logistics – Page 3 – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

OM in the News: Walmart Unveils Largest Blockchain for Supply Chain Management

Walmart Canada and DLT Labs are partnering together to launch a blockchain-based freight and payment network, reports Supply & Demand Chain Executive (Nov. 15, 2019). The solution (going live in Feb.) will be the world’s largest full production blockchain for any industrial application. “Just as the Roman’s concept, ‘dictum meum pactum’ (meaning ‘my word is my bond’) was fundamental to building trade, this product creates a secure digital handshake using blockchain to renew trust and efficiency in global trade,” states DLT’s CEO.

The new system uses distributed ledger technology to track deliveries, verify transactions and automate payments and reconciliation among Walmart Canada and its carriers which deliver inventory to over 400 retail stores across Canada. The blockchain-based freight and payment network manages, integrates and synchronizes all the supply chain and logistics data in real time, aggregating the data between Walmart Canada and its fleet of third-party trucks on a shared ledger. The solution also automates the many calculations enabling real-time invoicing, payments and settlement.

“Our carrier partners move over 500,000 loads of inventory nationally, which creates an extraordinary volume of transaction data. This new dynamic and interactive blockchain technology platform is creating complete transparency between Walmart Canada and all of our carrier partners,” adds Walmart’s VP for SCM. Walmart Canada operates 8.75 million square feet of distribution center and moves more than 853 million cases of merchandise annually. These goods are transported by a combination of 3rd party fleet as well as Walmart Canada’s own fleet of 180 tractors, 2,000 trailers and 350 drivers. Each third-party trailer tracks approximately 200 data points per shipment. Automating this data collection and management using blockchain results in a significant cost-saving.

While the application of blockchain technology in industry has long been discussed, this is the first practical implementation at scale, and it clearly demonstrates blockchain’s significant benefits.

Classroom discussion questions:

As an Operations Manager what OM tools might you find helpful for successful implementation of blockchain?
What would you expect to be the major impediments to a successful implementation?

OM in the News: The Rise of the “Cobot”

The holiday hiring frenzy is under way and robots are joining the rush to seasonal jobs, reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 29, 2019). Retailers and logistics operators facing a tight labor market are ramping up automation at warehouses for the holidays, when online order volumes can surge tenfold as consumers load up digital shopping carts in the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas. To cope, some businesse are ordering up extra fleets of collaborative robots, or “cobots,” that use cameras, lasers and sensors to navigate warehouse aisles and lead workers to the right shelves or to shuttle bins full of products between workstations.

France-based Geodis SA is boosting its robotic workforce by 75% to help workers at its U.S. warehouses fulfill fast-fashion orders during the holiday peak. This year the company, which plans to bring on between 6,000 and 7,000 human workers for the holiday period, is placing a total of 281 robot units at 5 locations. XPO Logistics, which is hiring 20,000 humans for the seasonal rush, is advancing its purchase of millions of dollars’ worth of robots the company expects to need next year so it can use them now to manage the spike in e-commerce orders. Locus Robotics said demand for “surge robots” to bolster the armies of seasonal warehouse workers has grown this year, and the company is sending more than 500 of them to its logistics and e-commerce customers.

Although most warehouses still rely largely on people pulling carts or driving forklifts, scarcity of labor and the push for faster delivery are accelerating automation at warehouses. By 2025 about 28% of warehouses globally will deploy commercial robots, compared to around 3% in 2018. The companies are looking for help in the labor-intensive business of storing, sorting and packing goods for shipment, especially around the holidays, when retailers and logistics providers add tens of thousands of extra workers.

Classroom discussion questions:

In what ways can cobots help the logistics industry?
What exactly is a collaborative robot?

OM in the News: Amazon Delivery Aims Electric, But Employees Want More

Amazon plans to buy 100,000 electric delivery vehicles as it seeks to reduce its carbon emissions in the face of criticism of its environmental impact, reports The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 20, 2019). The e-commerce giant is ordering the electric vehicles from startup Rivian Automotive, in which it invested $700 million this year. Amazon said the vehicles will start delivering packages to customers in 2021. The company plans to have 10,000 of the new electric vehicles on the road by 2022, and all 100,000 by 2030. Amazon has built up its delivery fleet in recent years and has become a force in the shipping industry, although it still works with companies such as UPS.

