[Transcript]

[00:00:00] Jan Griffiths: This is the Auto Supply Chain Prophets podcast, and we are on a mission to bring you the latest insights and thought leaders leading the charge on supply chain transformation in our beloved automotive industry. This podcast is powered by QAD and AIAG. I'm Jan Griffiths, your host and producer. Let's meet your co-hosts.

[00:00:27] Jim Liegghio: I'm Jim Liegghio from AIAG.

[00:00:29] Terry Onica: I'm Terry Onica from QAD. Let's dive in.

[00:00:36] Jan Griffiths: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Auto Supply Chain Prophets Podcast. Let's check in with my co-hosts. Terry Onica, what have you been up to?

[00:00:43] Terry Onica: Well, it's not what I've been up to, but it's what the industry's gonna be up to. So, next year we have MMOG/LE, the Materials Management Operations Guideline/Logistics Evaluation, getting updated to version seven. And in the first quarter of 2027, we're gonna have an IATF 16949 update. So, just wanna let the audience out there to know, to start watching for supplier bulletins next year as these, you know, get announced andcome forward. So just to stay on the pulse of it.

[00:01:13] Jan Griffiths: Good advice. Jim, what about you?

[00:01:16] James Liegghio: Yeah. Thanks, Terry, for that kind of teaser for what's coming next year. There's gonna be a lot of work going on next year for AIAG as well. So, yeah, definitely a time of developing new products, new versions coming out. So, as far as us at AIAG, it's been a heck of a year. It's been a busy year. It's been a good year.

I'm actually getting ready to bring online six new training classes next year. It was gonna be three, then it was gonna be two, and then I started doing some digging and I found four more. So, I'm really excited because I oversee the training department here at AIAG, and we're bringing on six brand new classes, open enrollment next year. So that'll be an undertaking, but I'm looking forward to bringing that to the industry. So, that's what I been up to Jan.

[00:01:51] Jan Griffiths: That's good. Well, I'm still reeling from Carnegie Hall. I'm not gonna lie, that was a moment. To emcee an event at Carnegie Hall was something, but you know, I can't mislead you. It wasn't the main Carnegie Hall. It's called the music room. So it's a room off to the side, but it was still a Carnegie Hall, and it was tremendously exciting. And the alarm went off right in the middle of the event, and you know, as the emcee you gotta keep everybody calm and just pretend like you know what's going on, even when you don't. Ah, but it was fun.

It just reminded me, you know, it's about dealing with the unexpected, right? And there's so much of that going on in the automotive industry today. How you handle disruptions, how you handle changes. How you wake up one morning, and there's a different tariff rate or there's a supply chain shortage, a chip shortage. You've always gotta keep on going.

But an area that we really haven't paid much attention to is the area of service parts. The OES tend to refer to it as after sales. The supply chain tends to refer to it as either service or aftermarket, and there is a difference between those two terms, I know that.

And so, I'm thrilled today that we are able to bring on the show an OEM. Somebody who understands the challenges and understands maybe more importantly, the opportunities of after sales and what that does for an OEM. And we are gonna dive deep into that subject. That's why I am thrilled today that we can bring onto the show Darrin Lucas. Darrin is the Director of After Sales Supply Chain Operations Americas at Nissan. Darrin, welcome to the show.

[00:03:31] Darrin Lucas: Hello, and I'm excited to be here. I'm looking forward to this. I've had the luxury of listening to several of your podcasts over the last couple of weeks, and just excited to join the many.

[00:03:41] Jan Griffiths: Are you excited bring the spotlight onto after sales?

[00:03:46] Darrin Lucas: Absolutely. I've been in after sales for all of my career, and the one thing that I've been able to try to combat is, a lot of people even in our industry, even in our company, they don't understand after sales. They don't even know about it.

I go back to my original origins when I started at Nissan, I transitioned over from the Saturn brand, and when I used to venture over to our manufacturing facility in Smyrna and I would explain to them, what division I work for and they're like, what? Who? Is that a part of Nissan? So it was a head scratcher to me because we play such an important part in the company, and at that time, very few people knew about it.

