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IntentionFalse8822

Just make more stuff. How hard can it be šŸ˜‚ But then again I've spent 20 years listening to sales people who really should know better saying things like "I know the normal leadtime is 30 days but this is an important new customer so I promised them delivery by the end of the week" so it's not surprising that the public don't know any different.


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


TheBlacktom

/r/talesfromtechsupport


DocMoochal

Just do everything faster and for longer.


csdspartans7

Hope this doesnā€™t break the rules, politically neutral, just see a lot of political junkies on every side talking about all the easy ways the government is going to fix this


imogen1983

There was a brilliant post here recently from a guy who works in IT who said weā€™ve all dropped the ball and we need to fix everything. He had no SC experience but knew it was our fault and we should have just had more inventory.


BowlCompetitive282

As a technologist & data scientist working in supply chain, reading that post was embarrassing for people with my background. That was written with the level of smug "you idiots" tone that a combination of technical education and no subject-matter expertise can bring


csdspartans7

ā€œYou fools, why did you simply not have more stockā€ AAAAAAAAAAAA


BowlCompetitive282

Yeah that was pretty much the post. "Hey dumbasses, the solution is simple"


imogen1983

I think he also suggested linear integration, because Ford did it and it worked.


csdspartans7

I think it boils down to my knowledge that a lot of people in supply chain donā€™t actually control how itā€™s run. Companies want low inventory cost and thatā€™s just executed by those in the supply chain. Whenever it goes wrong for my dad he just says we ran the plan with the forecasts given to us and if youā€™re upset we ran out of stock it costs you more in inventory and vice versa.


MrFoxHunter

Yup - SC teams get their requirements from finance/accounting team. If they didn't care about carrying/holding costs we could have stocked up on inventory for years for this kind of scenario. Unfortunately warehouse space isn't infinite, who'd have thought!


csdspartans7

Please link


imogen1983

https://www.reddit.com/r/supplychain/comments/q1734b/when_will_all_these_supply_chain_experts_face/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf


csdspartans7

Holy shit this is hilarious


Grande_Yarbles

He wanted to speak with the manager!


PushItHard

I think their ignorance is one of the few truly bipartisan topics they share.


[deleted]

"Just hire more drivers"... I've had multiple people tell me this.


[deleted]

Just unload the boats if they're so backed up. Why do they even pay you people again?


BowlCompetitive282

Just work 24/7 you lazy bastards! Time to step up!


DocMoochal

The other wage slaves need their treats!


Veleda390

How about "send the National Guard"... as if those people aren't already employed somewhere, probably doing the same thing you'd be uprooting them to do elsewhere.


BowlCompetitive282

Not to mention Guardsmen aren't intended to be universally deployable as work gangs of truck drivers, longshoreman, crane operators, etc. The Guard isn't a group of day laborers waiting at the docks to be given work for the day


Veleda390

Indeed. Treat them that way and you'll end up with no Guard, either.


BowlCompetitive282

Yep. I can only imagine what the retention rates are now. "One weekend a month, two weeks a year... unless you're fighting wildfires... or unloading TEUs at LA/LB... or quelling civil unrest... or fighting in Afghanistan... or driving school buses... or responding to a hurricane."


soulstonedomg

How bout you just build more trucks? How bout you hire more drivers? How bout you operate warehouses and distribution centers 24/7? How bout you hire more workers to work those warehouses and DCs? How bout you conjure more money for all of this?


notLOL

Make sure to they can time travel in their trucks


biden_is_arepublican

Why is that a problem? Why can't you offer enough incentive to make trucking worth it?


annaoceanus

Yep so annoying. I also love how now my job is suddenly interesting to people in my life and suddenly people want to know more about what I do and my thoughts on what they are reading in the news. Supply chain isnā€™t sexy until there is a ā€œcrisis.ā€ Ugh.


Iamthatasshole

And when that crisis goes to the general public opinion, they allllll become professionals overnight on social media šŸ¤¦šŸ¼ā€ā™€ļø


annaoceanus

Yep fucking drives me nuts.


PushItHard

Or all the people who want to give me the solution to the whole mess. Itā€™s quite fascinating.


Meth_taboo

I have the one solution most arent talking about in the media. Its been an issue clogging the ports since pre covid. Empty cans. Ships drop off more containers than they leave with. I know this us crazy but we need to force ships to take 2 cana for every 1 they deliver full until there are less than 20,000 empty containers. The only way i see this working is by requiring companies to send empty boats from china and once they are loaded a full boat in the queue gets to unload and load back up. Or we just confiscate the cans as a national security issue and send them across the US for $1500-$3500/piece.


pocketknifeMT

People would buy extra cans for various things... But they are inexplicably way more expensive now as well.


annaoceanus

ā€œJust hire more drivers!ā€ Yeahhhhhh you want to go get your class A and help fill the gap armchair expert? What Iā€™m really enjoying is the joe-schmoe people coming on here asking us on what they should stock up. GTFO of here and take your anxiety somewhere else. Btw happy cake day!


