Closing Gaps: The Tier Two Perspective on Supply Chain Success
When OEMs change their schedules or requirements, the ripple effect through the supply chain can feel like a game of telephone. Messages get passed down the chain, sometimes altered and ignored, leaving those further down the line piecing together what has changed.
That's the reality for Jenni Smith, VP of Supply Chain at Royal Technologies, who joins the show to share what managing that complexity as a tier two supplier is like.
She explains how this constant guessing game makes planning nearly impossible and why direct visibility into the "why" behind OEM decisions is just as important as the numbers themselves.
Jenni clarifies that communication and speed are non-negotiable, but doesn't stop there. At Royal, automation is a core strategy, not a side project. She talks about the company's use of robotics to offset labor challenges and how AI is helping them forecast demand, spot volatility, and identify risks months in advance.
The conversation then turns to MMOG/LE. While many treat it as a compliance headache, Royal approaches it differently, using it as a framework to uncover process gaps, improve efficiency, and strengthen profitability.
Jenni gives a practical example with packaging standards: on paper, Royal could pass certification, but by actually listening to warehouse teams and standardizing packaging, they unlocked real cost savings and smoother operations.
But systems and standards only go so far if people are burning out. Jenni is candid about "supply chain fatigue" in today's unpredictable environment. Instead of ignoring it, she leans into knowing her team, rotating responsibilities, giving people recovery time, and jumping into the trenches alongside them during crises.
When asked what she'd like to see from tier ones, Jenni's answer is simple: open the doors and invite tier twos in. Real efficiency happens when suppliers can see processes firsthand, ask questions, and solve problems together instead of working in silos. Engagement, she says, is the foundation of stronger relationships up and down the chain.
Looking ahead, Jenni's focus is on stability—aligning Royal's supply base to MMOG standards and preparing for the next disruption before it hits. With a culture that values quality, delivery, innovation, and people in equal measure, Royal Technologies proves that even a tier two can lead the way in how supply chains adapt to the future.
Themes discussed in this episode:
- How OEM requirement changes travel through EDI and disrupt tier two suppliers
- Why communication speed and context are critical for supply chain stability
- The role of automation and robotics in reducing labor constraints and boosting efficiency
- Using AI for demand sensing, forecasting, and identifying supply chain risks months in advance
- How MMOG/LE can be used as a tool for profitability and process improvement rather than just compliance
- The rise of supply chain fatigue post-COVID and strategies to prevent burnout in small teams
- The value of AIAG membership for tier two suppliers and how it supports training and collaboration
- Why stronger engagement between tier one and tier two suppliers is key to solving problems and building efficiency across the chain
Featured on this episode:
Name: Jennifer Smith
Title: Vice President of Supply Chain at Royal Technologies
About: Jennifer is the Vice President of Supply Chain at Royal Technologies Corp., bringing more than 20 years of leadership experience across every corner of the supply chain. Her career spans strategic sourcing, purchasing, supplier quality, demand planning, materials management, customer service, and ERP implementations—always with a focus on building and guiding high-performance teams.
Her expertise also extends to financial analysis and operations management, making her a versatile leader with a proven record of achieving results in complex, cross-functional environments. Known for her clear communication and collaborative style, she consistently delivers outcomes that strengthen both performance and relationships across the supply chain.
Connect: LinkedIn
Mentioned in this episode:
- Materials Management Operations Guideline/Logistics Evaluation (MMOG/LE)
- Automotive Trade Compliance Masterclass
- Supervisor Boot Camp
Episode Highlights:
[02:58] From Grocery to Gears: A listener question on EDI changes sets the stage as Jennifer Smith joins the show, bringing a unique supply chain journey from grocery aisles to automotive tiers.
[04:31] The Telephone Game: Jenni Smith explains how OEM changes ripple down like a game of telephone, leaving tier twos guessing unless clear communication and context are shared.
[06:41] Never Too Much: In supply chain, silence is costly—every delay or vague update leaves teams scrambling, which is why constant, fast communication is the only way to keep production aligned and avoid chaos.