[00:04:23] James Liegghio: Well, I'm gonna get us right out the gates here, Darrin. So you've had quite a journey. You just kind of mentioned it a little bit all the way from packaging. You're a packaging guy, you were a packaging specialist, and you've gone all the way up to leading after sales supply chain operations for the whole entire Americas for Nissan.

Before we dive in too deep, let's level set just a little bit here. How would you define after sales for our audience? Maybe take a minute to just kinda explain what that means from the insider point of view.

[00:04:48] Darrin Lucas: Absolutely. After sales or service part, as Jan mentioned, is everything we do to support the customer after that initial vehicle sale. That's about keeping the vehicles on the road and ensuring the customers are confident in our best true parts availability, service support, and warranty care.

It's where we build a trust with the customers, and we want that brand loyalty because we want them to come back to the brand again and again. So, once again, like I said, a lot of people, they don't understand the importance, but it's not about just that initial purchase, it's the carry through, it's that lifecycle with the customer, and that's what we do at after sales.

[00:05:21] James Liegghio: Yeah. You mentioned trust and I think it's something like when you start your car in the morning, you just rely and you trust that the car's gonna start and the parts are gonna work and everything gets where it's gotta go, so I love that. It's kind of the invisible trust in a way. You've got the parts and the reliability and the dealer networks and everything. And if you're doing your job, it's pretty seamless or invisible to most people I would suspect.

[00:05:40] Darrin Lucas: Oh, absolutely. I'm over the America's region and I visit a lot of our different countries. I've just done a two week session, one week in Mexico, one weekend in Canada. And I was talking to one of my leaders or my sub directors there, and he was talking about visibility and I told him about supply chain, where that entity is. If we're doing our job well, you don't know that we are there, but when we start screwing up, everybody knows about us. So we wanna stay radar, 'cause if nobody's talking about us, we knew we were doing our job and we're doing it well.

[00:06:09] Terry Onica: After sales plays such an important role in satisfaction and brand loyalty. How do you and your team bring that mission every day to life, to make sure that you keep those customers happy and you keep that brand loyalty?

[00:06:25] Darrin Lucas: Yes, about everything we do from our operational excellence, our advanced forecasting, we wanna make sure we have the right part on time, undamaged to the customer. You think about your customer's vehicle, that's a key component in their life and when something's wrong with it, it causes disruption and we wanna minimize that disruption and, everything we do. Is about delivering that part and building that trust and once again representing that brand.

[00:06:49] James Liegghio: I don't wanna understate how complicated this network is, Darrin. I think people, like I said, maybe they take it for granted that the parts are gonna be on the shelf or at the dealer that they need, but managing so many parts for so many different models, it's complex, right? So what do you and your team do to stay ahead of that demand and keep parts flowing where they're needed the most?

[00:07:07] Darrin Lucas: It's funny you ask that, we're in a definite transition. Historically, we would use previous demand, seasonality to kind of drive our forecasting. Now, we're transitioning over into more causal forecasting, AI driven.

And when you think about supply chain with Nissan, we're broken into two pillars, right? We have our supply chain management and we have our supply chain operations. So we partner with our supply chain management team to make sure that we are transitioning and we have the right parts.

We build those relationships with our suppliers so we can transition from a transactional relationship with our suppliers to more strategic partnership so we can drive for operational excellence and parts availability to again fit our customer's needs.

[00:07:48] Terry Onica: How do you manage that? 'Cause I know throughout all my career you've got production and then you have the after sales, and you have suppliers that oftentimes manage both. So how do you work together with production and after sales to really drive that smoothly between the two?

[00:08:08] Darrin Lucas: I would say that's been an evolving partnership over the years, 'cause, historically, anybody that's been in the market, they know predominantly manufacturing or production gets that priority. And within Nissan, I would like to say, no, we've built a nice balance of making sure our suppliers know we work closely with manufacturing to make sure that we give priority to both after sales and production, 'cause we need to satisfy those customers that have already invested in our product and they're looking for that loyalty from Nissan as we suspect the loyalty from them as well.

[00:08:41] Terry Onica: So, I have to imagine, as you mentioned, data and technology, AI are probably really important now and going forward. So how do you leverage that in the after sales organization?

