DC Velocity - January 2017

C’MON NOW; HOW MUCH FUN IS LOGISTICS, ANYWAY?

Everyone knows that we are in a dead-serious competition, fulfilling orders until our tongues are hangin’ out, with enterprise survival hanging in the balance. But we should all take a deep breath and look for evidence of humor in the hurly-burly of our workaday world.

We spend entirely too much time worrying and wondering, humorlessly pursuing KPIs (key performance indicators) of dubious value and dashboard entries that might or might not be displaying true speed and performance. Hey, if your job (in supply chain management and elsewhere)

is not fun, with its fair share of chuckles, you are either not doing it right or are doing it with the wrong people or the wrong enterprise.

So, what and where are other indicators that our work, at its core, is actually fun— there” variety. This is a good time to enlist people who get paid to be funny to help tell the stories. Practitioners and academics are pretty much useless in this arena; consultants generally make actuaries look like Louis C.K. All have senses of humor that would do a mortician proud.

ACTORS AND COMEDIANS ARE SOCIALISTS AT HEART

Let’s begin with the beloved leftist and genius auteur, Charlie Chaplin’s iconic tramp, with oversized trousers, an undersized jacket, and charming props of a cane and bowler hat. I’ll grant that Chaplin’s characters predate the rise of logistics and supply chain management. But his painful lampoons of soulless factories, scientific management, and pointlessly impossible performance targets capture the behaviors of the rapacious lap dogs of the ruling classes. Thus, the classic “Modern Times” depicts the indignities heaped upon helpless laborers and exposes their inability to exercise initiative or creativity in satisfying the

BY ART VAN BODEGRAVEN basictraining

Fun and games in the
supply chain

bosses. Looks, feels, sounds like DC operations working under stress, with limited investment and fewer resources—last generation’s standard, with residual exceptions among performance laggards today.

Chaplin’s pinnacle of artistry in silent films, “City Lights,” shared almost nothing with “Modern Times” but foreshadowed the lack of human dignity, the capriciousness of monied classes, the powerlessness of workers, and the relegation of people to menial jobs, with no rights or recourse in keeping or losing tenuous employment.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Admittedly, we often have to search out the humorous in supply chain management and logistics. Once upon a time, a brilliant TV comedy series, “The Wrong Mans,” opened its second season with the principals (English) working under assumed names in a witness protection program, functionaries in a distribution facility in Texas.

The co-star? James Corden, now hosting a late-night TV show and fighting off wanna-be guests with a shillelagh as “Car Pool Karaoke” captivates millions.