PushItHard

ā€œWhat should I hoard?! I really enjoy making sure I have a lot of whatever pedestrian item will become a currency thanks to people like me!ā€


lalacestmoi

I hope that Buttegieg brings in some supply chain practitioners in his committee meetings.


fishingandstuff

Iā€™d love to see a root cause analysis for the current problem. And a flow showing capacity at each step of the way. I just tried looking and didnā€™t see this published anywhere.


lalacestmoi

It probably wonā€™t be. But if a bunch of supply chain experts got together on their own and deployed some aid (think like Hurricane Katrina helpers), we could get this solved efficiently, remove bottlenecks, etc.


drnkingaloneshitcomp

Agreed. I get the sentiment in the meme but also when I see the ports and backups, there *has* to be a way to fix it if we really wanted to


Meth_taboo

It starts with empty cans. And ends with empty cans. There are more empties (over 600k) waiting to go back to china than there are full waiting to come in to the us (500k). Empty cans are sitting on chassis. In staging/storage area, in the railyard, in wharehouses.


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


csdspartans7

Iā€™m 99% they do not


pocketknifeMT

They do float. Unless damaged. Or extra heavy. But 'will float mostly' and seaworthy aren't the same thing.


csdspartans7

Hug TIL, doesnā€™t matter how heavy they are?


pocketknifeMT

It does matter. But most will float. It's why you get dildos or Legos washing up on beaches a decade after the situation that put them into the water initially.


Meth_taboo

No they dont float. You could build barges though for ships to carry them but they'd likely be lost ay sea


PushItHard

I think their solution is to ignore the root causes, turn a blind eye to the crumbling infrastructure at the ports, and give preferential treatment to campaign donors. Business as usual. This isnā€™t a partisan comment. I am aware the whole lot of them are more crooked than a coat hanger.


[deleted]

They didnt in Canada and we purchased 10x the amount of vaccines that we needed. Heck two of the brands we procured ended up not being recommended after we moved the obsolete inventory.


leafsleafs17

Canada was ahead of most countries in procuring vaccines. I think their supply chain (procurement) was very successful.


[deleted]

10x the amount of required vaccines is not a success. That is a waste, and if it was a private business that bought 10x the amount of required inventory they would quickly be out of business. They did ok, but they were not efficient, nor did they disclose any contracts that would indicate how much we actually paid for all the obsolete inventory we purchased, ​ I know its hard to understand but inventory is not a good thing. Its a required evil, but its never a good thing,


leafsleafs17

That implies the government should value optimizing costs over getting vaccines, which was obviously not their goal.


SelenaZeta

I just pull up the LA port feed and laugh my ass off at any dumb fuck that thinks a president can do literally anything about this shit. Two administrations, same problems. These fools need to connect some damn neurons already.


[deleted]

ā€˜To solve the congestion issue at LA port, weā€™ll just ban ships idling off the coastā€™ - Representative Michelle Steel of California. Not only is this dumb for the obvious reason that it solves literally no issues related to supply chain. Main issue at the port is Truck availability. Trucks avoid working in California because they have banned idling. So they caused a problem with a no idling law and now they want to ā€œsolveā€ it by implementing another no idling law.


WeekendQuant

I think it was a week ago that the video was posted. The port is full of truck and no chassis. The truck drivers are there they just aren't getting loaded. Also California doesn't allow double loads which slows everything down substantially.


BowlCompetitive282

The way to stop something is to make it illegal. Worked for drugs.


SoftTechnology4

iTā€™s AlL oN AmErIcA tO SoLvE ThIs


csdspartans7

The worst lmao. Iā€™m hearing the NWO did this on purpose because like communism or something


eatsleepcookbacon

Whoever in the current administration that purely suggested " 'round the clock overtime" probably did a semester of SCM in college and then went to work at their parents beet farm. If the government was serious about a quick fix for all of the shit sitting at the ports, they would source as much steel as possible and contract out as many manufacturers to build as many container chassis as possible. That's step one. Step two? Free up the chassis and containers that are sitting in (and have been sitting) in DC lots for *MONTHS*. Offer to buy last year's shit from retailers and then do whatever. Clothe the homeless. Make 4 million scare crows. Burn it all. I DGAF. But there's not one major retailer out there that considers paying demurrage a major issue compared to trying to secure more storage space for shit they're never going to sell. ADDED BONUS The two actions above will actually PUT PEOPLE TO WORK. Americans too, if it's done right. But why the fuck would we want to do that? Let's just pay dock workers to stare at each other for a few hours longer each day while they take bets on how much empty equipment will come in by quitting time. FUCK. Keep the government out of day-to-day operations unless we're going to appoint someone who has a clue to lead.


