For centuries, coastal communities have tapped marine environments for food, trade, and early industrial materials. Ancient East Asian cultures harvested kelp as elite food, tax payment and even currency. In 1658, a Japanese innkeeper accidentally discovered agar by leaving seaweed jelly out in the freezing night air, revolutionizing food and medicine production.
Today, that same resourcefulness is powering a new wave of innovation as seaweed transitions from a traditional commodity into a high‑value industrial input. For OM, this shift represents both an emerging opportunity and a complex execution challenge.
Seaweed’s natural advantages make it uniquely suited for sustainable supply chains, reports ASCM Insights (Sept. 10, 2026). It requires no freshwater, no arable land, and grows rapidly—an appealing profile as organizations face tightening resource constraints and rising sustainability mandates. Researchers and manufacturers are now converting marine algae into bioplastics, fertilizers, renewable fuels, livestock feed, and even biochar, which can lock in up to 80% of the plant’s carbon. These applications don’t just support environmental goals; they create new pathways for operational resilience and carbon‑credit strategies.
Innovation is accelerating across sectors. UK researchers have developed biodegradable alginate‑based plastic films that can reduce single‑use packaging waste. In the U.S., aquaculture projects are transforming native sugar kelp into natural oils for personal care products, bio lubricants, and plastics—supported by federal investment aimed at strengthening domestic supply chains and reducing reliance on imported palm and coconut oils. These breakthroughs demonstrate how seaweed can serve as both a sustainable raw material and a strategic lever for reshoring critical inputs.
But scaling seaweed‑based materials is far from simple. High processing costs, fragmented midstream capacity, and regulatory tensions between multinational processors and local harvesters create operational friction.
Mastering this transition requires rigorous planning and inventory control. Operations managers must navigate evolving material flows, optimize production networks, and turn early‑stage innovations—like seaweed‑derived inputs—into long‑term competitive advantage.
Seaweed’s industrial future is taking shape and organizations that build the operational expertise will lead as marine‑based materials scale.
- Seaweed-based materials promise sustainability benefits, but there are steep processing costs. How should operations managers evaluate whether an emerging raw material is truly scalable?
- How can supply chain leaders balance efficiency, regulatory compliance, and community impact when integrating new natural resources into global production networks?
A recent 
Pentagon officials just reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin to more than triple production of the latest Patriot, the PAC-3, to 2,000 a year. But the weapons maker isn’t expecting to hit that target until the end of 2030. Why is that?
Dr. Jon Jackson is Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Providence College School of Business. He has created a series of AI exercises for each chapter in our text.
ASCS opens Amazon’s vast global logistics network not just to its own marketplace sellers, but to businesses operating across competing marketplaces and in B2B channels. As Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, puts it, the platform is “available to any business of any shape or size.”
Alongside Mac mini production, Apple is ramping up output of advanced AI servers at the Houston site, an initiative that began in 2025. The expansion reflects Apple’s growing investment in AI infrastructure, an area that has become central to both consumer devices and cloud services.
This forces a shift from one supply chain to a portfolio of capabilities designed around distinct value propositions including speed, reliability, customization, cost-to-serve, and compliance. Where commercial commitments are made in isolation from operations, the consequences surface later through margin erosion, excess inventory, and lost customers.
For two decades, manufacturing has been defined by a relentless pursuit of optimization. We automated assembly lines (Ch. 9), digitized records and built predictive maintenance models (Ch. 17), all in the service of marginal gains in efficiency.
Scale drives efficiency—for almost a century, industrial planners have relied on this simple principle. In 1936 aeronautical engineer Theodore Wright discovered that costs fell in a predictable way every time production doubled. The more you produce, the cheaper things become, in part because the learning cost per unit declines. This is the topic of Module E in your text.
Walmart’s situation is unique, with most companies still figuring out how to deploy even one AI-powered agent that can perform a task autonomously or in coordination with humans.
