This episode, the second of a two-part series, continues the compelling conversation of part one, “From Clinical Trials to Commercialization: The Pharma/Healthcare Global Supply Chain.” Now in part two, we hear from a guest podcaster from our parent company, Kuehne+Nagel’s Robert Coyle, Senior Vice President of Pharma & Healthcare Strategy. Also joining us again is QuickSTAT’s Scott Ohanesian, Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations. In this program, they take a deeper dive into supply chain planning and strategy—with a focus on the role that frequent and precise communications play. Whether it’s supporting today’s most important clinical drug trials or ensuring delivery of drugs into the marketplace, Rob and Scott cover it all—giving listeners a holistic perspective on the end-to-end planning and execution of the pharma product life cycle and logistics process.
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PODCAST
Mike LoRusso: Tech & IT Logistics in the Time of Coronavirus
This episode of QuickConversations was recorded on March 30, 2020 in New York City – the current epicenter of the coronavirus. Depending upon when you’re listening to this program, the virus’ hot spots will likely be somewhere else. But wherever it’s traveled to, one thing is for sure: COVID-19 not only represents an acute, sometimes dire health concern, but also an unprecedented impact on our global supply chains as we know them. After all:
- How do you move business-critical high-tech components across borders when you can’t move cross-border?
- How do you manage just-in-time deliveries when the airline routes you depend on change – even be cancelled – at any moment?
- And of course, how do you keep your own workforce safe and active during a global pandemic?
Those are just some of the challenges that Mike LoRusso is facing and solving every day. Mike is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Quick Specialty Logistics. He has worked on the financial and logistics management side of the business, so he knows how to keep processes operational during challenging situations – supporting the needs of businesses ranging from the financial services sector to healthcare, high tech, automotive to hospitality and beyond.
Mike took some time today to talk with host, Chris Riback, about how he and his team are working during this crisis - focused on keeping business and life moving, even when it seems the whole world has stopped.
Transcript
The podcast that shares what’s behind delivering mission-critical logistics
Introduction:
Today is March 30, 2020 – and we’re recording this podcast in New York City – the current epicenter of the coronavirus. Depending upon when you’re listening to this program, the virus’ hot spots will likely be somewhere else. But wherever it’s traveled to, one thing is for sure; COVID-19 not only represents an acute, sometimes dire health concern, but also an unprecedented impact on our global supply chains as we know them.
After all:
• How do you move business-critical high tech components across borders when you can’t move cross-border?
• How do you manage just-in-time deliveries when the airline routes you depend on can change – even be cancelled – at any moment?
• How do you keep your own workforce safe and active during a global pandemic?
Those are just some of the challenges that Mike LoRusso is facing and solving every day. Mike is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Quick Specialty Logistics. He has worked on the financial and logistics management side of the business, so he knows how to keep processes operational during challenging situations – supporting the needs of businesses ranging from the financial services sector to healthcare, high tech, automotive to hospitality and beyond.
Mike took some time today to share how he and his team do it – keeping business and life moving even when it seems the whole world has stopped. As you will hear from time to time in the background, we caught up with him in Quick’s active NY warehouse.
Chris Riback: Mike, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate your time.
Mike LoRusso: Thanks for the invite.
Chris Riback: I hope that you and your family are staying safe and doing as well as possible during these very challenging times.
Mike LoRusso: Thank you. Yes, they are. Hopefully, the same with yours. Everyone's taking those precautions, right?
Chris Riback: Yes. It's 24/7, and we're all doing it. I know for you, you're doing it not only at home but also with Quick and at the office, and that's what I would like to talk with you about today. Tell me about your role. Why is that role front and center during this pandemic?
Mike LoRusso: Well, we have four divisions at Quick International. Two are on the medical side and one is on aircraft on ground, our Sterling division. I run Specialty Logistics, which is a little bit different. There are some similarities in terms of the services we provide, which is next flight out, deferred shipping, chain of custody. We do onboard couriers and charters, but we're not specifically in an aircraft on ground, let's say, or just specifically medical. So if there's something that's kind of outside the box, it would probably roll to my division. I have a team. The managers who work for me are pretty experienced, and they've done some things outside the box and are able to plan and do special projects and move freight differently.
