transportation. Then you can use the block chain technology to understand where this box was at each particular point of time. Where did it come from, etc. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Well, that's really cool. It's really exciting to see that big companies like BCG are jumping on top of these trends like that, when they see the potential, like in AI or block chain. It must be exciting to work. How are you feeling? You've been with BCG what, for like two years now? Show Notes: 20

21 Three years. Three years, three years. That's really cool. So how are you feeling about your career at BCG? For people who are listening or considering applying to BCG. Is it a good place to work? Oh, yeah. I love it. They provide good career development opportunities, are very interested in projects, especially now a team... so we have global team which is called COMMA, which specializes in advanced analytics. So things like Artificial Intelligence, machine letting, advanced analytics for durations for things like mathematics optimizations, etc. And we do lots of projects overseas because we are a global team. So I get to travel a lot. I really like it. Awesome. Is it hard to get into BCG? Honestly, yes. Out of 100 CVs that we get, we only short list probably like 10. Out of this 10 that pass to an interview, only hire one probably. So it's like one to 100 chance. But anyway, feel free and don't feel discouraged to apply if you think that's a place where you want to work. Yeah. Definitely if you do get the job, then after this podcast, after hearing this podcast, then hit up Artem and say hi. You may catch there on your trips. Yes, for sure. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Speaking of this worldwide travel. Are you not sick of it yet? Three years, you've probably been to like 50 different countries. When does this stop? I don't know. How can you be sick of that? You're traveling in business class. You stay at five star hotels. The company pays for your stays. Show Notes: 21

22 That's awesome. Yeah. How can you not like it? Okay. They're all kinds of considerations, like if you have a family and like especially if you have children, that's going to be very hard to travel. Again, the company is very supportive of different working models. If you say, "I don't want to travel, " then they will be supportive of that and they will try to put you on projects which don't involve travel. So far, I'm very flexible in travel and I am actually... I like to choose projects which are overseas, so that works quite well for me. So as I mentioned, my spouse can work remotely, so that works for both of us. So I don't see an end to that yet. Okay, okay, cool. Again, just jumping back into the topic of careers, can you give our listeners an overview of what it's like to be in consulting. Three years at BCG, two years at Deloitte, that's five years total. Consulting - Six years Kirill. -six years. How do you get that? Three plus two. Yeah. It's three years at Deloitte, three at BCG. Oh. Three and three. Okay. So, consulting can be tough sometimes. Looking back at my days at Deloitte, you work long hours. Travel is great, it's a benefit. But there's also difficult times. What is your overall recommendation for somebody who's considering to into data science and start data science in the industry, in a industry or start data science in consulting and they've never done consulting Show Notes: 22

23 before. What would your insights be into this world of consulting in data science and analytics? Yeah. That's a good point that you brought up, Kirill. The consulting world is tough and it's very challenging in terms of your working hours, you always have to work on new projects which is interesting for me, but at the same time it can be very stressful sometimes because your work with new people and not just new people from BCG, but new people from the client side as well. You always have to pick up new knowledge on how the client operates as well. Timelines can require pressure so it's a very challenging and stressful job sometimes and they don't want you to promise a la la land and it turns out to be a very tough job for you. So, yeah, it's very interesting and challenging at the same time for people who didn't do consulting before. I guess it's also a trade off between, like they want to try yourself in different industries and try yourself in different projects and then you can make up your mind what you actually like. Because, as I mentioned for instance, in my particular case, I only started to work in supply chain three years ago when I started to work at BCG. After that time, actually I love it. I didn't know I love it before I started to work on that end. If I move to an industry... like I wouldn't have moved to what I loved. So consulting gives you an opportunity to work in these different areas in different industries and understand what's actually, where your heart is and what you like, what you don't like. So that was a big consideration for me as well. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. No, that's definitely a good point. I wanted to have a little flashback from our previous podcast where you mentioned that you started out into the world of data science into this world where you've now been Show Notes: 23