The sustainability commitments are part of a new climate pledge that promises Amazon will report greenhouse-gas emissions regularly and implement strategies to reduce carbon emissions. Amazon said it expects 80% of its energy use to come from renewable sources by 2024, up from 40% now. It is working toward its facilities being 100%-powered using renewable energy by 2030, helped in part by the development of large-scale wind and solar projects.

Amazon’s climate pledge comes one day before more than 1,550 Amazon employees world-wide threatened to walk out of work if the company didn’t do more to fight climate change. The group of Amazon employees said that the company’s announcement was a win, but said they still plan to walk. “The Paris Agreement, by itself, won’t get us to a livable world. Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we’ll be in the streets,”

Classroom discussion questions:

What are various components of Amazon’s delivery strategy?
Should employees be able to dictate the firm’s sustainability strategy?

OM in the News: Warehouse to Doorstep–Amazon Builds a Shipping Empire

Amazon’s recent breakup with longtime shipping partner FedEx shows how far it has come in creating its own delivery network. As consumers flock to its site for everything from toilet paper to TVs, Amazon has quietly blanketed the nation with hundreds of warehouses and package-sorting centers, flooded the streets with tens of thousands of vans and taken to the air. The costly effort is enabling Amazon to control how goods reach its customers—and increasingly turning it from a customer of delivery companies into a rival. Here is The Wall Street Journal’s (Aug. 30, 2019) look at Amazon’s vast shipping empire.

Storing, Sorting and Shipping The 2013 holiday season was a turning point for Amazon, after orders overwhelmed carriers and led to late packages and upset customers. Since then, it has multiplied the number of fulfillment, sorting and other facilities from 65 to 400+, planting facilities near city centers across the country to be as close to each customer as possible. That has enabled Amazon to deliver more packages to doorsteps within a day, catering to demanding online shoppers.

Big Spender Amazon’s aggressive pursuit of greater shipping control and speed has raised the amount it spends on shipping and fulfillment. Those costs have risen from $5.5 billion in 2010 to $61.7 billion in 2018, and they now equal more than 1/4 of Amazon’s revenue. It spent more than $800 million alone in the second quarter to shift its standard free shipping option to next-day from 2 days.

Heavy Lifting Amazon is no longer handling a small glut of overflowing orders. It is the primary carrier of its brown boxes. The shift over the past few years is staggering. It now delivers 1/2 of its orders, up from 15% in 2017.

By Land, Sea and Air All of this means Amazon needs more ways to transport its increasing volume. Last year it created a program where entrepreneurs with their own delivery companies could begin delivering packages in Amazon-branded trucks. Amazon is also renting 60 planes, and expects to adding another 10 by 2021. It has even sought to manage ocean freight.

Classroom discussion questions:

What unique strategies is Amazon using to expand its delivery services?
How is Amazon achieving competitive advantage through OM? (See Ch. 2).

OM in the News: Amazon’s Plane Ambitions

Amazon is expanding its domestic air-cargo operation, adding smaller jets to its rented fleet to link its distribution centers and extend the reach of its next-day delivery service. It is aiming to reach the capacity of its free 2-day option, which is available for more than 100 million products. The firm is also experimenting with local collection centers, its own delivery vans, on-demand taxis and even its own employees to speed deliveries to consumers at a lower cost, bringing it into direct competition, in some cases, with companies that also deliver its packages. FedEx recently said that it would end its air-shipping agreement with Amazon to concentrate on rapid delivery for other retailers that are making more sales online.

Amazon is renting another 15 Boeing 737’s converted to carry cargo, in addition to 5 it’s already leasing, alongside a fleet of 40 larger planes it uses to ship packages around the U.S. It expects to have a rented fleet of 70 planes by 2021 as it takes stronger control of its own logistics operations, writes The Wall Street Journal (June 19, 2019). “These new aircraft create additional capacity for Amazon Air, building on the investment in our Prime Free One-Day program,” says Amazon’s VP. Amazon is opening three more air cargo centers this year, in Fort Worth, Texas, Wilmington, Ohio, and Rockford, Ill. A new hub at Cincinnati’s airport that can handle 100 planes is due to open in 2021.

Amazon continues outsourcing its flying rather than start an in-house carrier. The domestic industry is highly regulated and has a history of turbulent labor relations, creating high barriers to entry.