[07:33] Robots and Foresight: Royal turns to robotics and AI to cut labor strain, spot risks early, and keep supply flowing long before problems hit the OEMs.
[09:02] AI in the Trenches: From forecasting demand swings to predicting part shortages months ahead, Royal is using AI to move from reactive firefighting to proactive supply chain control.
[10:26] Small Fish, Smart Systems: Royal stays nimble between giant customers and suppliers by leaning on ERP and integrated data to boost efficiency and keep plants connected nationwide.
[12:01] Beyond the Checklist: MMOG/LE becomes more than compliance when it’s used to uncover weaknesses and turn them into opportunities for stronger, more profitable supply chains.
[13:08] Culture Over Compliance: Instead of treating MMOG/LE as a burden, Royal’s leadership uses it to strengthen quality, streamline processes like packaging, and turn efficiency into real cost savings.
[15:26] Fighting Supply Chain Fatigue: With constant disruption taking its toll, Jenni shares how flexibility, cross-training, and hands-on leadership keep teams resilient and prevent burnout.
[19:46] Open the Doors: Jenni calls on tier ones to invite suppliers in, share their processes, and solve problems together instead of keeping partners at arm’s length.
[22:24] Strengthening the Base: Looking ahead, Jenni sets her sights on building stability by aligning Royal’s supply base with MMOG standards to brace for future risks.
Top Quotes:
[06:59] Jennifer: “My biggest advice for the tier twos is twofold: You can never over-communicate. Communication is the key, especially through the tier ones and down to the tier twos. And the second thing is that the speed at which communication happens is also critical. So, it's not just that you communicate, but not lagging on that communication for a few days, and making sure we can get it as fast as possible. That allows us to adjust schedules, make sure we're working the weekend before you want to work, and any of those types of adjustments to allow the flow to happen back up quickly.”
[12:19] Jennifer: “I think it's really important for the listeners to understand that MMOG is not a tier one requirement or an OEM requirement. When we look at what MMOG really is, it's the best practices across the organization. And we used MMOG to find our gaps, and where we have pieces that are potentially not going to allow us to be profitable in the long term because of supply chain, either risks, or process gaps. Take the assessment, not as a requirement, but as a way to make yourself better.”
[22:02] Jennifer: “Engage, open your doors, and invite. I think when our teams have gone to our tier ones and learned about why and how they do something, it has not only built the relationships, but it's grown efficiencies. And we just had some of our team over at one of the big tier ones, looking at their receiving and why they receive something one way. And it's going to change the way our warehouse is set up to ensure that there's efficient picking versus just going through the warehouse to pick somebody's product. And I think that as long as they're engaged and they're open and allowing their suppliers to come in and see and really work through problems together, that's the best thing.”
Transcript
[Transcript]
[:[00:00:27] Jim Liegghio: I'm Jim Liegghio from AIAG.
[:[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-host. Terry Onica, what have you been up to?
[:And I tell you, they knocked it out of the ballpark. It was amazing to see how much they've grown. It was so exciting. I tell you, I had to fight back tears. It was like a mom, like I just could not believe all that they understood and how they articulated all. They did awesome.
I think that was so cool. Great experience. And I just wish we would do more of this across the United States, 'cause we really could get the high school students in to start thinking about supply chain and manufacturing jobs for sure.
[:[00:01:37] James Liegghio: Jan, I've been staying busy. It's August, right? So, we're moving into kind of a busier period here at AIAG. We're actually planning our schedules for all of next year's training right now. All of our training classes. So, we're busy. We're working on that right now and ironing out the schedules for next year already.
So, with that, we've got a couple new classes coming up. A couple of new classes are kicking off. We have a trade compliance practitioners bootcamp series that kicks off next week here. That's one of our new classes, which is pretty awesome. And then we have that new supervisor class I was talking about that starts in October.
And also some new interesting twists on some of the way we're packaging some training for next year in the quality space. Lots going on, never a dull moment, hanging in there, and doing really well.
[:[00:02:23] James Liegghio: I saw that. With Roop Raj.
