Supply chains
- Thread starter CO. Hoosier
- Start date
Same thing. Hockey is soccer on ice.
Don't make me create a separate thread.
I agree with all of that. That last paragraph I think has more to it as well. Many people working those kinds of jobs had one or more stretches over the last year and a half where they weren't working. That meant many rearranged their support structures around child care, and figured out their family budgets without that income. After doing that, the decision on whether going back to that service job is worth it looks different now that you and your family have adjusted to not getting that income, perhaps not paying for childcare you were before, grandparents helping more etc.
I wonder, should "just in time" be debated? I get hospitals do not want sunk costs of big critical care units sucking costs, corporations do not want warehouses of parts they will not need for some time, electric companies do not want to pay for power generation they al.ost never need. In running a lean business none of that is good. Yet maybe we were too lean?
One thing I found fascinating over the last year was seeing which companies are leaders and which are followers. A lot of the "lean" stuff came out of Toyota, but more than other auto makers they were backing off on just in time supplies and building robustness into their supply chains as other automakers leaned (heh) more into the JIT philosophy. That meant Toyota weathered the chip shortage better than most other manufacturers. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ply-chain-helped-it-weather-the-chip-shortage
At the same time Apple was taking the approach of owning their own chip technology and having a lot more control over the manufacturing and supply chain, again bucking a lot of industry trends and it meant that the new M1 Macs were some of the few computers this last year that were consistently available. https://www.spglobal.com/marketinte...dwinds-apple-finds-solace-in-m1-chip-63877560
JIT is all about execution. To execute well you have to know what you can count on, what kind of variables you have to account for, how much cushion you build into your systems, and how well you can react when any of those parameters fall short. There's a lot more to it than just doing it or not doing it. Everyone does it for some value of "just in time". Where you have to be careful is not getting greedy, where you're running so close to the edge that the risk overtakes the reward.
I know you are generalizing, and it's impossible not to, and the answers are industry by industry, but for many lean isn't a choice but a consequence of cash flow, seasonality, on and on. And as noted much of these issues aren't a product of "inventory" but labor shortages. Stop with the stimulus free money. Or raise wages. Or whatever is necessary to bring back workers.
I refuse to believe that the pandemic occasioned some revolutionary epiphany that allowed massive swaths of people to re-evaluate their lives and forgo their shitty job at the Memphis fedex warehouse center. They had those jobs bc they needed money, not the life fulfillment packaging provides. Once the current eviction moratoriums are lifted, child care credits as checks in the mail, unemployment enhanced benefits, and stimulus checks stop I believe the lion's share of people will go back to work, and they'll do so for the same reason they worked at FedEx before: they need the money.
The unemployment bonuses have stopped and the eviction moratorium lifted (I am sure we had a thread on Biden losing the court case).
So in short, are you saying that the UBI experiment has ruined the entire country (if not the world) in just a few months?
who in the heck would have figured that? I mean no one EVER brought this up, so it’s probably just another unintended happenstance, right?
Stoll, I agree with you about those ignorant politicians who call young adults wanting college forestry degrees as being "tree huggers".
I strongly disagree. I have only anecdotal evidence, but I know several people who have gone from two working parents to one over the last year and a half. Childcare is expensive, someone making $12 an hour isn't taking much home if they're paying for daycare for a couple kids. It's hard to see that possibility when you're in the grind every day, when you're forced to make that change it gives you the chance to actually see what it's like and whether you want to go back to what you were doing before.
And I suspect there will be a lag time for money gained to run out and when it does we'll see jobs filled again.
Maybe. There was a sharp decline in poverty as a result. Presumably a decline in those "having" to work.
The short of it is I think free money has contributed to the labor shortage more than a re-evaluation of life choices
Only person I’ve called a tree hugger is the businessman in Bloomington that spiked a tree and killed a logger.
Schools are, but before/after school care isn't free in a lot of cases, and daycare for younger children isn't either. I'm not talking about parents of high school kids, I'm talking about parents of younger kids. School days don't line up nicely with a lot of hourly jobs, and way too many people are paying most of one parent's salary for the childcare they need to be able to go to work. The economics are stupid and a lot of people are realizing that.
In my young adult years employers competed to offer benefits to attract employees. Health insurance and other family beneits, for example, attracted mothers into the workforce.
Today, although some employers do help with child care, the task is being assigned as a government responsibility.
Yeah but that's no different than 2018 and prior. I don't buy that. The economics haven't changed.
The economics haven't, but there was a forcing function on realizing what those economics were. Many people in that situation don't have the financial literacy to truly understand that tradeoff, in the last year and a half many of those people in the service industry were laid off or furloughed without a lot of other options so they made it work without that income. Now they have a comparison between the two situations and are noticing that they get a ton more time with their kids for only a small decrease in take-home pay.
I think the bridge money from the gov was the difference in "making it work"
Yeah, and let's give out another $5 Trillion which includes Universal Basic Income so labor becomes even more difficult to find!
Makes me nostalgic for the Jimmy Carter days and the coal shortage that shut IU down for 3 weeks (1 week was Spring break) in 1978.
I guess 'nostalgic' isn't the right word. Nauseous is more like it.
Wait until these 'younger people' hit their 40s and get tired of living like gypseys and try to raise kids.
And their kids will get tired of scroungine.
It's fun while it lasts, but eventually, greed will rule.
Yeah I could be totally wrong. I just have a hard time believing a re-evaluation of life choices is playing a significant role, largely because the sectors most impacted are lower wage jobs where ees don't have the luxury of extended sabbaticals.
I haven't taken the time to look but I'd like to see if there's a correlation between employment rates and when states' terminated Benes
Talked to a client today having trouble finding good salaried people. Client was disappointed by the candidates they got for a low level salaried position (ie requires college degree).
Still, I don’t think there’s one easy answer to the problem of finding employees at any level. But I definitely think some people have re-evaluated whether they need to work, or how much they need to work.
Did the client opine why he/she thought the applicant pool was underwhelming?
Here's one recent take.
Redirect Notice
www.google.com
I don’t think the client knew why other than a tight market for finding good people.
Here's more:
The workers who keep global supply chains moving are warning of a 'system collapse'
Seafarers, truck drivers and airline workers have endured quarantines, travel restrictions and complex Covid-19 vaccination and testing requirements to keep stretched supply chains moving during the pandemic.
www.cnn.com
Perhaps requiring a college degree either weeded out otherwise qualified candidates, or college graduates didn't feel the job was up to their expectations.
My impression was they were simply comparing the quality of pre and post-pandemic candidates.
I know a commercial landscaping business that almost went under because they cannot find any labor at reasonable rates. At some point, their customers stop giving a shit about how nicely landscaped their offices are while the majority of their employees work remotely.
Yea, well those selfish little shits are also unlikely to reproduce and parent at rates necessary to prevent a massive demographic problem.
I won't disagree we are heading toward a huge demographic problem. Of course the only possible answer to that is more immigration which is hard to convince people.