Chris Riback: Yes, I'm sure that they have, and I'm looking forward to getting to talk with you about some of those specifics. At the highest levels, how has your role and how have the roles of the folks on your team changed since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak?
Mike LoRusso: I think things where we may have had some repetitive business, where it was consistent and we kind of knew the destinations where our freight was going to, we knew the lane segments where the pickup and delivery, and if there was any type of connecting flights, we knew those and had them in place. With the environment we're in now, those things are ever changing. Aircraft lift is changing. There's cancellations, not just internationally in certain regions like APAC and Europe. Now we're starting to see that in the US.
Mike LoRusso: So we're a little bit more cognizant of that, and we have to be on our toes because routings can change in an instant. Where we may have had something set on a particular lane with a particular aircraft and it could have been skidded material or it's palletized, and all of a sudden, that aircraft is now downgraded from a wide body to a smaller aircraft. So a 300 plus passenger aircraft is now 120 or 150 passenger aircraft. So that limits the ability to put freight, palletized freight on that aircraft. So we may either have to break down that freight and send it in smaller shipments or find another alternative. So our guys are constantly working that, making sure that we're satisfying our customers based on the destinations that they need to get freight to but finding different ways to move that freight.
Chris Riback: While most of us are working at home, you're actually in the office right now, aren't you? I can hear activity going on back there. Things are moving 24/7 at Quick.
Mike LoRusso: Yes, they are. Not just our office but the other divisions, the medical divisions as well as our aircraft on ground divisions are also 24/7. We have people that are on staff and on site. Where we have the ability to have people work from home, they're doing that, but there's certain logistical needs of our clients that we need to have personnel here at our location... We're at a warehouse location... to support that. So we're very careful about what we're doing, and we can probably get into that a little later, but we do have staff here and we need to have them here to support our client.
Chris Riback: It goes without saying, first of all, the warehouse noise that I'm hearing – keep operations moving. Secondly, if anything comes up and you've got a logistical emergency that you've got to go deal with, you just let me know and we will hit pause and we'll pick the conversation back up. I know that's what you're worrying about 24/7, and what everyone there is worrying about 24/7. Mike, you're a creative guy, I'm sure, by nature. Have you ever had to be as creative as you surely have had to be right now?
Mike LoRusso: You know what, at times we have. 9/11, that comes to mind where we had to be creative in what was happening. We'll have instances just on a particular project that we're working on with a client when something outside the box happens where we have to react to it, we have to put a solution in place, satisfy the customer, advise the customer how we're tackling that situation, and then moving forward. So this is challenging. Having a challenging environment like this is having the personnel who are experienced that can navigate these changes that are consistently happening, and they're able to come up with solutions. It's nice to be able to work with your customer where they may think there's no solution or how are we going to do this, and we're able to come back to them and give them two or three different scenarios on how we're going to accomplish what they need to get accomplished.
Chris Riback: It sounds like those one-off, unbelievable, you're never going to believe what happened with this client stories that might happen... I don't know how often... once a week, once a month, once a year, it's sounding like that's the continual business as usual right now. Like, "Oh, my gosh. You can't believe what we're going to have to try to figure out right now."
Mike LoRusso: Yes, and you know what? In this environment too where we're in a situation where it's not so much a financial issue, it's not so much an issue where there's other reasons why we're not able to move freight a certain way, this is a medical situation where it's impacting human lives and people who are getting sick. Some of the things that we are doing is helping mitigate some of those issues and be able to help our clients to navigate and keep their employees safe. So there's another extra added kind of thought process. It kind of gives us an extra step, and we'll bounce in our step when we're putting these things together, knowing that we have a small impact on helping people that are out there.
Chris Riback: Let's talk about, if we could, geography. I fully imagine that the locations you're focusing on now, they're the areas that have, as of today, been hit the hardest by the pandemic. Tell me what you're seeing geographically and maybe some of the requests that you've been fielding.
Mike LoRusso: Yes, so initially, we were seeing an impact naturally in APAC and China at first. We have freight throughout all our divisions that move in and out of China, also in APAC, Shanghai, Singapore, looking at Hong Kong as well, Malaysia. So we started seeing an impact a couple months ago out of Shanghai when we started seeing that the lift capacity was diminishing and then came to zero where we weren't able to get freight out of Shanghai. We saw capacity and we saw lift moving over to Singapore and Hong Kong and Malaysia. We started seeing our customers in those regions really start pumping out product. Normally, product that would go on cargo aircraft, we were seeing on an expedited basis because they needed to get as much production out the door as possible because they felt eventually they may see what happened in China impact their region.
