Growing up, I had the honor of doing some manual labor/equipment operations. Now, I know that the word “privilege” is currently a live grenade, when used by the “wrong person”, but I don’t care. The people I don’t want to offend are those who have no choice or path out of manual labor, and/or whose work is undervalued by society as a whole.
A period of manual/collegial labor teaches more than you think, if not at the time it is sure to succeed. You might drive past one of them, someone driving a bulldozer, fixing roads, changing tires and thinking, oh, life isn’t stressful or something like that, how hard it is. excusenot allowed.
And that’s true in a limited technical sense, because nobody said ‘oh, look at the guy driving that forklift in a straight line – pure genius.’
But the benefit of that time in the driver’s seat is that another world opens up — the world of getting things done, in a world where anything can be thrown at you at any moment. Weather issues, health issues, equipment problems, staffing issues… any of these issues can derail a seemingly trivial task that could be so important in the future. supply chain meaning.
Spend some time sitting in those chairs and these challenges will come to fruition, challenges that don’t impact passers-by directly but can indirectly, in huge ways. And understanding those challenges, even some of them, gives blue-collar/manual workers the opportunity to take a laptop class, which is extremely important. . Anything can be easy on paper, but could be an entirely different matter ahead.
Here’s an example from a recent freight newsletter. U.S. Railways is facing a labor shortage and workers are threatening to strike over the conditions. One reason is that, in an effort to improve profitability and thus impress Wall Street, thereby increasing stock prices and thereby increasing the value of stock options, some management has laid off a lot of workers in an effort to cut costs.
I don’t know some of the layoffs that might be necessary or worthwhile, but I read an engineer’s account who summed up why no one wanted the job anymore. He recounts that trains are now much longer, more than a mile, and run with less staff. He talked about what the situation would be like now if there was an unexpected problem in one of the cars somewhere on the route, he said having to trudge a mile through the snow or in poor conditions. bad to test is up to him. about a problem on a particular car, and then there are fewer people to solve the problem. However, that engineer is responsible for getting the goods there on time. Add those pressures together, and driving the train seems pretty easy, doesn’t it?
Another quick example and then one that almost no one ever thought of, or couldn’t live without, is mentioned in the title. During one of the “paid to drive something around” college summer jobs, I drove a truck for an alfalfa processing plant. Since alfalfa is cut as close to the young plant as possible (10% bloom to be exact) and then transported to a drying facility as quickly as possible (for rapid drying to achieve alfalfa pellets). best quality), time is of the essence, and breakdown is a big deal.
The poor field mechanism will be driven half crazy by a single component – the bearings. One could hear them swearing half a mile away due to the poor quality of some bearings, if for any reason bad bearings were installed due to cost or availability issues. (usually the latter problem). It’s true that operating conditions are dusty and harsh, but that makes better quality components (and their availability) that much more important.
Bearings come in an incredible variety of sizes and shapes, and without them our whole world would stop working (almost literally). Has anyone thought of bearings, other than a small subset of a commercial enterprise responsible for dealing with the direct consequences if they fail?
Here’s a serious story on the subject from a publication that may not have a place in your evening news hour – Bearing-News. A company called EZO Bearings supplies bearings for precision equipment consists of electric motors, power tools, flow meters, pumps, etc. According to an article in Bearing-News, EZO’s bearings distributor in the United Kingdom note that, historically, bearings will arrive six to eight weeks after ordering. As of the beginning of this year, the distributor has received a delivery quote 690 days – onealmost two years.
Going back to the incompetent mechanics who repaired equipment that affected harsh conditions: these mechanical wizards became in some way responsible for the day’s output. During a short growing season, daily production is crucial. Alfalfa doesn’t take long to bloom 10 percent.
The mechanic’s stress level is enormous and they have choices they don’t want. Waiting for the good part? Or use the cheap stuff if that’s all available? And what about them racing around the countryside – what happens when they get a flat tire or get stuck on a bad road or any other problem that can happen that no one can imagine except when they actually do things like this?
