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...
Things I learned When Lighting a Fire
It is getting cold, and I started to use my beloved wood stove on a daily basis. I am not a novice, but I have not been lighting a fire for quite a few years because we have...
Zillow’s Failure in Housing Flipping is a Classic Example of Ignoring Bottlenecks and Variabilities
By now, we have all heard the story of Zillow losing more than $550 million doing house-flipping. Its CEO blamed it on its forecasting model that produced house-buying prices...
How to Revive the Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry in the US
Before we talk about the “How”, we need to first understand why we need to revive the semiconductor manufacturing in the US. First of all, it is the foundation of...
What is the Supply Chains of the Future?
At the risk of sounding overly ambitious and pompous, I propose to think about a big topic: What should the supply chain of the future look like? This is such a big topic and...
A Tale of Two Chains: Supply Chain and Blockchain
I cannot believe that I have not written a post on blockchain, until now. The matter of fact is that I have been teaching blockchain for a number of years, and I do think...
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...
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...
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...