[:[00:02:26] Jan Griffiths: Woo. Yes. He's such a great guy. So authentic. He really is. You know, he cares about the audience, and we care about our audience. We love it when we get questions from the audience. And whether you communicate with us directly on LinkedIn on our personal pages, or you send us a question to autosupplychainprofits.com. We wanna hear from you. We wanna hear what questions you have or concerns you have. And we got a question this week, and it came directly to Terry. Terry, tell us about it.
[:[00:03:18] Jan Griffiths: And that is a great question, and that's why today we have the perfect person as a guest to answer that question. And she works for a tier two, and I don't know that if we've had tier two on before, maybe we have. But I am also feeling this way, too, that we don't have enough focus on our tier twos. And let's face it, you know, without tier twos, there is no tier one, and there is OEM. So, the tier two focus is extremely important.
So today, I am thrilled to bring on the show, Jenni Smith. She is the VP of Supply Chain for Royal Technologies. And what's interesting, something about Jenni you may not know, she started her career in the grocery business working for Maya. And for those of you who are outside of Michigan and maybe don't know what Maya is all about, it is a massive grocery store.
Well, it's more than a grocery store. It's an everything store. It's a chain in Michigan, and I can't imagine, you know, what you learn by being in charge of supply chain for a grocery store, and how you bring that learning into automotive. What a fabulous background. So, Jenni Smith, welcome to show.
[:[00:04:31] Jan Griffiths: So, Jenni, you heard the question that we heard from our audience, somebody who works for an OEM, and they wanna know the impact of EDI and changes to EDI all the way through the supply chain, and any efficiencies. So, what do you got?
[:So, it's a game of telephone, and the fact that it could go amplified if they said, "I want 10," and then the tier one says, "I want, well, 15." Well, now I need to go make 20. So we get that often, and we also get the fact it gets passed through, but they don't make the change because they wanna make sure that the inventory is secure through the supply chain.
So post-COVID, you may make a change at the OEM, and it actually never gets down to us because they may not accept the downward change and keep the supply high. So it goes both ways. It's either a really big up or a really big down. But for us, at the tier two, it's really just a guessing game each week on what's changed and how do you get to see the difference between last week's EDI and this week's EDI to know what the adjustments are. And then can you respond quickly enough to get it back up through the channel?
The other question that she asked is about the inefficiencies. One of the best things we've gotten out of our tier ones and our OEMs is the ability to connect and communicate on a weekly basis to the 'why.' And so, the OEMs who allow their tier twos to be part of their manufacturing calls and listen with their tier one OEMs, allow us visibility into what's changed. Is there a super Saturday? Are you working a weekend? Are they closing down for three weeks on the line? All of those things allow us to have the 'why' behind the data, to catch it, and be able to move it along much faster.
[:[00:06:57] Jennifer Smith: Yeah. I think the biggest thing, and my biggest advice for the tier twos, is twofold: You can never over-communicate. Communication is the key, especially through the tier ones and down to the tier twos. And the second thing is the speed in which communication happens is also critical.
So, it's not just that you communicate, but not lagging on that communication for a few days, and making sure we can get it as fast as possible. That allows us to adjust schedules, make sure we're working the weekend before you wanna work, any of those types of adjustments to allow the flow to happen back up quickly.
[:[00:07:48] Jennifer Smith: Yeah, I think, in all areas of our business, automation is critical. When you think about the ability for labor in the United States, specifically, anytime you can automate, you can secure productivity, right? And so, we've been working on robots and robots within our facilities to ensure that those manual interventions can happen on a regular basis.
Within engineering and within supply chain, we use a lot of AI and AI resources to ensure that we can have the right visibility. And then, the second thing is measuring what matters and ensuring that when you're automating, you're automating things that are repetitive, but they're also where you can get quick visibility to changes within the supply chain.
What COVID taught us was how do you see risk out in the future more effectively, and how can we, as a tier two, communicate that risk up to the OEM without an impact to them. So, if I can get ahead of it, we won't shut the OEMs down. And so we use a lot of automation within our supply chain, from an AI perspective, but then we also use the robotic side of automation within the facilities from a labor perspective.
