Category: supply chain
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Why Additive Manufacturing (or 3D Printing)?
[Header image credit: Wikipedia] I have been interested in 3D printing (the technical name should be “Additive Manufacturing”) for the last 10 years, but why can it be a real alternative to the traditional manufacturing, at least to some industries? Just from a pure physics perspective, AM can make products that other methods cannot. For…
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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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EV is not just about making cars. It is about the Supply Chain.
JB Straubel, Tesla co-founder and its former chief technology officer, recently gave an interview, where he warned that some auto manufacturers may have not thought through when they announced that they were going to switch to 100% EV by a certain date. Indeed, if you look at how a car is made, whether EV or gasoline ones,…
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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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Simulation: Is demand equal to sales? (Part II, and why is there a Loch Ness Monster?)
In an earlier post, we discussed the difference between demand and sales using a simulation exercise. Now the question is: How can we visualize the difference? To start off, we all know the shape of the normal curve (in the example we discussed the mean is 600, and its standard deviation is 100): However, if…
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Simulation: Is demand equal to sales? (Part I)
Consider the following problem: Suppose at a retail store the annual demand for a toy is a random variable with a normal distribution of N(600, 100), i.e., with mean of 600 and standard deviation of 100. Simulate the distribution of sales if 700 units of such a toy is ordered. What is the expected sales?…
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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…