Now, imagine their dilemma if they faced year-long parts wait times. There’s no good way to plan around that. How can you order parts for next year? Order copies of all of them, hundreds of them, and spend a fortune on inventory? Management frowned at those suggestions; they have their own problems that people further up the food chain consider important.
Yes, all of these should fall within the realm of procurement/supply chain, who are tasked with making sure everything is in place. But not all is well, in a way that I think makes sense: “Moreover, the hoarding fever is pushing the global supply chain to the brink of collapse.” report a supply chain industry publication. Toilet paper and bearings… are not interchangeable but have a lot in common.
In the Bearing-News article, one culprit for the shortage was pointed out as rising energy prices. The skyrocketing cost of natural gas (and even coal, as the article notes) has meant that some key input supplies dry up, leading to price spikes or complete absences. available. In a way, high fuel/natural gas prices create a huge net of shortfalls through collateral damage.
Recently, it has been reported that a large aluminum smelter is 22 percent production cut due to rising energy costs. You might think it’s a facility, the world has many facilities. And it’s true, unless the market is fairly balanced between supply and demand, who doesn’t buy aluminum anymore? It’s not just a matter of price increases – something that won’t be built, that it should have. Could it be bearings? Maybe, or maybe something else.
Maybe it’s the alternator chassis, or engine parts, or who knows what. Hopefully it’s the peripherals that get cut – maybe the giant TVs are the key consumers of the product and life as we know it will go on even if Best Buy doesn’t have an 8 screen foot. But we don’t know that that allocation will play out in an optimal way.
The point is that our world is built on a certain energy price range and it only works within that range. In addition, the system is broken.
In the long run, the industry will adapt – over a period of 10 or 15 years, for example, frequent shortages of aluminum will lead to a rebalancing of supply and demand. It’s possible that cheap barbecue grills (or whatever) will no longer use aluminum, because more important demand nodes (such as bearings) will boost pay significantly more.
That’s how major structural changes can work over time and when price signals have an opportunity to correct behavior and/or consumption patterns.
Today’s global market is one of the broken price signals, starting with energy. High oil/gas/coal prices mean the world is hungry for more, however, global production is being held back by a class of people who have never been in the driver’s seat of anything – but unfortunately Ironically, they are in the driver’s seat of the economy.
The world is in dire need of increasing supplies of key minerals and metals, and building a new mine is becoming increasingly difficult due to increasing environmental and regulatory constraints. That’s not to say that environmental constraints are a bad thing, they can be a great thing from a habitat conservation perspective, but they are real obstacles to new supply.
As society’s fortunes increase, subsequent generations become more distant from where things really happen. People flock to cities where food only appears in supermarkets, where fuel appears at gas stations, where electricity appears in outlets, where everything else is available on Amazon and on the doorstep. tomorrow. It’s a bit of an illusion. The emergence of all these is not automatic.
Everyone’s work is deliverable, of several types, and all important in their own way. But many jobs, especially manual/blue-collar workers, have a certain degree of severity to them that is not appreciated. Truck driver issues that can slow the delivery of critical parts or supplies can affect one manufacturing facility and possibly affect other manufacturing facilities. An inexpensive part used to save money or because it is readily available can fail and cause similar cascading events.
The heat really affects those on the front lines in a way that other professions don’t. If a columnist doesn’t write a column in a given week, at the end of the day, who cares? If academic research is delayed by a month or two, what will happen to a functioning society? If an analyst doesn’t analyze for several weeks, it may affect the flow of data into some economic models or economists’ thinking, but will have no impact on the supply chain.
A critical bearing failure, in a world that has to wait 690 days for a replacement, is a problem worthy of our consideration.
A great gift to place under a tree to avoid energy controversies during the holidays. It works like a pacifier. Watch “The End of Fossil Fuel Madness” at amazon.ca, indigo.caor Amazon.com. Thanks for the support. If you don’t buy the book, send some money to kind people in Ukraine and Iran who really need it. But one of us sure. Or both. Up to you. Not presure.
Read more insightful analysis from Terry Etam here, or email Terry here.
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