New Florence. New Renaissance.

Learning from last century logistics

Given all the supply chain breakdowns of the last couple of years, I have often thought about Howard Tibbals who passed away earlier this year.  I had reached out to him a couple of years ago and hoped to meet him, but I suspected it would be impossible during the lockdowns. Even more than a craftsman, Howard was a logistician and I hoped to learn from him about the amazing supply chain of the circus a century ago

Howard spent most of his adult life recreating a miniature model of the US circus during its Golden Age in the 1920s and 30s. The Ringling Museum, an hour’s drive from us, has a center which houses his collection, the largest in the world. Requiring over 3,800 square feet. it is a model of the circus under tent. With over 42,000 objects, it includes not only the big top, menagerie, and side show tents, but also 59 railroad cars, 54 wagons, and over 900 animals. Each tent and wagon is equipped exactly like the real circus from steam kettles in the cookhouse tent to the 7,000 folding chairs for the audience.

Here are some highlights from my research about the complexity of circus logistics back then

• During the 1920s and 1930s, the combined Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus required more than 100 rail cars to ferry 1300 workers and performers, 800 animals and their cages and equipment.
• The circus would travel up to 15,000 miles over the 7-8 month season and visit 150 towns.
• They would stay at some of the larger cities like Chicago and New York for a week or two, but most other towns they would only visit for a day. It was a cash-only business in those times – so they would start in the bigger cities and build up a cash cushion. Many circuses would go broke in the middle of the season. No digital payment or cash flow technology back then.
• The loading, unpacking, re-packing, travel etc required unbelievable precision. The evening performance ended at 10:30 p.m. but they had to be in the next town by 4 am so that the circus could start its town parade by 11 am. Required lots of parallel activities – tearing down and moving stuff to the train yard while the performance was still on-going. Cooking for everyone while the Big Tent was being set up. There was no HR or project management software.
• The local supply chains were just as precise. An order for a day for the humans was something on these lines of 90 gallons of fresh milk, 1,000 pounds of bread, 300 pounds of beef and pork, 250 dozen eggs and 300 pies of 4 varieties. For the animals, the order was along the lines of 5 tons of hay, 20 tons of straw, 50 bushels of oats, and 600 pounds of bran. Local vendors also delivered ice, water, coal, gas, kerosene etc. No supplier networks to manage all this. The most sophisticated communication tech was a telegraph.
• Flat cars and ingenious use of elephants and horses helped to load and unload the cages with animals, the tents, cooking equipment. The animals were all-weather – they could work though rain, snow and muddy grounds. They were also part of the entertainment. There were no robots or industrial equipment to do all that
• At the industry’s peak, the day the circus came ro town ranked with Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July: banks and businesses closed, schools got a day pass, and an entire town came out to watch the parade and see exotic animals and acrobats. The shows used large newspaper ads, heralds, courier booklets and small picture cards, but the bulk of the marketing was spent on colorful posters of all sizes and the cost of putting them up. There were no TV ads or social media.
• The planning process began months in advance of the actual show date, with early visitations to the town by contracting agents and the promotional staff who negotiated with local printers and glued thousands of posters in each town. Weather routinely played havoc with the plans. No spreadsheets or planning tools back then.
• According to an 1895 article in McClure's magazine, the U.S. Army sent a number of officers to study Barnum and Bailey's Circus for a week while it was in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The report the officers sent back praised the complex logistical operation. I think today’s supply chain wizards should similarly study how the circus did what it did with so little tech.

I have seen Howard's collection a few times and can spend hours admiring his craft and also thinking of the amazing logistics of the circus with the primitive technology they had a century ago.

RIP, Howard.

Sidewalk Robots

Near-term expectations for all kinds of autonomous vehicles have fallen recently, after several years of unrealistically optimistic projections and a string of road fatalities. But sidewalk bots have begun to gain momentum in certain environments. A few thousand pedestrian-speed delivery robots are in operation, a figure that will at least triple in 2022 if the leading bot makers hit their goals.