Classroom discussion questions:

How is Amazon taking more control of its logistics operations?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

OM in the News: Trucking the Last Mile for Home Furniture

J.B. Hunt Transport Services is snapping up another home-delivery firm as trucking companies compete to bring furniture, appliances and other bulky goods to consumers’ doorsteps, reports The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 9, 2019). The deal to buy Cory 1st Choice Home Delivery for $100 million deepens Hunt’s reach in a sector that has grown as shoppers get more comfortable shopping online for sofas, exercise equipment and other big objects that are too large for conventional parcel networks.

Hunt will gain 14 additional warehouses and access to a delivery network of more than 1,000 independent contractors, carriers and company drivers. As a result, the Arkansas carrier’s final-mile division will grow to 100 locations and more than 3.1 million square feet of warehouse and facilities space. “We have high expectations that there will be a lot of demand for that heavy goods delivery,” says Hunt’s CEO. “That’s the two guys in a truck, appliances, furniture, things that the parcel guys don’t want to handle.”

Last year, UPS raised its fees for the largest items it delivers to $650 to discourage shippers from sending oversize items such as refrigerators through its parcel system. FedEx also has added surcharges for oversize shipments. The big-and-bulky delivery business also poses challenges for trucking fleets, whose main revenue typically comes from hauling goods to commercial loading docks. Furniture and appliance delivery often involves special services, such as assembly inside shoppers’ homes.

The growth of e-commerce has raised customer expectations. Delivery windows are shrinking, and shoppers want to be able to track the arrival of a new washing machine the same way they might other online orders. Last year, XPO Logistics, the largest provider of last-mile delivery for bulky goods in North America, rolled out services allowing consumers to track their shipments through Google Search or smart speakers such as Amazon’s Alexa.

Classroom discussion questions:

How does this differ from Amazon’s “last mile”?
What are the OM issues that Hunt faces?

OM in the News: UPS, Capacity, and a Busy Holiday Shipping Season

UPS is counting on a big boost in shipping capacity to avoid logjams in its network during the peak holiday shipping season, and the delivery giant is raising prices to help offset those investments. The company is planning to deliver 800 million packages in the U.S. between Thanksgiving and Christmas, up from 750 million last year, reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 25, 2018). Nearly every delivery day during that stretch will see volume of more than 30 million packages!

To handle the surge in packages driven by online shoppers, UPS is building more automated sortation hubs, including its 3rd-largest U.S. facility that just opened in Atlanta. UPS says it has added 7 times more processing and sorting capacity this year than it did in 2017. To offset those costs, it is pushing up prices on domestic deliveries and adding surcharges on oversize packages. In the U.S. business, revenue per piece rose 4.8% in the 3rd quarter, the fastest growth since 2011.

UPS also working closely with more of its largest shipping customers, like Amazon, on better forecasting demand during the period, including predicting volume based on where it’s shipped from and coordinating with shippers when they have promotions. The company hopes to avoid unexpected volume surges that caused delivery delays in the past. “The last couple (years) we’ve been constructively dissatisfied,” UPS’s COO said. “Our goal is to have this peak be the peak we all want it to be through the eyes of our customers.”

UPS is addressing its recent declining profit by trying to woo more higher-quality businesses—including small- and medium-size customers and health care companies—to offset predominantly lower-margin shipments tied to e-commerce.

Classroom discussion questions:

What tactics for matching capacity to demand that we discuss in Supplement 7 is UPS employing?
How might UPS’s moves impact profit and revenue?

OM in the News: Does Tesla Have a Quality Problem?

A car in the Scottsdale lot marked “inv,” or inventory, indicating it has no buyer, with service needs noted.

Tesla has been parking hundreds and hundreds of cars at lots and industrial buildings in Burbank, Antioch, and Lathrop, Calif, reports The New York Times (Oct. 2, 2018). Last week, a batch of about 100 Model 3s turned up in Bellevue, Wash., with smaller collections in Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. The parked vehicles were discovered over the last two months by amateur detectives who closely follow the company stock.

Elon Musk recently acknowledged that the company was having difficulty shipping cars to customers, saying Tesla was in “delivery logistics hell.” He attributed the problem to a shortage of trucks to haul cars around the country. But the Auto Haulers Association says it is not aware of any shortage of car haulers, and that other automakers that are not having shipping troubles.

