YMX Logistics' Matt Yearling Brings Operations and Technology Together to Address Yard Management Challenges: Pros to Know Award

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Hello, my name is Marina Mayer, Editor-in-Chief of Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive, and I am here with Matt Yearling, CEO of YMX Logistics. Matt is a recipient of this year's Pros to Know Award in the Leaders in Excellence category. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today.

As a tech guy, kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you ended up being the CEO of YMX.

Matt Yearling: This is a very common question because I'm a technology guy, and why is a technology guy running a logistics operation? My time the last 30 years, I really focused on delivering corporate outcomes with enterprise technology solutions. And of that, I would say most of that time has been specializing within the nodes on supply chain networks, hence, what I'm doing today. So whether or not that's marine terminals, rail, inland manufacturing distribution. That's been my primary focus, and YMX was born out of that combination of beliefs on the opportunity in this area.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: One of the things outlined in your submission is that you founded YMX to address yard management. Why has the yard historically been overlooked, and what risks does that create for enterprise supply chains?

Matt Yearling: Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because there's certainly a lot of opportunities in the supply chain to look at solving problems. It's very fragmented, a lot of technology solutions, but from my perspective, it's the area that I understood the most.

I think three primary reasons: one of them, it lacks strategic focus, because transportation and warehousing spend dwarfs yard spend. I mean, any shipper could tell you that.

Secondly, that the value is not well understood. Fifty percent of the time it's insourced, 50% of the time it's outsourced. And the companies really don't understand the impact of yard. It's not necessarily seen as a strategic advantage. And those that do look to outsource it just for a tactical costing arbitrage opportunity. And they really don't think about it, strategically up to now.

And then finally because of all that, it does lack sophistication and technology enablement. The vast majority of the sites do not have any technology, and that's a good opportunity for them, but there's along with that comes some risk. A lot of companies are out there looking for a technology solution for a poorly defined problem that they're trying to solve. So there's a lot of widgets trying to solve problems that are not well articulated, that really don't drive the outcomes that they're looking for.

And some other risks that we're focused on is labor shortages, high turnover, underperforming, and unaccountable providers, rising costs, safety, theft, inconsistent execution, and not necessarily a service provider that's really focused on the customer, and YMX really, fundamentally, is not a spotting service with a YMS.

We transcend that. We transcend that in capability and value to the customer, ultimately.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Your nomination form also detailed the YMX operating system. Kind of walk us through what this is, what does it mean in practice, and how it's different from how most companies maybe manage their yard operations today.

Matt Yearling: This is the primary reason for YMX and what we're trying to do is focusing on that convergence between operations and technology, right? Where traditional spotting providers focus on labor equipment and just getting basic tasks done.

Our differentiation resides in this proprietary yard operating system.

And it's not a YMS. It's basically integrated tech-enabled operational framework designed to bring the same level of sophistication and governance and rigor around yard as enterprise shippers demand around transportation and warehousing.

And that's really a fundamental belief around what we're trying to do with this platform from a sophistication perspective. So, what we do is, we guide a customer through an upgraded experience from Day 1, and put them on a path, from an engineered solution, on a roadmap from start to finish, looking at standardized planning, staffing, equipment, right-sizing, utilization, technology, execution, performance, and really then stepping back and saying, well, how does this apply across your network? And all of this is powered by data, but we're not driving for insights, we're driving for outcomes, we're driving for strategic value to the customer. And so that's really what we're focusing on.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: A champion of digital transformation, your submission form expressed your passion for using technology to solve the supply chain's biggest challenge. What can you share about this journey, and how enterprise shippers should approach technology in the current environment?

Matt Yearling: I don't want to be too critical. I'm just looking at it from my perspective, from my experience. When you're looking the problem, is you step back and you say, how is that problem solved today? What are the market participants? What is available out there to drive value or trying to solve this problem. And then you just look at this, and just say, well, what are some of the characteristics associated with this? How would you define success? Who are some of those that you would consult with in defining a mission, in creating a different roadmap that addresses the outcomes that you're really trying to drive towards? And then, when you frame that up, it's like, okay, so then how do you excite talent to be able to deliver on the vision?

It's pretty much what we've done as a company. We're framing up this opportunity in a different way. We're market engineering an outcome, or a definition of what this industry should look at yards, how the industry should look at yards, and then how do we drive value within that?

We're lucky, from our perspective, we have hundreds of years of collective experience in the yards to tap into. We're not going to get caught up in the word salad of technology, but we will certainly frame specific practical uses of AI and autonomy for the greater good of yards. But ultimately, we're focusing on value creation, and value creation needs to be defined and measured, and that's really it. We're not just focusing on little specific elements. We're looking at it in totality.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: The Leaders in Excellence category honors company leaders who've made outstanding contributions to the supply chain space. What advice do you have for other supply chain professionals?

Matt Yearling: I think especially, it seems like, every day there's an exception, there's a macro event, or a force that's forced upon us that we have to think about. And, obviously from my perspective, a lot of that is distractions, and I think what we really need to continue to focus on is executing what we believe is going to drive the value, and treat execution as a strategic lever, not an operational afterthought.

The biggest gains in the supply chain performance today are not coming from better planning tools, they're coming from how consistently you X across your sites, locations, teams, stop solving problems with more resources, right? This is big for us. We're not throwing labor and equipment at problems. We're just stepping back and trying to understand why do we have those inefficiencies? Why do we believe that we need to kind of approach it by throwing assets and people at the problem, as opposed to saying, what is it we're trying to do? Design for scale from Day 1. What works in one facility may go across the network, but customers are asking us for a standardized approach.

We still see decentralization, we still see sites operating in independence. We don't see a lot of leverage, we don't see a lot of best practices. And so, how do you take those things and just replicate it across your network?

And be disciplined about technology. I think most of the conversations I talk with people, they're all looking for that tool that's going to drive massive value, but I do see a lot of pilots. There's a lot of one categorization I like to use is pilot purgatory, where you're perpetually in pilots, but you don't necessarily drive to measurable outcomes. And so then, by definition, you're not getting the value that the customer is asking for. And so, the landscape of technology, especially around AI, is littered with some of these solutions today, and that's not what we're about. So from our perspective, what we would do is look at it holistically, and harness all of the capabilities and look at this differently, and be pragmatic in how to select technology to address the outcomes that you're looking for.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: And what is something that we haven't addressed so far that would be pertinent to include in this discussion as a good takeaway for our viewers?

Matt Yearling: I think you have to move fast, you have to iterate quickly, you have to test and get feedback. And validation. Even from the get-go with YMX, the thesis was born 10 years ago, from my perspective. I had a belief around the characteristics of a market that was underserved.

And then, how do you get to a point where you're getting validation, not just nodding heads, but you're getting scale, you're getting customers, and you're getting prospects starting to talk the same language as you. We're redefining what the value is, where it drives value, how is that value priced, and how is that value delivered, ultimately, at the end of the day. I think that's really, really key to looking at building a company like YMX in the supply chain space, is really try to define what is it you're trying to do, and your placement within that market that you're trying to serve. And then, how are you going to execute on that?

People think that this is a risky thesis, but there's so much validation that we've received thus far, that we just need to continue the momentum and execute ourselves in, ultimately putting the customer first in terms of how we make decisions and drive value to the customer. And again, we've got validation. Validation, I think, is key. And how do you get validation along the way? Don't wait a quarter, don't wait a couple months. We're getting daily, if not weekly, validation.