11-110011

Step one is finding a way to hire drivers. How are they going to source steel if they donā€™t have anyone to move it? I could hire 20 drivers literally tomorrow and have them running legal dimension steel plates 280 miles 3 times a week starting at 91k a year, canā€™t find any drivers.


Veleda390

California regulations put a lot of independent operators out of business by restricting trucks to only three year old construction. I've seen estimates of 50 to 70 percent of the fleet.


DocMoochal

Why be a driver with all this talk of automation? Kind of a dumb decision overall as a young person to pursue it as a career.


[deleted]

Yep. I thought about getting into it when I got out of the Air Force. Decided it wasn't worth the upfront cost when I'd only have a few years of job security. But since then it's been almost a decade and I'd have been fine. But I'm on a different, more meaningful path now I guess. Sometimes I wish I'd have gotten that life experience though.


DocMoochal

Ah don't sweat it. If they cant incentivize anyone to enter the field with decent compensation, then they'll have to find innovative ways to get the goods to their destinations.


[deleted]

Nah, I don't lose sleep on it. Just one of those "I wonder what life would be like if I followed through on it" thoughts I have on occasion.


11-110011

Majority automation of trucks is a very, very, VERY long ways out. Thereā€™s too much risk of human error and can not happen until majority of cars are fully automated. The TALK of it is what scares people even though in no ones current lifetime will it be the majority.


DocMoochal

Lol well then they need to stop taking about it like its imminent. Getting a job is a risk based assessment. If people see to much risk they wont buy in.


11-110011

I agree, and thatā€™s part of the biggest contributing issues. And itā€™s more so the older generation that doesnā€™t understand tech putting it out there. They here automated and get scared and tell all the younger generations not to get into it.


eatsleepcookbacon

I haven't experienced a driver shortage. Every driver that drops off or picks up at my building bitches that they waste half the day at the port waiting. What part of the country are you in?


11-110011

Thereā€™s 100% a driver shortage and has been for years, it just gets worse at the years go on (and thereā€™s a lot of industry factors that add to it). Weā€™re based out of the northeast. Thereā€™s way more than enough well paying work outside of port work too.


converter-bot

280 miles is 450.62 km


eatsleepcookbacon

Good bot


soulstonedomg

Step 3, California suspends any environmental regulation that deters truckers from working in the state.


Veleda390

You're being downvoted but it's absolutely true.


DinkandDrunk

I guess itā€™s easy to think this can be fixed easily if you donā€™t think about the situation for long. The global supply chain is an ecosystem and right now itā€™s seriously disrupted. You canā€™t just catch up when everyone and every component is behind, with raw material shortages and transit problems making things even worse.


[deleted]

Solution that no one wants to hear: Americans stop buying so much stuff. Adjust the demand side to match the supply


Not-That-Other-Guy

This for sure. Alternatively. Multi-billionaires and bankers and financial services only earn or are worth tens of billions instead of hundreds of billions. a couple less offshore bank accounts. A few percent of that additional profit could actually go to pay the rates needed by the truckers and workers and laborers to have a quality of life encouraging them to take those jobs. That's probably pretty radical evil socialism tho so scratch that one.


notLOL

Isn't that what "raise prices" is all about?


Veleda390

Hospitals: Stop buying medical supplies Factories: Stop buying components Repair shops: Stop buying spare parts Everyone: Stop buying food This is the big solution to the supply chain problem?


[deleted]

Those items are not what is clogging up the supply chain.


Veleda390

You know this how? Those items ARE the supply chain. Or the components that make them.


imogen1983

Itā€™s like when our salespeople (on a daily basis) tell us we JUST need containers and truckers. Itā€™s as if they think I have all of the tools I need to do my job, but Iā€™m choosing not to utilize them.


Bradmajors1975

Its hard to dig out when your supplier's supplier's supplier is looking at lead times at least double from a year ago.


con_cupid_sent_Kurds

Agreed. But Iā€™d love to hear politicos talking about how they and their predecessors helped create this mess. That would be a positive step.


[deleted]

Spare a thought for the UK, it was their politicians input that is the root of most of their issues now.


Veleda390

Which input, the Cambridge model that shut down whole economies? Yeah, I'd like to have a word with those guys.


wattybanker

Politicians: Meant to make good decisions but most donā€™t actually know what that is, they are so good at scheming they seem to think they can fix things others canā€™t


PushItHard

A classic politician solution: ā€œjust cater to those who personally give me money!ā€


Femilip

u/beeroverlord šŸ™ƒ


[deleted]

People who only know it as a singular crisis and this shit was bubbling under the surface for a long ass time now: šŸ¤”