Mike LoRusso: So we've seen that in APAC. We've seen that slow down where all of a sudden flights were canceling going into Europe, going into now the US. So we had to navigate that. Now, it's come full circle. We see it here in the US. Locally, I'm located in New York, so we are seeing the impact naturally of this virus in New York, being pretty much the epicenter now of where the virus is located and who it's impacting.
Chris Riback: So those realities that you were seeing in Asia just a few months ago, was that almost a canary in the coal mine for you globally? I mean, were you sensing or were maybe your clients and through their behaviors sensing that, "Wait a second. We see what's going on here. We see the impact. We better start doing prep action elsewhere around the globe." How effective were those preparations?
UP
Introduction:
Today is March 30, 2020 – and we’re recording this podcast in New York City – the current epicenter of the coronavirus. Depending upon when you’re listening to this program, the virus’ hot spots will likely be somewhere else. But wherever it’s traveled to, one thing is for sure; COVID-19 not only represents an acute, sometimes dire health concern, but also an unprecedented impact on our global supply chains as we know them.
After all:
• How do you move business-critical high tech components across borders when you can’t move cross-border?
• How do you manage just-in-time deliveries when the airline routes you depend on can change – even be cancelled – at any moment?
• How do you keep your own workforce safe and active during a global pandemic?
Those are just some of the challenges that Mike LoRusso is facing and solving every day. Mike is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Quick Specialty Logistics. He has worked on the financial and logistics management side of the business, so he knows how to keep processes operational during challenging situations – supporting the needs of businesses ranging from the financial services sector to healthcare, high tech, automotive to hospitality and beyond.
Mike took some time today to share how he and his team do it – keeping business and life moving even when it seems the whole world has stopped. As you will hear from time to time in the background, we caught up with him in Quick’s active NY warehouse.
Chris Riback: Mike, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate your time.
Mike LoRusso: Thanks for the invite.
Chris Riback: I hope that you and your family are staying safe and doing as well as possible during these very challenging times.
Mike LoRusso: Thank you. Yes, they are. Hopefully, the same with yours. Everyone's taking those precautions, right?
Chris Riback: Yes. It's 24/7, and we're all doing it. I know for you, you're doing it not only at home but also with Quick and at the office, and that's what I would like to talk with you about today. Tell me about your role. Why is that role front and center during this pandemic?
Mike LoRusso: Well, we have four divisions at Quick International. Two are on the medical side and one is on aircraft on ground, our Sterling division. I run Specialty Logistics, which is a little bit different. There are some similarities in terms of the services we provide, which is next flight out, deferred shipping, chain of custody. We do onboard couriers and charters, but we're not specifically in an aircraft on ground, let's say, or just specifically medical. So if there's something that's kind of outside the box, it would probably roll to my division. I have a team. The managers who work for me are pretty experienced, and they've done some things outside the box and are able to plan and do special projects and move freight differently.
Chris Riback: Yes, I'm sure that they have, and I'm looking forward to getting to talk with you about some of those specifics. At the highest levels, how has your role and how have the roles of the folks on your team changed since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak?
Mike LoRusso: I think things where we may have had some repetitive business, where it was consistent and we kind of knew the destinations where our freight was going to, we knew the lane segments where the pickup and delivery, and if there was any type of connecting flights, we knew those and had them in place. With the environment we're in now, those things are ever changing. Aircraft lift is changing. There's cancellations, not just internationally in certain regions like APAC and Europe. Now we're starting to see that in the US.
Mike LoRusso: So we're a little bit more cognizant of that, and we have to be on our toes because routings can change in an instant. Where we may have had something set on a particular lane with a particular aircraft and it could have been skidded material or it's palletized, and all of a sudden, that aircraft is now downgraded from a wide body to a smaller aircraft. So a 300 plus passenger aircraft is now 120 or 150 passenger aircraft. So that limits the ability to put freight, palletized freight on that aircraft. So we may either have to break down that freight and send it in smaller shipments or find another alternative. So our guys are constantly working that, making sure that we're satisfying our customers based on the destinations that they need to get freight to but finding different ways to move that freight.