24 six years. And you're flying all over the world and doing amazing project and helping businesses. You started out with no knowledge of data science whatsoever. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you built it up by jumping into this role of data science consulting. Can you tell us, like refresh us on this story, especially for those who haven't heard podcast number 7 or for whom it's been a long time since then. Yeah, for sure. So when I started at Deloitte, I had no knowledge of any of the machine learning tools or advanced analytic tools that I use now. I was not a data scientist. I was more like a guy with economics and finance background. I was always looking for an employment like if valuation, valuation consulting so I could valuate how much a company costs or like in investment banking. Then, thanks to Kirill, by chance I got into Deloitte data analytics team. So Kirill arranged - I just arranged the interview. You got in there and, you know, when you started talking, they just... in fact, for those of you who don't know, it was so... they were so impressed with Artem... Artem was a bit upset about the whole job market in Brisbane and he decided to go back to Russia and then the last day, or the last week before he was going to fly back, I arranged this interview with the partner at Deloitte. So once Artem went in there, there was so impressed with your mind, the way you think, even though you didn't have any data science background. They were so impressed with that, that even though Artem later got on the flight and went back to Russia, they paid for him to fly back and to join Deloitte. How crazy is that? Remember that? Yeah, I remember that. That was also [inaudible 00:44:52] during my interview. Grace Noble, the partner and the Show Notes: 24

25 analytics team asked me about my current situation and I had to tell him that actually I had a one way ticket to Moscow the next day. Honestly, I owe a lot to Grace, who put a lot of faith in me when he actually offered me a job at Deloitte. Yes. So when I started, I didn't have knowledge in data science. So I had to pick it up on the job. To be honest, when I started, when I looked at this sequel scrapes and stuff like that, I just thought it's not for me and I'm not going to be there for more than two or three months. Then I kind of... when I started to see the bigger picture, not just the [inaudible 00:45:47] that I had to change, when I started to see the bigger picture, how it all fits into the big picture of a project, then I kind of started to like it and I started to... obviously I started to learn the tools from day one. But, I also started to like it. So I started to pick up other tools as well. I started to do projects in different industries, pick up new tools and that's where it got me six years after. What I like about that story, what you mentioned here is, the learning component. That you don't have to be a data science expert to be successful, but you should be good at learning. Listeners of this podcast, as I imagine, are excited about learning. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you aren't excited about learning. Or you wouldn't be taking courses online. Whether it's [inaudible 00:46:50] or super data science or other platforms, if you weren't excited about learning. In that sense, consulting is a good platform to start, as long as you are happy with the tough work, sometimes stress and things like that, but it's a good place to get started for people Show Notes: 25

26 who are passionate about learning. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Absolutely. And they provide the training, right? They provide the guidance, the mentoring and they want you to get up to speed with the tools really fast, a broad range of tools. So, yeah, it's just up to you from there on. Yeah, that's right. From the training perspective, we at BCG, for instance, we have lots of training programs starting from like web based training, training tutorials that we have on different industries and different methodologies, etc. And I guess, when you're just starting, when you're a junior, it's going to be training a bit more on the technical side, how to do this or that. Then when you become more senior, it's going to be trainings more on project management, how do you manage projects, how do you manage your client, how do you manage a team, etc. So for instance, I'm going to have a training in Mid-April in Germany for a week. BCG invests lots of time and effort into training their own people. Hmm. Okay. That's very cool. What can you say about the transition from technical to management? Is that something you were excited about? Is that change something you wanted? What about people who want to just continue doing technical work and don't want to become managers? It's also possible, yeah. You just need to relay that to your team leadership. But I don't see any problems with that, particularly now. So generally at BCG, there is a rule which is called up or out. So if you're not promoted to a more senior Show Notes: 26

27 role within a certain time period, then they kindly ask you to leave the company. Wow. Is that an actual rule? Or is that just rumors? No, it is an actual rule. It can be a bit less strict or more strict depending on the geography. So in some countries where I have projects in, it can actually be... they just don't wait for, say two years, which is standard promotion window. But they can ask you to leave half a year after you started. Mm. Wow, that's crazy. I've heard of that rule, but I thought it was kind of like an unspoken rumor type of thing. Wow, that's pretty- Yeah. This is an actual thing. I personally know lots of people who were advised to leave the company. It actually happens. But in our team, we have a slightly different business model, so it's not up or out, it's perform or out. So if you're happy to stay in the same role as you are now, and if you are performing, then they are happy to leave you, like up to four, five, six years, etc. Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you're not performing, of course, then we'll ask you to leave the company. Which makes sense because it's so technical. Okay. All right. Sounds good, sounds good. I had an interesting question for you, a bit of an out of the blue, different type of question to be discussing. What do you think of autonomous vehicles? How is that disrupting the supply chain industry? Because we hear a lot about self driving cars, especially self driving trucks, how they are going to displace drivers. Have you encountered any Show Notes: 27

