> Or worse, sending several containerfulls of stuff somewhere in anticipation of them maybe needing it soon You're again making a lot of assumptions here. What

> Or worse, sending several containerfulls of stuff somewhere in anticipation of them maybe needing it soon You're again making a lot of assumptions here. What do you mean with "sending several containerfulls of stuff somewhere"? Similarly with "This is of course very wasteful". First you assume that companies often send too much stuff, then use that as a basis that there's waste. You haven't substantiated the first assumption! > and the high latency is the source of the waste. Again, this entirely depends on the business (commodity) and circumstances! Further, you take this as a given, while you did _not_ substantiate this at all. For loads of commodities the time spent on the vessel does _not_ matter. For others it might be a mix. Sometimes it's important that things arrive on a regular basis. Sometimes it's not important. > So effectively what has happened in lean manufacturing and product development flow-based approaches Lean manufacturing car companies are happily using container vessel to transport their car parts. I've already mentioned the latency argument is missing the point quite a bit: the scheduling is important. A factory that runs out of parts is way more important than the 2 weeks vs 4-6 weeks. If the 2 weeks cannot be trusted upon it won't work. Further, substantiate your assumptions. I don't see anything referencing a particular business, the costs associated, etc. Just guesswork.