Is Tesla simply gathering cars together before shipping them to customers, or bringing cars with defects together to repair them before delivery? If the former, it suggests Tesla failed in a critical task: It didn’t set up an efficient way of delivering hundreds of cars a day as it was scrambling to produce 5,000 a week. A more worrisome problem would be if Tesla built these cars and now doesn’t have customers willing to take them. Musk had long promised that the Model 3 would be available for as little as $35,000. But the least costly version available now starts at $49,000.

In some cases, cars have been marked — with a bar-coded sticker or with grease pencil on the windshield — to indicate that they are inventory vehicles, meaning they have no customers awaiting them. Some markings indicate repairs required before the cars can be sold. In the rush to ramp up Model 3 production, Tesla has faced growing issues with vehicle quality. Some customers have complained that cars arrived with scratches, loose parts and other manufacturing defects. And a new headache has cropped up: severe shortages of replacement parts. Owners needing repairs have complained of waiting a month or longer for parts.

Classroom discussion questions:

What is Tesla’s biggest OM issue?
Why is the company only producing high-option models of Tesla 3?

OM in the News: Zara’s New Inventory and Logistics Plan

The ship-from-store operation inside a Zara store in Spain.

Fast-fashion giant Zara is equipping its stores to also ship online purchases, betting that the move will boost sales of full-priced items that can be delivered to customers more quickly than from a warehouse. The rollout encompasses around 2,000 stores in 48 countries, including the U.S., making it one of the largest-scale attempts by an apparel company to repurpose downtown shops to help fulfill online orders.

Zara’s efforts are part of a broader push among retailers to rethink how they can better use their network of brick-and-mortar stores to compete with Amazon, whose dominance in the retail industry has depressed profits and set new standards for speed of delivery. While some have considered traditional retailers’ vast store networks costly and antiquated, industry executives are increasingly equipping them to fulfill online orders to quicken delivery times, cut delivery costs and lift sales. “There has been a trend lately to think of a store as a liability,” an industry expert said. “It’s an asset—but you need to learn to use it correctly.”

Traditionally, retailers shipped items from warehouses to downtown locations, writes The Wall Street Journal (Aug. 1, 2018). (But warehouses on the outskirts of cities are not as close to consumers as stores are). As online shopping grew, many retailers created inventory lines specifically for internet orders. Retail companies including Zara have been working to merge their inventory for online and in-store purchases rather than keeping separate stocks, to minimize lost and discounted sales. Ship-from-store initiatives are one pillar of efforts by Zara and others to tackle the far bigger problem of mismanaged inventory, which, by one estimate, cost retailers nearly $1.4 trillion in lost sales in 2017. While shipping online orders from downtown stores can lower delivery costs, some retailers have struggled to make it profitable because they lack the technology to track in-store and in-warehouse inventory accurately.

Classroom discussion questions:

How are brick and mortar retail stores an asset?
Describe the inventory problems that firms like Zara are facing.

OM in the News: The Messy Business of Making Meal Kits

Employees package meal kits on an assembly line at a Sun Basket distribution center

Meal kits may make cooking easier, but getting a box of pre-portioned ingredients and instructions to a customer’s door is one of the most complicated OM riddles in the food business, writes The Wall Street Journal (July 27, 2018). Companies have poured millions into solving such questions as how to stack fish and fennel in boxes. They’re also investing in systems to reroute shipments during snowstorms and algorithms to predict what customers want to eat during the summer months. “It’s building a supply chain from scratch,” says the VP of Hello Fresh SE, the world’s largest meal-kit firm.

Meal-kit spending by consumers has grown three times as fast as spending in established food sectors such as restaurants and grocery stores since 2015. But companies have had to devise workarounds for everything from heavy weather to diverting trucks around highway accidents. At Home Chef, a sudden recipe change could set off a scramble to source ingredients at the last minute. “Building a perishable-food business is not something you do quickly or lightly,” said Sun Basket’s CEO. To help keep a lid on costs, Sun Basket has gone so far as to set up a Midwestern distribution center in a converted limestone cave—a cheaper way to keep its products cold than spending millions to convert a conventional warehouse in the region for refrigeration.

Adding to the complexity of the meal-kit business: Blue Apron, HelloFresh and others are now looking to supermarket sales to supplement subscription-only revenue. Chef’d was one of the first companies to push into supermarkets, but ran into trouble as it did so while also running a complex e-commerce operation that offered more than a 1,000 recipe choices. To survive, startups are scrutinizing each step of their operations. While some rely largely on manual labor, Blue Apron and Sun Basket are investing in automation, such as machines that dole out sauces or seal single-serving ingredients in tiny bags.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why is this business complex from an OM perspective?
What role can automation take?

