Category: logistics
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Supply Chain Woes Turns Out to be the Main Culprit of COVID-era Inflation
Inflation can occur when too much money chases too few goods and services, but it can also result from supply disruptions, rising production costs, or global economic shocks. It suggests that inflation can come from either the demand side (a surge in demand or money), or the supply side (a shortage of supply). So here…
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The American Civil War was a War on Supply Chains
I love to look at the Early Modern Period and the Modern Age through a capitalist lense. I see the significance of capitalism in almost every turn of historical events when I read the excellent book “Americana: A 400-year history of American Capitalism” by Bhu Srinivasan. After I read the chapter on the American Civil…
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The US Economy is Changing in its structure
Photo: Business Formation in Numbers 2006-2023 Recently I have been reading some papers that claim that COVID-19 kick-started entrepreneurship, as more and more people changed their perspective on old jobs and started their own businesses. I do not agree with such an assertion. My thesis is that such a trend has been brewing for quite…
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Decarbonizing Last-mile Logistics: A quick summary
Recently I gave a short lecture over Zoom to a group of students at NYU on my thoughts of decarbonizing the last-mile in supply chains. The one-sentence summary? The decarbonizing magnitude is highly dependent on the configurations. If you have the patience, watch the 27-minute video below:
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Why do we need to fix the T?
Photo: Longwood Station, Brookline, 2023. Recently I was asked if I have any opinions on the announcement that MBTA was shutting down the Green Line in order to fix the “slow zones”. I can think of at least three benefit, and a big negative. Let me state the negative first. If the shutdown is too…
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Choosing the right fuel (III): Whose perspective?
In this post, I will try to flesh out the perspective of a shipping company whose goal is to reduce its carbon footprint. Let us say there a shipping company that owns and operates deep sea bulk carriers. The following areas are of concern, from the greatest to the least: Fuel-related cost (FC): purchase, distribution,…
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Choosing the right fuel (II): Total cost
We have discussed the cost of using different types of fuel. Now let’s step back and talk about what are the total cost involved in marine shipping. For marine shipping, the following costs are relevant: Fuel cost, including initial purchase, energy conversion, distribution, operations and maintenance cost. Ship building/retrofit cost: How much does it cost…
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So Ford Wants to Do Away with its Dealers…
According to the Detroit Free Press, Jim Farley, the current Ford CEO, said that he wants to sell its EVs online rather than through its dealerships. Apparently, he was upset at the markups added by many of its dealers on its ever-so-popular electric F-150 Lightning that offended many customers. For example, one of the dealers…
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A Fascinating Recount of the US Semiconductor History
I recently read a book titled “The Microchip Revolution: A Brief History” authored by Luc Oliver Bauer & E. Marshall Wilder. It has lots of interesting technical details as well as personal anecdotes. A wonderful read. I flipped to the chapter on Intel once I got my hands on the book, because it was the…
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A Small Innovation, A Big Saving for the Environment
Just a couple of days, I received my new iPhone shipped from Apple. What I was impressed with was not the phone – the phone was good by all means but it was the clever packaging that I was impressed with. You see, in order to create proper cushion for the items shipped in a…
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Port of LA: Storage Space is the culprit?
Recently I read about the saga at the Port of LA. According to Ryan Petersen, the chief executive of logistics company Flexport, the real bottleneck at the Port of LA was actually storage space. The article reported: “In a full 3 hour loop through the port complex, passing every single terminal, we saw less than…
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Why Supply Chain Delays are Multi-faceted: A Mathematical Explanations (Without the Heavy Math)
Paul Krugman recently penned an excellent article explaining why we see the supply chain snarls in New York Times. It mentioned a number of factors: The US consumers are buying a lot more stuff than before, as a partial substitutions to experiences because of the COVID; The processing capacities at docks and hubs have not…
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Green Ammonia is a promising renewable marine fuel
It was in the news that “Amazon’s new net-zero carbon pledge is focused on the oceans, as shipping giants pursue alternative fuels“. That is absolutely the right move. Ships emit about 2% of the total GHG a year, compared to 12% in road transportation (see detailed numbers in my early article), but in absolute volume…
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The One and Only Michael Dell
I have seen Michael Dell in person once (that was in Boston), and I have read about him and taught about him and his company many many times. Even though I knew his story by heart, I was nevertheless very pleasantly surprised to see a very relaxed Michael Dell talk about his life story (the…
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A great article on this thing called “supply chain shortage”
By now, people should have already heard many times the term “supply chain shortage” in various settings: semiconductor chips, ports, airfreights, toilet papers. But what does this term really mean? Which is why I found this article on the Atlantic very helpful: Americans Have No Idea What the Supply Chain Really Is Several highlights and…
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Carbon foot-printing problem is first of all an information problem
Carbon foot-printing problem is, first of all, an information problem. In a recent report released by World Economic Forum, the first challenge in reducing carbon emission is informational: There is just not enough transparency and clarity on who is emitting how much across a supply chain. Because of those informational barriers, companies will benefit from…
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Last-mile Transport is the Key Driver in Supply Chain Carbon Footprint
Does online shopping have a larger or smaller carbon footprint? Well, it depends. But depends on what? In a most recently-published study by Shahmohammadi et al (2020) published in Environmental Science & Technology, the authors highlight that the last-mile transport is one of the most important drivers of carbon emissions, among other things. What I…
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Road Transportation is the Single Largest Decarbonization Opportunity with a Clear Path Forward
My apology for the unwieldy title. But I chose the long title to highlight one thing: Although there are many decarbonization opportunities with large impact, road transportation offers the clearest path forward. Let me elaborate. First, let’s examine the areas where we need to reduce our carbon footprints. There are lots of high-quality research and…
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Carbon Foot printing: Devil is in its details…
I have been reading up on the carbon foot printing work lately. A lot of interesting findings. Overall, my impression is that the modern e-commerce is not significantly improving our carbon footprint. And with customers’ adaptive behavior (e.g., ordering more, not giving up store trips), it is likely that we can end up with a…
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The Sustainability Perils of E-commerce (II): Fast and Furious (Fuming)?
In an early post, I talked about the upsides and downsides of e-commerce logistics on the environment. The main idea there is that e-commerce can potentially reduce CO2 emissions if customers end up driving less in their own cars. However, because of the small batch size of typical e-commerce orders, delivery trucks end up drive…