[00:08:54] Darrin Lucas: We're transitioning into more AI forecasting, predictive analytics, and also trying to bring more real-time dashboards into our supply chain management. On the operational side is very interesting, 'cause when you look at Nissan, we do a lot of benchmarking versus our peers, and we're very efficient when it comes to operational perspective, but we're very manual. So we're trying to use a lot of new tools and dashboards to help our operational efficiency while looking into automation as we move forward.

[00:09:23] Jan Griffiths: How do you feel about AI, Darrin? When people talk about AI, the reason I ask is I was at a procurement conference a few weeks ago and it was all about AI, how do you feel about it as a leader in the supply chain space?

[00:09:37] Darrin Lucas: Oh. I think if you had asked me that question long ago, I was very hesitant. But as I've seen the capabilities and what it can bring to the table to help us satisfy our customer, I am all in. As far as my team, I'm open for them to use it as much as possible. And with a lot of the challenges that we have in supply chain right now with growth and the complexities of supply chain, it is only gonna make us stronger. And we think about how we recruit our talent, how we develop our talent, and to make sure that they're able to maximize our usage of AI.

[00:10:07] James Liegghio: You know, you led me right to where my head was going, Darrin, with collaboration, kind of going back old school, let's say. We talked about AI for a minute, but let's talk about old school collaboration. Just dealing with your suppliers, dealing with your own purchasing channels, dealing with the dealerships. How do you leverage just pure collaborative skills?

I mean, to do what you guys do. That's my question. You know, AIAG we're all about collaboration. And sure, AI, the technology piece is huge and it's on, we're burgeoning on the front of that, but what about collaborating with your suppliers, purchasing, and the dealerships? How do you make that all come together?

[00:10:37] Darrin Lucas: I think, one, it starts with just building trust and with transparency and collaboration. I mean, we have, I'll go to forecasting. I think in the past, our forecasting could have been stronger, and we've gotten better at that. And it helps our suppliers perform. And also, just performance data, marketing that's helping us from an inventory perspective, operational perspective, and just how we execute and deliver to the customer. And sharing those insights not only with our suppliers, but our purchasing department helps us move forward as well.

[00:11:06] James Liegghio: Is there a like a feedback mechanism from the dealership side? Is there kind of a reverse feedback from the dealer? I'm only asking this, 'cause I'm kind of new to the whole after sales thing and I'm very curious how that works.

[00:11:16] Darrin Lucas: Absolutely. Nissan has several groups of what we call dealer advisory boards, and we actually have one for after sales, where we bring them in on a regular frequency, either in person or online. And we kinda share our ideas of what we're thinking, some of the projects we're trying to do, initiatives we're trying to do. And we use them as our sounding board, right?

They can tell us, whether they think this is gonna work, what changes we can incorporate? And even we go back and we do that PDCA after we launch initiatives just to make sure it's working as we planned. So, it's a very powerful tool. And not only that we have those advisory boards. We constantly change the members after a period of time to make sure we're getting fresh voices and fresh commentary back from my dealers.

[00:11:57] Terry Onica: So, I have to imagine, looking at myself when I go to get my vehicle worked on or maybe maintenance done, you've probably got an avenue where people are coming in, they need repair, and you're offering them services. So how does that actually work behind the scenes when we as consumers come into the dealership, and how does that end up getting to you?

[00:12:17] Darrin Lucas: So from a customer experience, when they walk into the dealer and they go into that service lane, you know, that first interaction, what we try to build is that, from our past knowledge of that customer, whether it be a first time visit or a second visit, we can look back at that historical data and look at what needs done to that certain care points for that customer. And all of that information is driven back to our what we call our DBS system that transitions that information to us and it helps us build our inventory at the dealer for that retail inventory management. And it also helps us build our trend and our forecasting moving forward so we can make sure that the dealer has the right parts available at the time of service when that customer walks in the door.

[00:12:57] Jan Griffiths: Darrin, I wanna talk to you about culture at Nissan. You are not the first person I've interviewed at Nissan, and I am seeing a trend, a trait. I'm seeing people who have spent pretty much their entire careers at Nissan.

Let's go back to the beginning, you talked about your journey from being a packaging specialist and now you are a director for after sales. You can see the career progression. Why, Darrin, what's so magical about the culture at Nissan that you stay, because that's not typical in this day and age. What is it that keeps you there?

[00:13:38] Darrin Lucas: Yeah, I think Nissan has a unique culture, one that I love, that I like to say I grew up in. But it's a culture of empowerment. Coming in, you know, I graduated from Clemson University Packaging Science, and I thought my career was gonna be within packaging. But once I entered Nissan, I saw the ability to not only grow, but expand and explore.

And all of my leaders throughout my career has always encouraged me to reach out and do more. And I was given that ability, that opportunity, and I took advantage of it. And it wasn't just, I was siloed in packaging, I was given the ability to delve into quality, delve into logistics, delve into operations. That was very important to me, and I think a lot of people see that. So, I think that's why you see so many people stick around for decades, if not their entire career. You also have what I call boomerangers. They all, you know, be with Nissan, they all leave and they come back, 'cause that culture is so strong here.

[00:14:31] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. That's really interesting. You know, what I'm sensing is there we often see talk about leaders reaching back, right? So as people progress in their careers, reaching back, and I'm sensing that there's a lot of that at Nissan where leaders really encourage you to go beyond your comfort zone, right? To try a different function, to take the next step, to take that promotion. Is that a correct assumption on my part?

[00:14:58] Darrin Lucas: Absolutely, that's something we encourage, right? And don't be afraid to fail, you're not gonna be chastised just because you took a stretch assignment into another group. 'Cause what we find is, those individuals that rotate, they go and they take those stretch assignments, they become stronger leaders. They become stronger individual contributors because they understand the business more. And that's been very vital in our cultural development here. And I think we're still, to this day, pushing for that even more.

[00:15:23] James Liegghio: That's awesome. That's awesome to hear that all three of us have a real soft spot for leadership and understanding cultures and organizations, Darrin. So hearing your story and hearing the culture of Nissan and seeing it shine through, like Jan said, your career progression. It's awesome to see that. So, thanks for sharing your journey.

[00:15:38] Terry Onica: And I wanna add to that, we work with a lot of university and now even high school students, and I love to tell them that supply chain is such a huge field. And to your point, you can keep moving around. You start at one point, but all of us, it ended up someplace differently than what we really expected, so I love your story. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners who are university students will really take what you said to heart. And thanks for confirming that from your own experience as well, too.

[00:16:06] Darrin Lucas: And I'll add to that, traveling across America, just talking to the different teams, and I love it when I go to speak to a team and I'm doing my small group chats and I get into a group of, say, packaging engineers and we're sharing everybody's background. And when I walk through my background, when they hear the fact that I started as a packaging engineer, you see the eyes brighten up.

[00:16:26] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:16:26] Darrin Lucas: Career path options just opened to them tenfold when I share that story, so it is good to see.

[00:16:31] Terry Onica: Looking ahead in supply chain, at Nissan and after sales, what do you see are some innovations that are coming forward for you? It could be in technology, it could be other innovations, but what are you seeing you're gonna be doing in the future?

[00:16:44] Darrin Lucas: Delving into more AI forecasting. I mentioned that in our DCs, our distribution centers, we're very manual. So delving into some automation there, that's a big initiative for us as we move forward. And also our sustainability initiatives, eco-friendly packaging, some green logistics. That's very key to our brand.

Even with some of the geopolitical changes in the automotive field, we still have those commitments there. And also, just other innovations across the Americas, right? We talked about aligning across North and South America and just building centers of excellence. So I think we have opportunities to create some efficiencies and operational centers of excellence across the America's region.

[00:17:25] Terry Onica: You know, looking ahead with your suppliers, what would you wanna share with them right now? What should they be focusing on when you look at the aftermarket? What advice would you have from today? What would you say?

[00:17:37] Darrin Lucas: Let's find out how we can be more dynamic and flexible. That's the one thing that I see as we move forward. We have a lot of norms that's been in place for many decades, you know, how we've always done it is what you hear. About we can't continue to operate in that vein anymore. We have to be more dynamic, flexible, and adjust to our customer needs and adjust to the industry. I think we've had a lot of events over the last 15 to 20 years that's kind of challenged us from a flexibility perspective and we're better for it, but I think we can even improve on that. With customer, demands, and trends changing ever so often, we have to be able to shift almost on a dime these days to make sure we're satisfying them.

[00:18:17] Jan Griffiths: We couldn't agree with you more. It is all about speed, and yes, we do need more flexibility. Darrin, I have a question for you. It's a similar question, but I'm asking a different way. What do we have to unlearn? What are perhaps some of the behaviors that you see in this industry that we have to unlearn, particularly as it relates to after sales and service?

[00:18:41] Darrin Lucas: I would say unlearn the OEM way, 'cause I think all of us have very similar models. When we think about our final mile, how we deliver to the customer, the base of customer that we are delivering to. I think, historically, we've all been set up to distribute to our dealers and to their dealerships daily. But I think every OEM right now is working in partnership with our dealers to expand our e-commerce presence. And when you have that new evolving channel, we have to be able to deliver to our customers in a different way, in a different manner. That's a different expectation that right now that we're not fully ready to address, but we're evolving quickly to meet those customer's needs.

[00:19:20] Jan Griffiths: So we have to unlearn basically the traditional ways of doing business, and it's not all bad, but there are some things that we need to leave behind and some things that we need to do differently to evolve and transform.

[00:19:34] Darrin Lucas: Absolutely.

[00:19:35] Jan Griffiths: Darrin, who are you as a leader? You have a team. You have a group of people that you're responsible for. It's up to you now to create the culture for that team. So who are you as a leader and how do you create that culture?

[00:19:49] Darrin Lucas: Yeah. So, for me, we talk about culture and it started early on in my career, starting with the Saturn brand. I think that was the best opportunity I could have started with, 'cause that was such a unique culture and I've taken it on throughout my career. And I think, if you speak to anyone that's ever been on my team, whatever, and it keeps coming out. And when I talk to people, it's about feeling of family and culture. I empower my team. I think that's very important. I think I spoke on, from my perspective, I was able to do that within my career. So I definitely wanna do that with my team members. And leading a large team as I do, across the Americas region, it's all about empowering my team. And I think it's key to our success, right? Without it, we can't service our customers. And I like to say I try to lead with balance. So that's operational excellence, sustainability, and team engagement. Because strategies only works where the culture brings it to life.

[00:20:43] Jan Griffiths: Ooh, strategy. Strategy only works where culture brings it to life. I interviewed a leader recently and we talked about people versus KPIs. So, are you somebody who focuses more on the people or on the KPIs? And in our beloved auto industry, traditionally, it's all been about the KPIs. But this lead has said that if you focus on the people, the KPIs will take care of themselves. I'm sensing that that's something that you're right behind that.

[00:21:13] Darrin Lucas: Yeah, absolutely. Managing a large scale team like I do, and really at my level, I'm not digging into the weeds managing all the KPIs, but you have to trust and empower your people to do that. And when you do it, they take care of it because they feel empowered to do so. I don't have to micromanage, and it just comes through in the overall performance of the team.

[00:21:35] Terry Onica: When it comes to the team, what do you look for in your role for the people that are in your team?

[00:21:40] Darrin Lucas: Dynamic leaders like leaders that are not only gonna try to achieve and accomplish the KPIs, but also ones that are forward thinking, right? What's the next step? How can we plan ahead? Because if you're just doing the same thing over and over again, you're not really getting any better. You know, there's an old saying, "If you're not improving, you're getting worse." So, just leaders that are going to challenge the norms, understand what our vision is as a company and our brand image, and move forward from there.

[00:22:06] Jan Griffiths: And there it is. Darrin Lucas, clearly, a forward thinking leader, a transformational leader for the future in the often underestimated area of after sales and service. Thank you, Darrin, for shining a light on this part of the industry and for sharing your story with us.

[00:22:26] Darrin Lucas: Thank you all, and thank you for having me.

[00:22:28] Jan Griffiths: We love to hear from our listeners, reach out to any one of us, our contact information is in the show notes. And if you want to dive deeper into our content, check out our website at autosupplychainprophets.com.