28 information on that that's... how do you see this affecting the supply chain? Yeah. From a broad scale, I am very excited about autonomous vehicles. I think that's where the future is. I personally am very skeptical about all this news of when you hear about an autonomous vehicle, car, got into a crash. I personally think if you... you have to normalize everything. If you take on a [inaudible 00:51:05] basis, the chance of a crash or the chance of an accident, is much lower if it's controlled by a robot. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Or at least when the algorithm is improved. So I think there is a huge potential in using autonomous vehicles for even every day use for personal cars, etc. Regarding supply chain, it's also... there is also huge potential just because on the one hand side, it's going to disrupt labor market a bit because you won't need as much drivers as you do need now to drive your trucks. If you have autonomous trucks, companies can save on labor costs, which are quite significant. But then at the same time, lots of people will be without a job and that has huge implications on the total market as well. This is partially the job of the government as well to make this transition smooth. Gotcha. But in your consulting work, it hasn't come up yet? You're not advising clients to start using trucks and things like that? No, not to the best of my knowledge. I don't think it is advanced yet so that you can just start using it right now. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Well, I guess we'll wait a couple of years and then things will change even more. Show Notes: 28

29 Yeah. That's what I hope for. Yeah. It's crazy, right, how things change quickly. Okay, well, yeah, that's pretty much it. We had, I think, a good ex course into all the supply chain and I really appreciated your view points on careers. I think that will help a lot of people, especially those who are considering consulting and specifically maybe even BCG. So, yeah, let's hope lots of people can use this knowledge to guide their own careers from here. Yeah. Thanks Kirill for having me on your podcast. It's really been a pleasure. Good day, I guess. All right. Well thanks a lot for coming again and hope to catch up soon mate. Likewise. So there you have it. That was my good friend Artem Vladimirov from the Boston Consulting Group coming on the show for the second time. I hope you enjoyed seeing how his career has progressed over the past one and a half years. It really puts into perspective what is possible and what can be achieved if you put your mind to it. He's gotten a promotion. He's managing a team. He's doing lots of different, exciting projects and most importantly, he's moved his career into the direction that he wants it to go into. Personally for me that was probably the biggest take away from today. Artem s advice to take your career into your own hands. As he put it, you need to make sure that your manager or managers know what you want from your career. You need to make it very clear to them. If you're enjoying doing some certain type of work, especially if you're in the field of consulting where there's lots of different Show Notes: 29

30 projects, lots of different tools you could be using, if you're enjoying some certain type of work, then make it known to your managers that this is what you want to pursue, this is where you want to develop your skills and this is the direction in which you want your career to grow. That is what he means by taking your career into your own hands because ultimately, that's how you will achieve happiness and you will ultimately enjoy your work more and more. It's something that we all want and sometimes we're a bit too passive about it. We think that it will happen on it's own. A lot of the time we have to take these things into our own control. Artem is a great example of somebody who's done that very successfully. As usual, you can get the show notes for this episode at superdatascience, or There you will also find a transcript for the episode and a URL to Artem s LinkedIn. Make sure to connect with Artem and say hi and follow his career further. See what happens next. See how he's going to progress further. If you are in the BCG, in the Boston Consulting Group, or if you get into Boston Consulting Group as a result of this episode, then definitely hit Artem up and say hello and maybe you guys can share some experiences between each other. He can give you a bit of his own personal taste of what it's like to be in BCG. On that note, I hope you enjoyed today's episode and maybe got some extra insights about logistics, supply chain optimization and what it's like to be in the world of consulting. I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing. Show Notes: 30