OM in the News: Amazon Drives Deeper Into Package Delivery

“Amazon is pushing further onto the turf of its shipping partners UPS and FedEx, enabling small businesses to carry its overflowing supply of packages in the all- important last-delivery leg to the consumer’s door,” writes The Wall Street Journal (June 28, 2018). The online retail giant is inviting entrepreneurs to form small delivery companies employing up to 100 drivers and leasing 20-40 Amazon-emblazoned vans, an initiative that should help it rapidly build out its own delivery network across the country. It has also contracted with many small delivery companies to drop off its packages in major metro areas, many in unmarked white vans.

It is yet another major push by Amazon to gain more control over its own deliveries in a continued quest to build a vast freight and parcel shipping network. Amazon says it has to build out its own services simply to handle the surging number of online orders that UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service can’t. More than $4 of every $10 spent online in the U.S. is on Amazon, and the number of its deliveries topped more than a billion last year.

Still, Amazon has taken broad steps in recent years to poach some of the most desirable deliveries from its partners and could be on a collision course to one day compete directly with the shipping giants. Amazon expects that hundreds of entrepreneurs could sign up to help the company deliver packages the “last mile,” which is typically the most expensive piece of an online order’s journey.

The number of packages Amazon needs to ship in the U.S. has more than doubled over the past five years to roughly 1.2 billion packages last year. Projected growth is too much for existing delivery companies to handle. Amazon has advanced deeply into logistics over that same period, building out more than 70 delivery stations, buying more than 7,500 truck trailers, leasing 35 aircraft to fly its wares around the country and expanding into ocean freight. Amazon spent $21.72 billion on shipping world-wide last year, or about 12% of overall revenue.

Classroom discussion questions:

How does Amazon handle the “last mile?”
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Amazon’s logistics strategy?

OM in the News: Services Sector Businesses Are Struggling to Get Supplies They Need

Firms in the services sector are grappling with delayed supply deliveries because of a truck driver shortage and slow rail service, reports the Wall Street Journal (June 6, 2018). The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) yesterday said its non-manufacturing index rose to 58.6 in May, indicating activity is expanding across service and other industries. But its backlog of orders index grew substantially in May to 60.5 from 52.0 in April, and the survey’s deliveries measured rose, hitting 58.5, which signals deliveries are slowing at a faster rate.

“You’re getting to the point with the economy growing so strong, there’s so much that needs to be delivered, and the supply can’t handle it,” said an industry economist. One business told ISM “supply is out of alignment with demand, which is causing many stockouts and shortages.”

The supply constraints stem from slow rail service and a shortage of truck drivers, keeping some businesses from being able to get the resources they need on schedule. If the backlog of orders continues for an extended period of time, it could lead to ramped up price increases and could stunt a recently strong bout of economic growth.
“It’s a matter of what firms choose to do with the supply issues,” said one expert. “Do they try to sustain growth and raise their own prices? If they feel like they don’t have the ability to do that, they may throw up their hands and say, ‘I just can’t fill the order.’If I were a business person with backlogs and demand through the roof and my input prices are going up, I’d test the waters and try to raise my prices.”

Classroom discussion questions:

What is the “manufacturing index” and what is the “non-manufacturing index?”
What is the solution to the delays in receiving supplies?

OM in the News: IBM and Maersk Apply Blockchain to Shipping

Shipping giant Maersk and IBM formed a joint venture using blockchain

Shipping giant Maersk is the latest company jump onto the blockchain train, entering a joint venture with IBM to create a more efficient and secure platform for organizing global trade using blockchain technology, writes The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 17, 2018). The platform could be used to streamline operations for the entire global shipping ecosystem. The idea came from the current stack of paperwork needed to process and track the shipping of goods. The cost of the required trade documentation to process and administer many of the goods shipped each year is estimated to reach 1/5 of the actual physical transportation costs.

The companies said blockchain, the technology behind increasingly popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, is ideal for organizing large networks with different partners like the shipping industry, which transports more that $4 trillion goods a year. “The potential from offering a neutral, open digital platform for safe and easy ways of exchanging information is huge, and all players across the supply chain stand to benefit,” said a top Maersk exec.