[:[00:09:12] Jennifer Smith: So, I'd say we're in a crawl, rock, run stage of using AI, and we're definitely in the crawl stage of it. But where we use AI the most is within our forecasting abilities. How do we use AI and demand sensing to ensure that when the EDI comes in that we're matching it to what our forecast is and making sure that we can understand the volatility in the forecast effectively? That's uno number one.
The second place we're using AI is really in what we call our runout reporting, where maybe pre-COVID, we could see two to three weeks out of where we were gonna miss in a volume perspective. But when you connect the bomb all the way down and you can use the customer's EDI against our bomb, we can actually see where we're gonna run out months in advance.
Especially with long lead times like we had in 20 and 21, that allows us to get ahead of it. And so those are the two areas where we've really used an AI model. But I believe the supply chain is really ripe for an AI intervention here in the next few years.
[:[00:10:49] Jennifer Smith: I think that the reason we are so focused on automation from that perspective and using it to grow, when you think about an ERP, is that, as a tier two, we're relatively small. I always say we're a small fish that sits between two very large ponds, right?
When you talk about our tier one customers and our supply base, they're large customers and large suppliers. And our ability to stay nimble and small, we have to use IT systems to be able to drive that. Otherwise, we'll have an employee and a staff perspective that's may not be comparable to the size of our organization. So, we drive it from an efficiency perspective, but also from a communication and a synergy perspective.
We have plants across the US that are using this interconnected data. So, we are definitely a centralized organization. All of our main operations behind the office or back office are within Hudsonville. But we have plants across the United States that need that data, too. So, connecting them using an integrated ERP system with all of its facets is really important to us.
[:[00:12:18] Jennifer Smith: I think it's really important for the listeners to understand that MMOG is not a tier one requirement or an OEM requirement. When we look at what MMOG really is, it's the best practices across the organization. And we used MMOG to find our gaps, and where do we have pieces that are potentially not going to allow us to be profitable in the long term because of supply chain, either risks or process gaps.
And if you take the assessment, not as a requirement, but as a way to make yourself better, I think we've learned a lot through our journey of doing the full MMOG assessment and looking at it not as a check the box, but as a, "Okay, where are our real failure gaps?"
[:[00:13:35] Jennifer Smith: I think, first of all, we have a really strong leadership team that embraces supply chain as part of the culture. So, number one, no different than quality. We want the perfect part in the box, at the right time to our customers. And that's just a culture of Royal, like that's what we built our foundation on, is quality and delivery.
So, we've always been strong on the quality side, from an IETF perspective. Adding and layering MMOG to ensure that we have the best practices on the delivery side are just as important to Royal.
So, I wish I could say there was a magic button, but it really was making sure you go through it. And I mean, Terry, you've been in a meeting or two with us as we've walked this journey. And I'll give you an example, and that's supplier packaging. And the supplier packaging is a part of MMOG. And if you were to look at it, do we have standards for gaylords and labels and all of the things that make sense? Yes. I could pass the certification right now in the exact wording of the law of MMOG. But when you start talking to our warehouse people and our operations people, they're like, "No."
But if you can get standard packaging on incoming and we can standardize what's going into our assembly equipment and the size of the box, the efficiency gain is an actual cost save for Royal. And so, when you take it to the next level, and you actually look at it, holistically, it's all about profitability and the ability to deliver.
And I think MMOG, if you really take it and pull it apart in the spirit, that's what you're gonna get. So, you can do it one of two ways. You can do it and just check the box and be done with it. But you can also use it to really grow profitability and efficiencies within your facilities if taken in the right context.
[:[00:15:48] Jennifer Smith: I think supply chain fatigue is a real thing, and I do think that, you know, pre-COVID, an issue would pop up once every six or seven months, maybe every year. You'd be in it for a few weeks, and then you'd get out of it, and life would go on, and you'd have six months of stability. And post COVID, I think it's this rollercoaster of up and down, and you're right, supply chain fatigue is a thing, and the way we deal with it at Royal is to a couple things: one, you wanna know who your people are and you wanna make sure you're meeting their needs and being flexible in what's going on.