Chris Riback: While most of us are working at home, you're actually in the office right now, aren't you? I can hear activity going on back there. Things are moving 24/7 at Quick.
Mike LoRusso: Yes, they are. Not just our office but the other divisions, the medical divisions as well as our aircraft on ground divisions are also 24/7. We have people that are on staff and on site. Where we have the ability to have people work from home, they're doing that, but there's certain logistical needs of our clients that we need to have personnel here at our location... We're at a warehouse location... to support that. So we're very careful about what we're doing, and we can probably get into that a little later, but we do have staff here and we need to have them here to support our client.
Chris Riback: It goes without saying, first of all, the warehouse noise that I'm hearing – keep operations moving. Secondly, if anything comes up and you've got a logistical emergency that you've got to go deal with, you just let me know and we will hit pause and we'll pick the conversation back up. I know that's what you're worrying about 24/7, and what everyone there is worrying about 24/7. Mike, you're a creative guy, I'm sure, by nature. Have you ever had to be as creative as you surely have had to be right now?
Mike LoRusso: You know what, at times we have. 9/11, that comes to mind where we had to be creative in what was happening. We'll have instances just on a particular project that we're working on with a client when something outside the box happens where we have to react to it, we have to put a solution in place, satisfy the customer, advise the customer how we're tackling that situation, and then moving forward. So this is challenging. Having a challenging environment like this is having the personnel who are experienced that can navigate these changes that are consistently happening, and they're able to come up with solutions. It's nice to be able to work with your customer where they may think there's no solution or how are we going to do this, and we're able to come back to them and give them two or three different scenarios on how we're going to accomplish what they need to get accomplished.
Chris Riback: It sounds like those one-off, unbelievable, you're never going to believe what happened with this client stories that might happen... I don't know how often... once a week, once a month, once a year, it's sounding like that's the continual business as usual right now. Like, "Oh, my gosh. You can't believe what we're going to have to try to figure out right now."
Mike LoRusso: Yes, and you know what? In this environment too where we're in a situation where it's not so much a financial issue, it's not so much an issue where there's other reasons why we're not able to move freight a certain way, this is a medical situation where it's impacting human lives and people who are getting sick. Some of the things that we are doing is helping mitigate some of those issues and be able to help our clients to navigate and keep their employees safe. So there's another extra added kind of thought process. It kind of gives us an extra step, and we'll bounce in our step when we're putting these things together, knowing that we have a small impact on helping people that are out there.
Chris Riback: Let's talk about, if we could, geography. I fully imagine that the locations you're focusing on now, they're the areas that have, as of today, been hit the hardest by the pandemic. Tell me what you're seeing geographically and maybe some of the requests that you've been fielding.
Mike LoRusso: Yes, so initially, we were seeing an impact naturally in APAC and China at first. We have freight throughout all our divisions that move in and out of China, also in APAC, Shanghai, Singapore, looking at Hong Kong as well, Malaysia. So we started seeing an impact a couple months ago out of Shanghai when we started seeing that the lift capacity was diminishing and then came to zero where we weren't able to get freight out of Shanghai. We saw capacity and we saw lift moving over to Singapore and Hong Kong and Malaysia. We started seeing our customers in those regions really start pumping out product. Normally, product that would go on cargo aircraft, we were seeing on an expedited basis because they needed to get as much production out the door as possible because they felt eventually they may see what happened in China impact their region.
Mike LoRusso: So we've seen that in APAC. We've seen that slow down where all of a sudden flights were canceling going into Europe, going into now the US. So we had to navigate that. Now, it's come full circle. We see it here in the US. Locally, I'm located in New York, so we are seeing the impact naturally of this virus in New York, being pretty much the epicenter now of where the virus is located and who it's impacting.
Chris Riback: So those realities that you were seeing in Asia just a few months ago, was that almost a canary in the coal mine for you globally? I mean, were you sensing or were maybe your clients and through their behaviors sensing that, "Wait a second. We see what's going on here. We see the impact. We better start doing prep action elsewhere around the globe." How effective were those preparations?
