Remystifying Supply Chains

J.P. Morgan put out a really great and fairly detailed article on supply chains and just the general state of the world from a financier's perspective a couple of weeks ago.

https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional...

Notion that supply chains are "old technology" is frankly part of the problem. That combined with the author's point of supply chains being emergent and not designed has made companies invest less and less in understanding and reacting to supply chain issues. It works fine during periods of slow growth and decline as that ensures enough time for supply chains to reach new equilibriums but we pay the price in disruptive situations like the one we see now. Hopefully, it motivates companies to invest in understanding the impact of uncertainties on their supply chains.

> [sic] Notion that supply chains are "old technology" is frankly part of the problem.

That is exactly it's fundamental problem, everything from bills of ladiing, to invoices to AR/AP is archaic and rigid, thus it's prone to severe strain under non-ideal conditions: couple this with the need for JIT everything to idealized forecasting and you can see why shortages are becoming the norm in a country run by an executive class that has benefited from making the World it's manufacture de jure via outsourcing for decades.

As a person that worked in supply chain for mega corps, I was lured back into the industry earlier this year, as some incredibly well paid jobs responded without solicitation as I applied to other non SC positions and to be honest SC management was never an 'easy gig' but swing shifts and 20-30 days with no days off are the norm now to catch up and I don't feel like burning out over something I tried to resolve in my own capacity.

Surprisingly, this is following Naomi Klien's shock doctrine fairly well and if this (in addition to it's egregious and belligerent behaviour in Xianjing, Tibet, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan) is what it takes for the World to decouple manufacturing from the CCP then so be it.

I'm fairly certain I'm past the consumerist phase of my life as I find it entirely unfulfilling so I have no need for their trinkets, and I hope I can keep a stock of used computers and laptops around long enough to see the transition, phones are always going to fall victim to planned obsolescence so I keep that in mind and reduce my dependence on them when ever possible.

All in all, yes it's old, but only because it was made to remain as such and a certain contingent of people vastly benefited from this system as a result; I'm recalling the gas shortage in 2016 when oil tankers were anchored out at Sea waiting for the price to correct to make a profit, and this article of Seamen left and cast aside [1] with no pay shows just how remarkably foolish things have gotten during COVID for those hapless enough to need to be in the trenches when it comes to large scale logistics under this scenario.

Globalization gave us many benefits, a robust and anti-fragile logistics and supply chain network was not one of them, if anything it showed why vertical integration (or at least as much as possible) is a highly desired albeit costly expense, which won't always be seen as a priority to quarterly earning fixated execs and board members.

0: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-...

1: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/imagine-being-strande...

I'm also following supply chain:

https://youtu.be/MoH7S_qLlIg

As energy prices spike acrossed the world we quickly understand how the current Agricultural system is not fit as greenhouses in the Netherlands are forced to reduce operations due to the parabolic inflation in natural gas.

The money printers go brrrrrrr in all countries, and having already dropped interest rates its clear by that isn't going to stop prices from rising stagflation from sliding in. The people who need money don't have enough, and there isn't anything to buy anyways, hence stocks go up.

China refuses to trade with Australia for coal and has had black outs across the country which stop animal feed processing. Pair all that with a poor couple years of harvests and it's no surprise prices on everything including food is rocketing up.

With Just-in-time supply chains jammed at most ports and empty containers in the wrong place many do not see a gentle resolution without some form of potential crisis. We must REBUILD WITH PERMACULTURE!

My video goes into more about how producing closer to consumption helps all parts of the equation.