AMAZON’S JEFF BEZOS SCORED A MULTIDIMENSIONAL
coup with his splashy introduction on CBS’s “ 60 Minutes” of
early prototype “octocopter” home delivery drones. The initial
reaction, encapsulated in Charlie Rose’s “Oh, my God!”
response, is inevitably one of either embracing or shrinking
from what a re-imagined future of fulfillment might look like.
The spectacle of skies filled with tiny bionic birds clutching small packages is startling enough, but when FedEx, UPS,
the USPS, and countless local delivery operations contemplate all those little birds flying away with bundles of revenue, attention, in Willy Loman’s words,
must be paid.
Whatever other fulfillment and delivery
enterprises do in response, we are clearly
looking at the vision of a new future. What
is truly sobering is the likelihood that
today’s prototypes are merely a preview of
coming attractions. By the time concepts
are proven, approvals are granted, processes are shaken down, and failsafes are
embedded, the five-years-out version is
likely to be faster, have greater range, and
be able to carry larger and heavier packages—in essence, changing the game
before it is even under way.
WHAT IT ALL MEANS
Commentators, some envious, some cynical, and some both,
have observed that CBS had been bamboozled into giving
away several hundred thousand dollars worth of free air time
to promote a commercial enterprise. Bezos got to put on a
longish infomercial for Amazon, cementing its share of mind
with consumers, impressing business targets, and scaring the
bejeepers out of competitors—all just in time for the Black
Friday/Cyber Monday retailing frenzy that infects the national economy each year.
Whether the vision Amazon is promoting ever comes to
fruition or not, the retailing exposure could not have been
greater, even disguised as news. As they say in the popular
Guinness commercial, “Brilliant!”
BY ART VAN BODEGRAVEN AND
KENNETH B. ACKERMAN basictraining
Help wanted:
Octocopter experience a plus
As much as anything, though, the
announcement illustrates the breadth and
depth of jobs required to make 21st century
supply chains operate effectively, and it highlights the shallowness and insufficiency of
past initiatives in training, education, and
work-force development. The day of living
and dying within the confines of order selection, fulfillment, material handling, and
truck driving is rapidly disappearing—and
none too soon.
Our profession has, as
everyone except those
mired up to their knees
at La Brea knows, evolved
mightily. Research and
education, as well as
process improvement
and other productivity
initiatives, were originally focused on material
handling—essentially
industrial engineering
approaches to how we
did our jobs within warehouses. That was some 70 or more years ago.
The next stage of our maturing perspective
encompassed physical distribution, basically
transactionally oriented transportation and
warehouse management. That awakening
followed World War II and a morphing into
what was known in wartime terminology as
“logistics.” But the focus remained on point-to-point transport and activities within the
four walls of warehouses and distribution
centers. Slowly, we began to consider factors
of how we related to suppliers and customers’ customers in this vision.
Although the term “supply chain management” was coined in the early ’80s, we did
