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I appreciate most of the arguments here, but take strong exception to the validity of blaming "just-in-time logistics". Consider grocery store A that uses Just-

I appreciate most of the arguments here, but take strong exception to the validity of blaming "just-in-time logistics". Consider grocery store A that uses Just-in-Time and grocery store B that does not: Grocery store A (with JIT) has much less inventory, which has a variety of benefits. It needs fewer square feet, which reduces rent/heating/lighting/cleaning costs and therefore reduces prices; this also means more residential space for actual residents. It has less food waste, because most inventory is only on a shelf for a hours or days rather than weeks. Paradoxically, it is actually easier to keep goods in stock, because there are 10x fewer goods to count. By contrast, Grocery store B (without JIT) has much more inventory, which has a variety of costs. It needs more square feet, which increases rent/heating/lighting/cleaning costs and therefore increases prices; this also means less residential space for actual residents. It has more food waste, because inventory is sitting there for weeks or months to prevent a shortage. Individual items go out of stock all the time, because the staff can't effectively count this much inventory. Similar arguments hold for stocks of parts at factories, with the additional problems of obsolescence, things getting lost, risk of fire or shelving collapses etc. Carrying enough inventory to weather a shortage like recent COVID shortages would require months and months of inventory; imagine the obsolescence costs if the factory needs to make any change at all! We need to stop blaming just-in-time logistics for shortages. Outsourcing, deregulation, anticompetitive behaviors are all valid, but just-in-time logistics makes businesses much more efficient which helps everyone. The thought of having stockpiles large enough to prevent issues like recent ones is completely absurdist.

deleted 5y ago
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cplusplusfellow 5y ago
Just about every smaller grocery store I’ve seen places themselves into some of the highest priced real estate in the city. This far negates the overall cost under most scenarios by my calculations.
Retric 5y ago
JIT doesn’t really apply to grocery stores as food rots, it’s a very different supply chain vs microwaves. JIT only saves meaningful amounts of money when you had significant amounts of inventory sitting around. The difference between 2 days and 3 days of parts at a factory simply doesn’t matter. The difference between 3 days and 3 months worth of parts is a big deal. That said, the entire reason companies used to have months worth of parts on hand is because shutting down factories is expensive. Missing a 20c part to build a 20,000$ car using a 200 million dollar factory is a big deal. JIT was about minimizing risks such that you didn’t need to keep as many parts on hand, that failed with COVID to the point where factories are once again trying to stock up with months worth of parts because the same basic economic rules apply. You can argue around why and how the assumptions built into JIT failed, and if mitigating them would have been worth the investment. But that’s a different story.
- maroonblazer 5y ago
  What percentage of a grocery store's inventory is perishable? There's plenty that has a pretty long shelf life. E.g. canned goods, paper towels, bathroom tissue, bottled goods, vacuum-sealed items, etc.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    Probably a lot as a percentage of sales. The fresh section of my grocery store might be 20% of space, but there's usually two restockers working compared to one elsewhere in the store.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    Most of the real, whole food that is healthy to eat and makes up an ideal diet. Although grains and legumes are an exception.
pessimizer 5y ago
> to weather a shortage like recent COVID shortages It's been 2 years.
- munk-a 5y ago
  It has been yes, and it isn't over yet. We've had significant issues mobilizing the public to address the issue so we've possibly been saddled with a longer recovery time than we'd otherwise have but traditional environmental shortage events (droughts and flooding) could effect areas for decades. And this did occasionally happen on a global scale as well - see the winter of 536[1] or the Krakatoa explosion of 1883[2] - occasionally the world gets dealt a really rough hand, we're better at responding to global issues like that now but we're still not great. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa
- thephyber 5y ago
  Since the first outbreaks, sure. COVID was not a 2 week event. A complicated car probably has 10k parts. Imagine if parts suppliers randomly have enough worker shortages to reduce their productivity so the assembly plants start running out of parts. You can’t finish building cars with only 99% of the parts, so the line stops. Same with ports. When longshoremen bring COVID into the workplace, it spreads and the port slows. Consumer behavior still hasn’t returned to pre-Covid, so demand for goods is still high while production isn’t quite 100% restored.
- glkjlkjerh 5y ago
bsder 5y ago
> just-in-time logistics makes businesses much more efficient Where is it written that "efficient" is the be-all-end-all for businesses? If a business can only extract money but can't serve society when required, perhaps that business should be replaced by something that can? This is the whole "smoking ban" thing once again. Smokers were so much more profitable that businesses that gave them up simply couldn't compete against those who didn't. At some point, we, as a society, decided that the downsides of such businesses finally outweighed the benefits, and we changed the laws to force those businesses to change. > Carrying enough inventory to weather a shortage like recent COVID shortages would require months and months of inventory; imagine the obsolescence costs if the factory needs to make any change at all! However, we also had situations like toilet paper where the factories had capacity in the industrial sector to make toilet paper, but we couldn't transfer that to the consumer sector because every step was so hyper-optimized (rolls are larger, no ability to individually package, only able to ship pallets, etc.). So, the demand shock rippled through consumer and the supply chain had no ability to adjust upwards because they had no extra capacity. And the industrial chain that had extra capacity was so hyper-optimized that it couldn't pivot to serve the demand shock. Maximally efficient is minimally robust.
_trampeltier 5y ago
The logisic is different now. Before a store ordered one big package with 100 items in china. Now 100 people ordere 100 packages. This does need much much more space on the transport.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cplusplusfellow 5y ago

Just about every smaller grocery store I’ve seen places themselves into some of the highest priced real estate in the city. This far negates the overall cost under most scenarios by my calculations.

Retric 5y ago

JIT doesn’t really apply to grocery stores as food rots, it’s a very different supply chain vs microwaves. JIT only saves meaningful amounts of money when you had significant amounts of inventory sitting around. The difference between 2 days and 3 days of parts at a factory simply doesn’t matter. The difference between 3 days and 3 months worth of parts is a big deal. That said, the entire reason companies used to have months worth of parts on hand is because shutting down factories is expensive. Missing a 20c part to build a 20,000$ car using a 200 million dollar factory is a big deal. JIT was about minimizing risks such that you didn’t need to keep as many parts on hand, that failed with COVID to the point where factories are once again trying to stock up with months worth of parts because the same basic economic rules apply. You can argue around why and how the assumptions built into JIT failed, and if mitigating them would have been worth the investment. But that’s a different story.

maroonblazer 5y ago
What percentage of a grocery store's inventory is perishable? There's plenty that has a pretty long shelf life. E.g. canned goods, paper towels, bathroom tissue, bottled goods, vacuum-sealed items, etc.
- tedunangst 5y ago
  Probably a lot as a percentage of sales. The fresh section of my grocery store might be 20% of space, but there's usually two restockers working compared to one elsewhere in the store.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  Most of the real, whole food that is healthy to eat and makes up an ideal diet. Although grains and legumes are an exception.

pessimizer 5y ago

> to weather a shortage like recent COVID shortages It's been 2 years.

munk-a 5y ago
It has been yes, and it isn't over yet. We've had significant issues mobilizing the public to address the issue so we've possibly been saddled with a longer recovery time than we'd otherwise have but traditional environmental shortage events (droughts and flooding) could effect areas for decades. And this did occasionally happen on a global scale as well - see the winter of 536[1] or the Krakatoa explosion of 1883[2] - occasionally the world gets dealt a really rough hand, we're better at responding to global issues like that now but we're still not great. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa
thephyber 5y ago
Since the first outbreaks, sure. COVID was not a 2 week event. A complicated car probably has 10k parts. Imagine if parts suppliers randomly have enough worker shortages to reduce their productivity so the assembly plants start running out of parts. You can’t finish building cars with only 99% of the parts, so the line stops. Same with ports. When longshoremen bring COVID into the workplace, it spreads and the port slows. Consumer behavior still hasn’t returned to pre-Covid, so demand for goods is still high while production isn’t quite 100% restored.
glkjlkjerh 5y ago

bsder 5y ago

> just-in-time logistics makes businesses much more efficient Where is it written that "efficient" is the be-all-end-all for businesses? If a business can only extract money but can't serve society when required, perhaps that business should be replaced by something that can? This is the whole "smoking ban" thing once again. Smokers were so much more profitable that businesses that gave them up simply couldn't compete against those who didn't. At some point, we, as a society, decided that the downsides of such businesses finally outweighed the benefits, and we changed the laws to force those businesses to change. > Carrying enough inventory to weather a shortage like recent COVID shortages would require months and months of inventory; imagine the obsolescence costs if the factory needs to make any change at all! However, we also had situations like toilet paper where the factories had capacity in the industrial sector to make toilet paper, but we couldn't transfer that to the consumer sector because every step was so hyper-optimized (rolls are larger, no ability to individually package, only able to ship pallets, etc.). So, the demand shock rippled through consumer and the supply chain had no ability to adjust upwards because they had no extra capacity. And the industrial chain that had extra capacity was so hyper-optimized that it couldn't pivot to serve the demand shock. Maximally efficient is minimally robust.

_trampeltier 5y ago

The logisic is different now. Before a store ordered one big package with 100 items in china. Now 100 people ordere 100 packages. This does need much much more space on the transport.