News - Quoted In

In his book The Power of Resilience: How the Best Managed Companies Manage the Unexpected, MIT’s Yossi Sheffi describes the rising vulnerability on all sides of the supply chain: more distance, more players, more variety, more technology, more complexity. Companies must look to their chief supply chain officers to ensure that the supply chain is resilient to disruption. For many businesses, supply chain disruption is the largest operational risk.

After a year of 600,000-plus dead due to the criminal leadership of the previous administration, 20,000 people murdered, close to 40,000 people dying in road accidents every year and maybe over a hundred people dying in a building collapse in Florida, I do not see worrying about what could have been if somebody did eat a razor... 

As the Port of Los Angeles announces (on June 10, 2021) that it is now the first port in the western hemisphere to process over 10 million containers over a one year period, one can’t help but wonder why so many containers are being processed in such a short period of time.  

Professor Yossi Sheffi .. has pointed out that trucking delays exacerbate problems across the entire logistics system, and that a binding constraint on trucking capacity is the availability of drivers themselves. He suggests, among other steps, loosening federal regulations so that potential drivers are no longer disqualified solely because of previous marijuana use. The broader point is that many efforts could be made to address logistical chokepoints that are behind at least a significant part of the recent inflation spike.

“Clearly, the pandemic pushed companies to use more digital tools to run their supply chains,” says Yossi Sheffi, Ph.D., an MIT professor and director of the university’s Center for Transportation and Logistics.

The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics asked two leaders, Lynn Torrel, the chief procurement officer and supply chain officer at Flex, and Dave Wheeler, the chief operating officer at New Balance, to relate their pandemic experiences. The executives learned much about managing supply chains in extreme adversity, and how such a crisis requires companies to be innovative.

Despite the shaky circumstances upon which many industries find themselves in 2021, the window on North America’s economy given by the petrochemical industry is showing a positive picture, even as companies experience both cyclical and structural shifts. The business of this critical sector, which touches 96% of all manufactured goods and in the US accounts for a quarter of GDP, is having to adapt its supply lines to the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic while at the same time dealing with forces from both end-markets and its raw materials

The largest mass vaccination campaign in U.S. history is underway after the Food And Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization for the first COVID-19 vaccine on December 11...Close to a week after the first emergency authorization, the FDA is nearing an approval on a separate shot from Moderna as well. (previously published information in WSJ)

The FDA officially granted emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Friday, writing that “in making this determination, the FDA can assure the public and medical community that it has conducted a thorough evaluation of the available safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality information.

Extreme lockdown measure in Germany are coming up. In the US, hospitalizations keep breaking records. The good news is Pfizer begins shipping its vaccine.