A Supply Chain Miracle

A modern supply chain is nothing short of a miracle, and Amazon delivery is a perfect example. Between the moment you click "place order" and the moment your package goes on the truck, the amount of time that passes is just 45 minutes! That's less than an hour to process, locate, pack, scan, label your package before hitting the road. It takes me 15 minutes just to get out of the house, and I live two blocks away from the office.

Amazon receives roughly 10 million orders a day or 115 orders a second. By the time you're done reading this Banter, Amazon would've filled 66 UPS delivery trucks' with orders. What makes this possible? A combination of robotics, ruthless management, and a workforce the size of Eswatini's population. Today, one out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee. The biggest increase in employment ever was registered last year by. . . you guessed it - Amazon!

What's the learning here? The 70s, 80s and 90s were called the "brand age", where everyone talked about the "intangibles" and people like Seth Godin made a nice living preaching about brand strategy. What is the new gangster cocktail? The new place you want to study and understand? Something that was really boring for a really long time and is now kind of the new black? SUPPLY CHAIN!