{"id":17580,"date":"2012-11-02T08:53:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T13:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17580"},"modified":"2012-11-02T08:54:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T13:54:26","slug":"modern-inventory-control-and-hurricane-sandy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/11\/02\/modern-inventory-control-and-hurricane-sandy\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern inventory control and Hurricane Sandy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlike major disasters of the past, storm-hit New Jersey and New York City won’t have to face the crippling shortages of food and other essentials in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The just-in-time food supply chain<\/a> is proving its versatility yet again:<\/p>\n

The day Hurricane Sandy made landfall, the Jersey City, New Jersey, warehouse for food distribution giant Sysco Corp. (SYY) sent out 30,000 cases of food and drinks. Most of the shipments were headed across the Hudson to New York City. On Tuesday, the day after the storm ravaged the city, the warehouse sent out none.<\/p>\n

Yet while news of flooding, power outages, downed trees, and other storm-inflicted wreckage abounds, you won\u2019t hear stories of mass starvation in the streets. Food may not be moving in or out of the city, but the data-driven supply chains perfected by some of the world\u2019s biggest companies in the pursuit of profits have become so resilient that even a cataclysm like Sandy registers as little more than a logistical hiccup. While the subways have stopped indefinitely, few in the storm\u2019s path will have to deal with empty shelves for long, if at all.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Wilson says the key adjustment Sysco made ahead of Sandy was to shift shipments to mainly non-perishable goods to ensure customers would have food to last through power outages. The company also prioritized getting orders to institutions that would have to keep large numbers of people fed through the storm, such as hospitals, hotels, airports, shelters, jails, and college campuses. Restaurants will stay near the bottom of the list as the recovery proceeds. But Wilson says the process of getting back to normal won\u2019t drag out. \u201cIt\u2019ll be a week or so of business-not-as-usual. But we\u2019ll get back to business-as-usual eventually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Large companies like Sysco with nationwide reach and a long history of managing supply chains can adapt quickly to natural disasters because they\u2019ve been there before, and they have the data to show for it. Over the years, as real-time inventory tracking and analysis has become the norm, companies know what people buy before and after disasters. They know how demand has varied between a Gulf Coast hurricane and a New England blizzard. By cross-referencing that granular data with the latest weather predictions, companies can forecast changes in their supply chain needs in parallel with coming storms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Charles Stross<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike major disasters of the past, storm-hit New Jersey and New York City won’t have to face the crippling shortages of food and other essentials in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The just-in-time food supply chain is proving its versatility yet again: The day Hurricane Sandy made landfall, the Jersey City, New Jersey, warehouse for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,74,13],"tags":[619,321,206],"class_list":["post-17580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-food","category-usa","tag-newjersey","tag-nyc","tag-severeweather"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4zy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17582,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17580\/revisions\/17582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}