Operations & Supply Chains

Watch

• How to Fix Broken Supply Chains | Dustin Burke | TED ↗TED
• Global Supply Chain Management, Factors Driving Global Supply Chain Management, logistics management ↗DWIVEDI GUIDANCE
• Why Global Supply Chains May Never Be the Same | WSJ Documentary ↗The Wall Street Journal
• How Companies Are Overhauling Supply Chains to Ease Bottlenecks | WSJ ↗The Wall Street Journal
• How Amazon Beat Supply Chain Chaos With Ships, Containers And Planes ↗CNBC
• 22. Trade Finance & Supply Chain ↗MIT OpenCourseWare

Read

• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement ↗This novel demystifies the Theory of Constraints, offering an accessible primer on identifying and resolving bottlenecks to enhance operational efficiency.Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production ↗Essential reading for understanding the genesis and principles of lean production, a paradigm shift that redefined manufacturing and supply chain excellence.James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos
• The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer ↗Delves into the enduring philosophy and practical methods behind Toyota's unparalleled operational prowess, offering blueprints for continuous improvement.Jeffrey K. Liker
• The Bullwhip Effect in Supply ChainsExplains the pervasive phenomenon of demand variability amplification across supply chains, a critical insight for inventory and production planning.Hau L. Lee, V. Padmanabhan, and Seungjin Whang
• Factory Physics ↗Provides a rigorous, quantitative framework for understanding the fundamental laws governing manufacturing and service operations, crucial for advanced optimisation.Wallace J. Hopp and Mark L. Spearman

Voices to follow

• Yossi Sheffi ↗His incisive analyses illuminate the vulnerabilities and resilience strategies crucial for modern global supply chains, particularly in times of disruption.Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Director, MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics
• Hau L. Lee ↗A leading voice on building 'triple-A' supply chains—agile, adaptable, and aligned—essential for navigating today's volatile markets.Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business
• David Simchi-Levi ↗Renowned for applying sophisticated analytical models to optimize complex supply networks and quantify supply chain risk, offering practical solutions for industry.Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Co-founder, LogicTools
• Christopher Tang ↗His research offers critical insights into sustainable supply chain practices and the strategic management of global operations, addressing both efficiency and ethical considerations.Professor, UCLA Anderson School of Management

Glossary

• CustomerA customer is anyone who buys or uses a product or service from a business. They are the final stop in the supply chain. For example, you are a customer when you buy a new phone or order food from a restaurant.
• DistributionDistribution is the process of moving products from where they are made to where they will be sold or used by customers. It's how products reach stores or your doorstep. For example, a soft drink company uses distribution to get its drinks from the bottling plant to supermarkets, small shops, and vending machines.
• EfficiencyEfficiency means doing things in the best possible way, using the least amount of time, money, and resources to get the desired result. It's about avoiding waste. For example, a restaurant improves its efficiency by organizing its kitchen so chefs can prepare meals faster with less movement and wasted ingredients.
• InventoryInventory refers to all the goods, materials, and products a company has on hand, either to sell or to use in making other products. It's like a company's stock. For example, a bookstore's inventory includes all the books currently on its shelves and in its storage room.
• LogisticsLogistics is the detailed planning and management of how things are moved, stored, and delivered from one place to another. It's about making sure products get to the right place at the right time. For example, a company uses logistics to figure out the best routes for its delivery trucks and where to store its products in warehouses.
• OperationsThis is about all the daily activities a company does to create its products or services and keep running smoothly. It's the "how" things get done. For example, in a bakery, operations include baking bread, managing ingredients, cleaning the kitchen, and serving customers.
• ProductionProduction is the process of making goods or products from raw materials. It's where things are actually created. For example, a car factory's production line takes metal, plastic, and other parts and assembles them into a finished car.
• Quality ControlQuality control is the process of checking products to make sure they meet certain standards and are free from defects. It ensures customers get good products. For example, before new smartphones are packaged, they go through quality control where workers test the screen, camera, and buttons to make sure everything works perfectly.
• SupplierA supplier is a person or company that provides the materials, parts, or services needed to make a product or run a business. They are the starting point for many supply chains. For example, a clothing brand's supplier might be the company that provides the fabric, buttons, and zippers for their clothes.
• Supply ChainIt's the whole journey a product takes, from getting raw materials to making the product, and finally delivering it to you. It involves all the people, companies, and steps in between. For example, the supply chain for your favorite chocolate bar starts with cocoa beans from a farm, then goes through factories that make the chocolate, and finally to the shop where you buy it.

Threads 10

Where this connects to other fields, and why it's worth knowing.

• The Legal Profession & Access to Justice Law

  Any queue, whether cars merging or courts hearing cases, behaves weirdly once it's nearly full. Push it past about 85% of capacity and the wait doesn't creep up, it rockets toward forever. So 'justice delayed' isn't only about money for more judges; it's partly cold queue math.

• Globalisation History

  The thing that really wired the world together wasn't some grand treaty, it was a plain steel box: the shipping container. By stacking cargo into standard boxes, loading costs dropped by around 90%, so shipping stuff across oceans got dirt cheap. That humble box quietly rebuilt global trade.

• Rivers, Watersheds, and Water Systems Geography

  When shoppers buy a few extra toys, each store, warehouse, and factory over-orders to be safe, and by the top of the chain a tiny wobble becomes a massive glut then a shortage. That's the 'bullwhip effect.' It's a river with no lake to calm it: a small ripple swells into a flood, then a drought.

• Pandemics Science

  When COVID hit, hospitals ran out of masks and ventilators in days. That's because factories keep almost zero spare stuff on shelves to save money, a trick called 'just-in-time.' Squeezing out every ounce of waste also squeezes out the cushion you need when disaster strikes, so the leanest system is secretly the most fragile.

• Globalisation Sociology

  Factories used to keep warehouses full of spare parts to absorb surprises. Then 'just-in-time' shipping ditched the stockpiles to save money, so parts arrive exactly when needed. Great, until one ship got stuck sideways in the Suez Canal and car factories across the planet ground to a halt. Turns out being super efficient and being super fragile are the same thing.

• Healthcare Systems & Access Health

  Emergency rooms follow the same math as any waiting line. Once beds are filled past about 85%, wait times don't creep up gently, they rocket toward infinity. That's why a hospital seems fine and then suddenly collapses into chaos, it fails all at once, not slowly.

• Semiconductors & the Chip War Technology

  Chipmakers once split into two kinds: companies that design chips and companies that only manufacture them. That was just a business decision. But it accidentally funneled the whole world's chip-making through a few factories, creating the single weak point superpowers now fight to control.

• Extreme Weather Environment

  One flood in one province can freeze factories across the whole planet. Why? Companies got so efficient they stopped keeping spare parts lying around — "just in time" delivery. That extra padding used to absorb shocks, and now it's gone.

• Systemic & Cascading Risk Global Challenges

  A supplier’s interruption may travel through production and delivery networks. Supply-chain analysis identifies dependencies; systemic-risk analysis asks when substitutes, shared suppliers or feedback change the scale of disruption.

  Sources: Chapter 2: Systemic risks, the Sendai Framework and the 2030 Agenda ↗ · Understanding and managing cascading and systemic risks: Lessons from COVID-19 ↗

• Industrial Engineering Technology

  Local factory decisions affect material flows, inventory and delivery across a wider supply network.

  Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Industrial Engineers ↗ · ABET engineering program criteria 2025–2026 ↗