One particularly promising market has been U.S. colleges, whose cloistered campuses provide an easier technical challenge than chaotic downtown business districts, and whose students make up an ideal customer base, given their constant hunger for both snacks and novelty.

BusinessWeek

Cloud-Based Logistics

With his co-founder and CTO, Jacob Boudreau, what Henry envisioned wasn't so much a supply chain company as it was a supply change company--a single distributed network that would allow customers of all sizes to shape-shift, to expand or contract their warehouses on demand, for example, without having to build their own or enter into long-term contracts with third-party logistics companies. Essentially, Stord can form an orchestra from scattered soloists.

In many industries, disrupters com­pete against the established order. Such order didn't exist in the logistics space. "More than anything, they were competing against no one," says Daley Ervin, the managing director of Engage Ventures, a venture platform for some of the largest corporations in Atlanta and an early investor. "When you go into an industry that has nothing, whatever you build is better than sheets of paper and faxes. They were competing against sticky notes."

Inc Magazine

 

goTRG's dominance of reverse retail logistics

“Reverse logistics”—the process of handling returned merchandise—has become increasingly complex. Retailers have to determine whether each returned item is fit to go back on shelves, can be refurbished, or must be scrapped. Stores have used disparate technologies and even manual systems to do this, to little effect: Some 5 billion pounds of merchandise go to waste annually. goTRG oversees more than 45 million returned items per year for Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart, and others, using sophisticated software and a fleet of massive warehouses. After integrating specifics about each retailer’s catalogs, goTRG’s artificial intelligence determines the most profitable outcome for every item. Products may be refurbished, donated, recycled, or used for parts—all within goTRG facilities. “Our goal,” says cofounder and CEO Sender Shamiss, “is to convince retailers to give products a second life.”

FastCompany

 

Amazon Brick and Mortar

WSJ report

"The plan to launch large stores will mark a new expansion for the online-shopping pioneer into bricks-and-mortar retail, an area Amazon has long disrupted.

Some of the first Amazon department stores are expected to be located in Ohio and California, the people said. The new retail spaces will be around 30,000 square feet, smaller than most department stores, which typically occupy about 100,000 square feet, and will offer items from top consumer brands. The Amazon stores will dwarf many of the company’s other physical retail spaces and will have a footprint similar to scaled-down formats that Bloomingdale’s Inc., Nordstrom Inc. and other department-store chains have begun opening, the people said."

 

Amazon Fulfillment Center Tour 2.0

Exactly two years ago, I had an opportunity to visit the 855,000 sq ft, 4 level N. Jacksonville Amazon fulfillment center (JAX2). I wrote about my experience here. 

Due to the pandemic, Amazon had stopped doing those tours. However, it has restarted them in virtual mode (you can register here) , and I attended one today. I asked for a recording, and they sent me one from a few days ago, which covered similar ground.

In many ways, the virtual tour is better than going to one in person. They did not allow me to take any photos when I visited. The tour today profiled 4 US centers, and a new one outside of Venice, Italy.  Mine obviously only covered one. Today's tour took us into many corners of the center like the shipping dock which I did not see during my visit. I learned new stuff like the sensor filled vest Amazon employees wear when they have to go into the path of one of the robots. They also provided updates on Amazon's COVID related investments and their growing Prime transportation fleet including big plans for their EV trucks.

Very nicely done. Highly recommend you spend an hour and see the amazing blend of man and machine. Kiva robots, miles of conveyor belts, and thousands of scanners, cameras, printers that allow a couple of thousand Amazon employees at each center to process a million packages a day.

20 from 20: No industry untouched

This is the 19th post in a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform  and other series I ran last year.

2020 turned most industries upside down. I posted earlier about conversations in four industries here and another four here 

Here's another dozen. 