In a minute or in a moment, you may have somebody who's working long hours and long nights to get through something, and then you need to be flexible enough to give them the space and time to take the recovery time off on their own.
The second thing we do with a small team and a small staff is we're cross-trained. So that the people who are in the trenches of the commodities that are really, really high volume, high stress, high issue, we try to switch them out every once in a while, to give them a little bit of breathing room. So that helps.
But I think the one thing you gotta do is really get to know the team, get to know what their needs are and how they find relief. Is it taking the weight off for a little while? Is it switching accounts? Is it giving them the vacation so that they can just go reprieve when they need it? And how do we all know that you're in the trenches with 'em? Nobody wants to have somebody who's a leader sitting on the sidelines saying, "Go do," in the middle of a crisis.
How do we, as supply chain leaders, help pick up some of that heavy weight? I mean, at one time, we all started cutting purchase orders in any type of supply chain. You were either receiving 'em or you were sending 'em. That's how we all kind of start in this business. So how do we empathize, and how do we care about the employees as they're going through it?
[:We have a big focus right now on sub-tiers and small—to mid-size companies, so this is perfect. It's perfect timing to have you on the podcast. And my understanding is that you're going to get more involved and engaged, which is, number one, that you joined. Yes. Excellent. Number two, we love to have our companies that join engage right away.
So, my understanding is that you're going to participate in the supply chain steering committee as a start. Within AIAG, what else do you find interesting to participate in and engage with?
[:And then, when you really look at it, the supervisor training and being a small staff, how do we leverage what AIAG has to supplement our internal training that we have from a manufacturing facility? That is a win for Royal at a very low cost. And that, to us, is a space that we're really gonna start investigating as the year goes forward.
[:But I have a question for you, I'm going to anoint you here and now, the ambassador for the tier two supplier community, okay? So, whether you want it or not, you got it. Okay?
Ambassador of the tier two supplier community automotive industry, what would you ask of your tier one customers? Something that you want them to do that they're not doing, or do more of, or do less of? This is your chance to speak to your tier one supply chain people. What? What would you say?
[:We just had some of our team over at one of the big tier ones, looking at their receiving and why they receive something one way. This is going to change the way our warehouse is set up to ensure that there's efficient picking versus just going through the warehouse to pick somebody's product.
And I think that as long as they're engaged and they're open and allowing their suppliers to come in and see and really work through problems together, that's the best thing. And I think that's all we're looking for is that level of engagement, right? A lot of times, you feel as a tier two it's, "Do it or..." And I think sometimes we have to remember we're all in the same boat and we're all rowing in the same direction, and how do we solve problems together?
[:[00:21:14] Jennifer Smith: Yep.
[:I mean, a few did, but not that many. So, as a recovering tier one person, I would say to the tier twos, get out there and ask. You might have to force the engagement a little bit. But also, I want to take this to the WRI. As you know, the WRI is the Working Relations Index, where the supply base, the tier ones, rate the OEMs.
And one of the big areas that came through from the suppliers to the OEMs is exactly what you're talking about: VP engagement. So, we're seeing it at all levels in the supply chain. The message is clear: more engagement, more communication. Thank you.
[:[00:22:21] Jan Griffiths: There it is.
[:[00:22:24] Jan Griffiths: Jenni, you've started down the adoption curve of AI into your business. You're starting to see the benefits. You have a strong culture at Royal Technologies. Supply chain definitely has a seat at the table, and is considered, from what I can see, in just about every decision that the company makes. You are way ahead of the game with MMOG/LE. What's next?
[:I think, when we think about us from a tier two, I think we're pretty strong, but it's making sure that our supply base is as strong as we are as we go into the next level of what's next and what's the next big risk that's gonna hit Royal.
[:[00:23:22] Jennifer Smith: Thanks for having me.
[: