Category Archives: Logistics

70 Years Ago Today, Convoy HX 300 Crossed the Atlantic!

Convoy HX 300, the 300th of the numbered series of World War II HX convoys, consisting of 166 merchant ships sailing from New York, Halifax, Sydney, and St. John’s, arrived safely in the Western Approaches (and arrived in UK ports by August 3).

These ships were arranged in 19 parallel columns to produce a formation approximately 9 miles (14 km) wide and 4 miles (6.4 km) long. The convoy was protected by 6 warships when it left New York (2 submarine chasers, 1 minesweeper, and 3 corvettes), 5 warships when it left Halifax (1 minesweeper and 4 corvettes), and 7 warships (1 frigate and 6 corvettes) when Canadian Escort Force C5 assumed responsibility mid-ocean. Three warships (Isles class trawlers) escorted the Sydney ships to the main convey.

This was a very well coordinated logistics effort! And now that we have Post-Panamax cargo ships, not one we’re likely to see again. (Hopefully!)

Thanks to U2, Everyone Remembers Bloody Sunday. But 80 Years Ago Today Was Bloody Thursday!

The Industrial Revolution was not easy. It was a difficult time in American History. It was a time when workers’ rights had not yet been formalized, when unions were being formed, and when America was working hard to become the world leader it is today. It was a period of progress broken up by turmoil when America was going through its growing pains.

Part of this turmoil took the form of regular labour strikes by newly formed unions trying to bring workers rights to hard labourers and some order to the chaos that accompanies rapid industrialization. This included the Wheatland Hop that occurred 101 years ago in Wheatland, California that resulted in 4 deaths and Bloody Thursday that occurred 80 years ago today as part of the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen’s Strike.

This strike lasted eighty-three days and began on May 9, 1934 when longshoremen in every West Coast port walked off the job. They were joined by sailors a few days later. It was a heated and aggressive strike on both sides. As per the Wikiepedia entry, the employers recruited strikebreakers, and in response to this, strikers attacked the stockade housing the strikebreakers on May 15. This resulted in employer’s private guards shooting and killing two strikers.

Due to the impact of the strike (as a significant amount of trade has passed through west coast ports for the last century, which is also why “Billions [are now] at Risk as West Coast Port Contract Ends” [ABC News]), the Roosevelt administration tried to broker a deal to end the strike, but the membership of the newly formed unions rejected the agreements brought to them twice.

This resulted in the employers deciding to force a reopening of the port in San Francisco on July 3, sending trucks through the picket lines which resulted in fights between police and strikers. Then, on July 5, eighty years ago today, the employer’s Industrial Association tried to force a further re-opening of the port. In this attempted reopening, which started in the morning, police shot tear gas canisters into the crowd of strikers, picketers, and supporters, and charged with mounted police. Picketers threw the canisters and rocks back. Both sides then suspended aggressive actives, refortified, and took stock.

But then hostilities resumed in the afternoon outside of the ILA strike kitchen. Eyewitness accounts differ in the exact accounts that transpired next, but the end result was that police ended up firing shotguns, striking three men, and killing two — and giving us Bloody Thursday.

At this point, the California Governor called in the California National Guard to patrol the waterfront and federal soldiers stationed at the Presidio were placed on alert. The picketers pulled back and trucks and trains were, after 58 days, allowed to move without interference. But the strike didn’t end. On July 8, teamsters in both San Francisco and Oakland voted to strike. Then, on July 14, the San Francisco Labor Council voted to call a general strike, and the Mayor declared a state of emergency. This was probably unnecessary, as the Labor Council strike only lasted four days.

When the Labor Council voted to end the General Strike, it also recommended that unions accept arbitration of all disputed issues. This resulted in the National Longshore Board making the same proposal that passed in every port except Everett, Washington. At this point, only one point and striking seamen were left in the lurch. This was the beginning of the end of the strike, and the arbitration award on October 12, 1934 cemented the ILA’s power, which still exists today in the ILWU, which was formerly known as the ILU which broke off from the ILA in 1937 and which covers the west coast district.

The ILWU continues to recognize this day by shutting down all West Coast ports every July 5. Let’s hope they, and the employers, never forget what happens if both sides don’t sit down for as long as it takes to resolve disputes and work out a deal.

15 Ways to Shave Costs From Your Supply Chain Part II

As per yesterday’s post, earlier this year, Inbound Logistics ran an article on 163 Ways to Supercharge Your Supply Chain that had good advice to improve your global logistics, customs, documentation, expedited shipping, warehousing, optimization, equipment, trucking, 3PLs, maritime, security, risk management, and general supply chain operations. Besides all of the obvious ways to improve your supply chain and cut your costs, and the more advanced ways that are covered regularly on SI, there are a few often overlooked nuggets of cost savings that should be singled out because they cost many companies money and go undetected. Today we will cover the remaining eight (8).

3PLs
Determine What Each 3PL Does Best
Most 3PLs excel in a niche such as global logistics, transportation, or warehousing because most of them started off focusing on one function and added others as they grew. Understand their strengths, and weaknesses, before selecting a 3PL.

Inventory Accuracy
Establish external and internal product traceability.
It’s not just inbound and outbound shipments, but internal transfers between different warehouse locations, etc. that need to be tracked. Knowing you have 10 units of a product is only useful if you know where the units are.

Lean Logistics
Manage your empty container flow.
Moving empty containers is equivalent to burning money. It’s a complete waste.

Seasonal Peaks
Know Your Overflow Potential Before You Need It!
Don’t be scrambling for overflow space and trailers, etc. when you need it — have a plan in advance.

Maritime
Bypass Distribution Centers
If you can consolidate a large shipment that can go directly to a store, or a local DC that serves multiple stores, do so — temporary storage costs money and so does unnecessary unloading and reloading of inventory.

Port Selection
Know Your Port’s Infrastructure Limits
Especially if the port is near capacity. If the port isn’t investing in infrastructure to expand capacity, or can no longer expand its infrastructure, then it should be expected that the port will hit capacity and that could be a problem for your organization in the future if you plan to do more global trade.

Security
Protect Against Malicious Behaviour By Former Employee … Credentials
It’s not just the former employee that can cause you problems, it’s their credentials! Just because an employee left on good terms does not mean that their login and access credentials won’t cause problems. A current employee trying to arrange an inside job will happily use the ill-gotten password of that esteemed former employee for their illegal gain.

Risk Management
When Selecting Geographically Distributed Vendors, Consider the Ports!
Multiple suppliers who ship through the same primary port can all be taken offline as a result of a typhoon that destroys the port.

For another 148 ways to optimize your supply chain, see the Inbound Logistics article on 163 Ways to Supercharge Your Supply Chain.

15 Ways to Shave Costs From Your Supply Chain Part I

Earlier this year, Inbound Logistics ran an article on 163 Ways to Supercharge Your Supply Chain that had good advice to improve your global logistics, customs, documentation, expedited shipping, warehousing, optimization, equipment, trucking, 3PLs, maritime, security, risk management, and general supply chain operations. Besides all of the obvious ways to improve your supply chain and cut your costs, and the more advanced ways that are covered regularly on SI, there are a few often overlooked nuggets of cost savings that should be singled out because they cost many companies money and go undetected. Today we will cover the first seven (7).

Global Logistics
Collect Data About Your Products
Not only is understanding product composition vital to correct classification, which determines your tariffs, but it makes sure you don’t get any surprises when you product gets detained at the US border because your new hard drives with built in encryption were designed primarily for industrial information security and do not automatically qualify under Category 5, Part 2 of the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations like your hand-held personal digital cameras.

Customs
Focus on What You Can Control
When it comes to customs, you have no control — but you can create a position for a Customs Compliance Officer and make sure everything you do is fully compliant, fully documented, and fully auditable at a moment’s notice to prevent unnecessary delays when some newbie mistakes your fig paste ship for hash.

Documentation
Confirm Document Receipt
Just because you sent the documents, it doesn’t mean they were received, even if they weren’t returned (or the e-mail didn’t bounce). For critical shipments make sure the documents were received and noted in the system before your goods hit the border.

Expedited Shipping
Eliminate Padding
It’s a typical situation where everyone along the logistics chain adds “safety” time to ensure on-time delivery. It only takes a few layers to transform a shipment required by 9 am into one that is required by 5 am which requires expensive expedited shipping. Make sure unnecessary padding is not added to the delivery time.

Warehousing
Processes Need to be Quality Based
When a mistake happens, get to the real root cause. As per the article, if a forklift knocks off a sprinkler, don’t just ask why it was so high and how to prevent the forklift from getting so high again, but if it should even have been there in the first place. It might not just be a storage height issue, but an overall storage plan issue. If boxes are being stacked to the ceiling in multiple locations, maybe you need a new storage arrangement or maybe you need more storage space!

Equipment
Recognize the Environmental Impact of Your Pallets
Plastic pallets, which require oil, cannot be repaired and must be melted down to be recycled — requiring more energy that likely uses more oil. Wood pallets are easily repaired and recycled.

Trucking
Place your production facilities close to major cities.
Metropolitan areas have a substantial concentration of LTL trucking firms and terminals, which minimize your freight charges.

Come back tomorrow for Part II.

The Board Gamers Guide to Supply Management Part XXII: Thurn and Taxis

Thurn and Taxis, by Rio Grande Games, is a very interesting game. In this game, each player is trying to build a competing postal system in Bavaria (which is now a southeast German state) in the 17th century when travel relied on (horse-drawn) carriages. In order to do this, she must build post offices in as many of the 22 major cities as she is able to, before someone else builds her 20th, and last, post office or acquires a carriage worth 7 points (which will be the 17th carriage acquired in the game). Like Ticket to Ride and Camelot, the Build, the game is very easy to learn, and the basic rules can be picked up by a new player in just a few minutes. But also like both of these games, mastery is considerably more difficult as your options depend not only on the cards available to you but what your opponents choose to do as well.

In Thurn and Taxis, you are trying to build post offices that establish a postal system, and you do so by building postal routes of three or more cities. When you have a route of 3 or more cities, you may close the route and place post offices in every city on the route that is contained in one province or in one city from every province that is covered by the route. A “good” route, when closed, will allow you to place a post office in every city on the route, but a “poor” route will only let you place post offices in some of the cities. Furthermore, the identification of the “right” route is hampered by the fact that the first player to build a post office in every city in a province gets a high score for doing so, the first player to build a post office in every province gets a high score for doing so, the first player to close a route of length 5, 6, and 7 also gets a high score for doing so, and the player to trigger the game end condition gets an additional 1 point. (Subsequent players to do the same score less.) Not only do you have to build routes, like in Ticket to Ride, but you have to build effective routes. Furthermore, to add an extra level of complexity, once you begin to build a route you must add to the route on every turn (until you close it) or you lose the route. (If you have a route of 6 you can close but decide to go for the route of length 7 for the biggest bonus, and you aren’t able to extend it in your next turn, your gamble could cost you everything, and anywhere between 3 and 6 turns of effort will vanish.)

The rules of Thurn and Taxi are easily summed up as follows. On her turn, a player, who can only use the special ability of one of the four postal officials (Administrator, PostMaster, Postal Carrier, and Cartwright) on her turn, will:

  1. Optionally use the special ability of the Administrator to replace the six cards available to him to build a route.
  2. Add a city card to her hand, and, optionally (unless it is the player’s first turn, then she must), use the special ability of the PostMaster to add a second city card to her hand.
  3. Play a city card from her hand to create a new, or add to an existing, route, and, optionally, use the Postal Carrier to play a second city card to her route.
    If she has no cards in play, or cannot add to an existing route, she starts a new route and the previous route, if there was one, is discarded.
  4. If the route is of length 3 or more, close and score her current route (by placing post offices and collecting any bonus tiles and/or carriages earned) and, optionally, use the Cartwright to acquire a carriage that is associated with a route up to two cities longer than the route she closed. If the player has more than three cards in her hand when she closes a route, she must discard down to three cards.

The only other rule is that the carriages must be acquired in value order, even if a player closes a longer route. (And that is why the first carriage of value 7, for a route of length 7, will always be the 17th carriage acquired.)

It’s simple, but just like in real supply chains, timing is everything. It mimics some of the intricacies and complexities of trying to coordinate shipments through multiple cross-docks and stops across multiple carriers. With capacity tight, do you try to acquire extra options (by taking a second city card) to guarantee capacity later? When you have extra capacity, do you expedite some goods (by playing a second city card) in the hopes of preventing inventory build-ups and storefront stock-outs later? If your current options look less-than promising, do you instead focus efforts on finding new options (by wiping the board and turning up six new city cards) instead of trying to develop your current options? Or, do you maximize the one option available to you and give a marquis customer better than expected service in exchange for goodwill and quicker payment (by using the ability of the Cartwright to score more). Like Ticket to Ride and Camelot, the Build, this game can also be played during lunch-hour and also exercises your strategic thinking, because each opponent is trying to do what’s best for them, and in doing so might undermine your best efforts (just like a competitor can swoop in and tie up all remaining capacity on a lane if you don’t get the paperwork in before them).

Plus, the base game supports a couple of expansions, including All Roads Lead to Rome which includes two mini-expansions to the game that give you even more options to balance. In the mini “Offices of Honor” expansion, nothing changes in the base gameplay but if a player balances her usage of the different postal staff members, she will occasionally get extra help. Each time a player uses a postal staff member, she gets a token indicating her use thereof. When the tokens for a particular staff member run out, each player must turn in 1 to 4 different tiles to the supply. If a player returns 2 different tiles, she gets to take an extra face-up city card. If a player returns 3 different tiles, she gets a victory point. And if a player returns a set of 4 different tiles, she may place one of her post offices anywhere on the game board, even if such placement triggers the generation of victory points in her favour. (In real life, if you use each of your carriers for routes and modes they are best at, and use them wisely, your on-time delivery percentage shoots up.)

In “The Audience”, in addition to having to build postal routes, you are also transporting 5 clergymen to attend an audience with the Pope in 5 different carriages. When a route is closed, for each city card in the close route in which a post office was not built, the corresponding carriage transporting a clergyman is moved one city closer to Rome. Your goal is to not only get your clergymen to Rome, but get them their in the right order. The ministrant should arrive before the priest who should arrive before the deacon who should arrive before the bishop who should arrive before the cardinals. Sounds easy, but your clergyman share a carriage with one clergyman of each other player, and you don’t know which clergyman the other players have assigned to each carriage. In other words, while you are trying to advance a particular carriage to get your ministrant there first, the other player is trying to hold it back because it contains her cardinal whom she wants to get there last. So the choice of routes gets even more strategic because if you build a route that ends up advancing the carriage with your cardinal and bishop too fast, you’re not going to score many bonus points at the end of the game. This expansion serves to add another element of randomness to the game, just like unexpected disruptions add another element of randomness to logistics planning.

It’s a good, simple, logistics-themed game to play when you have a lunch hour to spare.