Jason Blessing, President and CEO of Model N, describes the intensity when 24 out of 25 of his largest customers like Stryker and Gilead have worked on some life-saving COVID-19 related products or services. The longer interview is here 

At 2.52 is Mark Galloway, Chief Commercial Officer at GrandPad which offers a simple and secure tablet computer that digitally connects a senior to their family and friends. Mark describes the speed at which they rolled out the device to nursing homes and elderly care facilities. The average user is 82 years old and technology which most readers of this blog use on a daily basis is a big challenge for these seniors. The longer interview is here 

At 5.54 Phiroz Darukhanavala, who goes as "Daru" is the ex-CTO of BP and points out the oil and gas industry has faced other "shocks" before, usually on the supply side. The sector in the past has bounced back and has been more efficient each time. The longer interview where he discusses industry changes is here 

At 9.48 is Bill Berutti, CEO of Plex talks about the auto industry. He and CTO Jerry Foster cover global manufacturing trends and the effect of COVID lockdowns in the longer interview here. 

At 12.99 is M.R. Rangaswami of Sand Hill Group. He talks about sustainability efforts at the members in the Corporate Eco Forum he runs. He also points how the definition has extended beyond renewables and climate issues to also cover diversity and inclusion. The longer interview including coverage of other communities he runs is here 

At 16.00 is Associate Dean Bill Moncrief at the Neeley School of Business at TCU. He describes the complexities of moving from campus to on-line education in under 2 weeks and the challenges of teaching in hybrid mode - some students in-class and some on-line. I am on the school's advisory board and the longer presentation to the board is here 

At 19:33 is Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters. He describes how supply chains - PPE, global, food etc - came under a lot of pressure but responded amazingly. In the longer interview here, he talks about adjustments most industries are making to their supply chains. 

The sports world had never seen this much disruption since WWII. Yet, it bravely kept us entertained with its bubbles, empty stadiums and shortened seasons, At 22.06, you get a glimpse at the maneuvering from Max Mueller, CEO and Christian Nilson, COO of Daimani, a unique marketplace for VIP experiences in sports, rock concerts and other events. The full interview is here 

At 25.52 Vittorio Viarengo of VMware shares how he brought to life COO Sanjay Poonen's desire to record a rendition of "This little light of mine" using a group of musically talented employees around the world. These are amateurs and the result is amazing - you can see how Taylor Swift and others in the music world managed to do even more with their virtual productions. The longer session with Vittorio is here 

At 31.21 is Rod Johnson, President of Infor. He points out how the TV and entertainment industry has an opportunity to help refine tech and other events in a virtual format.  The longer conversation is here.

Apple, in reverse, promises to reshape physical events and the TV and movie industries with its iPhone 12. At 32.56 is an excerpt of the stunning imagery recorded from the back of a truck and from a drone. The longer coverage of the launch of that device is here.

Sector after sector saw massive changes. Yes, Toto we are not in Kansas anymore. 

 

The mRNA revolution

It's still early days for the Pfizer, Moderna and other vaccines, and the COVID virus keeps mutating, but it's still worth celebrating the progress to date.

First, a layman's primer on mRNA

a more technical discussion with virologist Shane Crotty

Next, the logistics of distributing the vaccines, especially the challenges posed by the Pfizer COVID vaccine which needs to be stored at below -70 F throughout the cold chain

Finally, here is CBS 60 minutes episode last night about how Pfizer and BioNtech developed the vaccine so rapidly

The year of the cold chain

At the start of the pandemic, it became clear very quickly that the cold chain was a priority.

Manufacturers and distributors committed to ensuring the food supply chain would continue working as an essential industry. The focus later expanded to figure out how the cold chain would also be used to successfully deliver a temperature-sensitive COVID-19 vaccine to billions across the globe, once a viable option was ready.

Supply Chain Dive

Video below of the massive logistical challenge around COVID-19 logistics

Vaccine Vial Monitoring

While Zebra’s products have been used for tracking samples from mass tracking sites, the company is also being counted on for vaccine distributions in what’s known as cold chain, a temperature-controlled supply chain.

“Our vaccine vial labels,” which can also be used on boxes and pallets “will change color based on the temperature exposure,” Gustaffson said in a “Mad Money” interview.

The labels come from Temptime, a manufacturer of temperature monitoring solutions for the health-care industry that the Lincolnshire, Illinois-based company acquired nearly two years ago.

CNBC