Subscribe to our podcast for insightful, in-depth conversations with experts
in healthcare, life science, aviation and technology logistics.
in healthcare, life science, aviation and technology logistics.
MORE EPISODES
In this special episode of QuickConversations we’re joined by a guest speaker from our parent company, Kuehne+Nagel: Robert Coyle, Senior Vice President of Pharma & Healthcare Strategy. He joins QuickSTAT’s Scott Ohanesian, Senior Vice President Commercial Operations, Clinical Trial Logistics, for a conversation about the pharma/healthcare global supply chain—which has become even more urgent and complex in our global pandemic world. Robert and Scott explore the strategic steps needed to go from clinical trials to the final delivery of drugs into the marketplace. From critical logistics planning to planning for the unexpected, it’s a fascinating conversation about this life-changing and life-saving global supply chain.
Host Chris Riback is joined by Michael McNally, The Quick Group’s Vice President of IT Product Management and Steve Wilson, Vice President of Strategic Accounts, Sterling Global Aviation Logistics, for an informative, timely discussion on the global aviation supply chain—and how to keep it on track. Their conversation focuses on one of the critical elements to do just that: technology. Michael and Steve share their insights on technology’s role in supporting the aviation industry’s supply chain needs. They also provide a “coming attractions” overview of QuickOnline 2.0—the newest version of our online logistics tool designed specifically to manage AOG and aviation logistics.
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A continuation of the conversation with The Quick Group’s technology leaders who, in Part 1, shared their experience and expertise on “Managing a Crisis on a Global Stage.” In Part 2 of our two-part series, they discuss best practices for keeping each segment of the global supply chain seamlessly active and secure—all while constantly pushing for continuous improvement.
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This episode, part one of a two part series, features The Quick Group’s technology leaders— Eric Bischoff, Chief Information Technology Officer; Michael McNally, Vice President of IT Product Management; Ed Wendell, Director of User and System Support Documentation & Training; and Bob Rottinger, Director of IT Infrastructure and Compliance. Their lively discussion is focused on business continuity and supporting customers’ mission-critical logistics during a crisis—particularly when that crisis is a global pandemic.
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PODCAST
Mike LoRusso: From IT to FI – global logistics solutions for mission-critical logistics needs
Mike LoRusso, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Quick Specialty Logistics, joins host Chris Riback for his second QuickConversations podcast. In this episode, Mike shares the wealth of knowledge that comes from a career in both financial and logistics management. He fully understands the urgency of high-tech and IT services -- whether it’s a component that needs to be immediately replaced or a data center moved. In this program, he covers it all – and just what it takes to deliver finely-tuned technology logistics.
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What does it take to deliver the logistics solutions needed to support the global aviation supply chain? Sterling’s Claus Engelbrechtsen tackles that question – and shares how his team works with clients every day to help keep their planes in the air. Host Chris Riback sat down with Claus in February of this year in New York, right before the COVID-19 outbreak, to talk about running a just-in-time supply chain – expertise that takes on even greater significance as the world copes with the impact of a global pandemic.
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In this episode of QuickConversations, host Chris Riback speaks with Paul White, Corporate Executive Vice President for Quick. Paul, who’s based in the UK, caught up with Chris by phone at the time when Brexit deadlines dominated the headlines and the coronavirus crisis was emerging. They covered a wide range of global logistics topics, including best practices for managing a supply chain during a crisis -- from bad weather to Brexit to a global pandemic.
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In this episode, host Chris Riback speaks with QuickSTAT’s Scott Ohanesian, Senior VP of Commercial Operations, North America. This program was recorded on April 27th, 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis was continuing its dramatic impact on lives globally. Scott shares what goes into supporting logistics for clinical trials and the solutions that ensure these clinical trials can continue -- all while addressing the pandemic-created obstacles faced by life science companies around the world.
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Host, Chris Riback talks with Quick's Executive Vice President of Quick Specialized Healthcare Logistics about the healthcare logistics. Dave covers a wide array of topics from the evolution of personalized medicine to delivering life-saving shipments while faced with natural disasters or a global health crisis.
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Subscribe to our podcast for insightful, in-depth conversations with experts
in healthcare, life science, aviation and technology logistics.
in healthcare, life science, aviation and technology logistics.