More corporations, including General Motors and P&G , are exploring ways to use it to streamline supply chains and customs clearance. Singaporean and Peruvian customs also are exploring collaborating with the platform to facilitate trade flows and enhance supply chain security.

The move comes as Maersk and IBM have been attempting to reinvent themselves. IBM, the 106-year-old technology giant, has been looking to new lines of business, including blockchain, as sales in its legacy business of selling hardware and software slow. Maersk has been trying to transform itself to into a global supply-chain major like UPS and FedEx by integrating its transport and logistics units.

Classroom discussion questions:

What is blockchain and why is it important in OM?
How does blockchain relate to supply chains?

OM in the News: Taking to the Sky to Deliver on Time

Shoppers accustomed to getting e-commerce orders in 2 days or less are adding to the pile at airport cargo terminals

Companies are shipping more items by plane to meet customers’ rising expectations for rapid delivery, prompting a scramble for cargo space that has sent airfreight rates soaring and pushed Amazon and others into the airline business. Global airfreight traffic climbed almost 9% this past year.

The cause is twofold: As online shoppers come to expect faster home delivery of everything from smartphones to paper towels, passenger jets and dedicated cargo planes are picking up more kinds of cargo traditionally carried by container ships, trains and trucks. At the same time, strong global economic growth also is spurring demand for goods long ferried by air, such as automotive and manufacturing parts.

Those factors are creating some of the stiffest competition for air-cargo space in years, reports The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 10, 2018). To meet the rising demand, Amazon has started its own airline and some air-cargo operators are searching for older, idle jets to convert into freighters. Amazon has used its current fleet of about 30 use Boeing 767 jets primarily for its fastest Prime delivery service, and is adding 10 more planes this year. The dedicated fleet has allowed it to extend the window for guaranteed 2-day delivery from 6 p.m. on the East Coast to as late as 11 p.m.

Demand for new smartphones from Apple and Samsung last year pushed up airfreight costs. Elevated semiconductor shipments, an airfreight mainstay, also have been gobbling up cargo space. And increasingly, manufacturers are loading toys, clothing and other products onto planes to meet shorter delivery windows and leaner retail inventories.

Airport cargo terminals are now teeming with items such as dog food and spaghetti sauce. “We’re shipping more and more of what you might consider to be everyday basics,” said a UPS spokesman.

Classroom discussion questions:

What can operations managers do to better control shipping/logistics costs?
What technique in Supplement 11 (Supply Chain Management Analytics) could be used in this situation?

OM in the News: Humanitarian Efforts of a Houston Supermarket Chain

A flooded H-E-B store. Three of the chain’s 83 stores in Houston will need to be rebuilt; the interior of one store shown.

One of the colleges within the POMS academic society is called Humanitarian Operations and Crisis Management. Hurricane Harvey, which slammed Houston, provides a great example of how OM steps up to the plate in times of a disaster. At a time when retail watchers question the future of brick-and-mortar stores due to Amazon’s continued ascendance, retailer H-E-B is drawing widespread praise after managing to open 60 of its 83 stores in Houston, hours after the hurricane struck, writes LinkedIn’s Work in Progress (Aug. 2, 2017).

When employees couldn’t get to work, some stores still operated with as few as 5 people: one stationed at the door as crowd control and 4 working the registers, trying to get people out as quickly as possible. The behind-the-scenes operation is a complicated dance involving multiple command centers, a helicopter, private planes, military style vehicles and frequent calls to suppliers, urging them to send toilet paper.

Here are the word’s of H-E-B’s Houston president: “Coming out of a hurricane, if there’s been flooding, they’re going to want mops and bleach. I’ll take all the bread I can possibly get. Then you’re going to start to get produce. We don’t care about flowers in the middle of a hurricane. You only have so many trucks and so much space. We brought over 2,000 partners from Austin, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley. They hopped into cars and they just drove to Houston. For 18 hours a day, they’re going to help us restock and then they’ll go sleep on the couch at somebody’s house. We’ve called P&G and said: Send entire trailer loads of toilet paper directly to our stores. Bypass our warehouse, so you can just get it to us. I called Frito-Lay and said manufacture your bestsellers. I need Lay’s, I need Doritos, I need Fritos. I won’t turn down any delivery. We’ll take it as fast as we can.”

Classroom discussion questions:

How was H-E-B able to reopen so quickly?
What OM tools can be used in times of a disaster?