Welcome to the Jungle

Axl Rose sang, "Welcome to the Jungle" with the line "You're in the jungle, baby. You're going to die." The jungle is not civilized. While many romanticize the concept of living in nature, the jungle is not a safe place. What to eat and if you would be alive to eat are always in question. The "supply chain" for meals is highly variable. Today, shock after shock is hitting business supply chains. Managing the supply chain requires visibility, flexibility, and resilience. Managers need to handle natural disasters, political upheaval, and cyber-attacks.

The jungle lifestyle has a "supply chain" that is unknown and highly variable. Thus, the menu has to be simple and easily modified.

Supply chain disruptions challenge any purchasing department. Back during Covid, things got crazy. The coming disruptions are projected to be as bad or worse. How to plan for the coming shortages? Many places found that "just in time" inventory was profitable when the supply chain was reliable. Right now, that reliability is in question.

There are a number of ways to help manage the supply chain. It all starts with getting visibility into the supply chain. It is not possible to manage what is unknown.

Natural disasters are one type of shock and will cause mostly short-term delivery problems. These can be mitigated by being aware of nature and its effects and by working to have multiple supply routes. Staying up to date on severe weather and forecasts can help.

Far more difficult are supply problems caused by political upheaval, "single source" supply shutdowns, and sudden extra costs. Sometimes, these require a redesign so that other parts are used. In these cases, a key part of recovery from such an event is having strong relationships with the suppliers. For example, during the electronic component shortage, suppliers would often deliver to their best customers first. Companies are moving to use local suppliers and manufacturers are moving to have supplies closer to their customers.

A key part of today's supply chain management is the cyberspace: web servers, databases, ERP systems, and more.

Cybercriminals are out there daily trying to break in and hold your systems for ransom. One such criminal was sending out over 30,000 attempts a day. There are places offering the "hacking" software for rent so that any small criminal can rent time and send out more. No matter how well people are trained to identify and avoid phishing attempts, at some point, someone will click on something and your systems have been violated. Or the system at one of your suppliers has been taken down.

Cybersecurity has to be part of the supply chain management.

Resiliency is the key to surviving supply chain shocks, disruptions, and parts not being available. In the jungle, when an area seems to be barren of food, people pack up the village and move on.

Mental Pollution

When the "dime novel" burst on the scene, critics roundly condemned the writing, the moral and cultural ambiguities, and bemoaned how it was corrupting the minds of our youth. But have books really corrupted youth? Mental pollution takes several forms: learning false information, taking in too much information, and propaganda taking over all channels.

The most harmful is when people learn things that are not true. It is very difficult to unlearn something especially when our safety or money were at stake when we learned it. Often, those who hold those ideas can't ever let go. The hope is that next generation will learn new ideas.

Another form is over consumption of information to the point where we no longer make critical judgement. One person put this as "always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth." This is best handled by backing off of the information sources till we can be more critical.

A third form is when all information channels say the same thing while ignoring other important data. Those promoting propaganda want this. By overwhelming all channels, they can hide what they are really doing. To counter this, it helps to seek out opposing voices, look for channels that are not controlled by the propagandists, and ask hard questions when all voices seem the same.

AI is adding to the problem as it is easier and easier to generate information and propaganda. However, AI generated information is often wrong and even when correct, becoming more and more similar. Learning to detect AI generated stuff is becoming a critical skill. Spending time to learn apart from AI will help us forge our own path in an information jungle.

Risky World

Some online surveys used AI to generate the prompts and, in several cases, AI created yes/no questions asking people to select between Fork and No. (Are you alive Fork/No?) At that time, Google Translate said that English "Yes" is "Fork" in Spanish. Why it was translating the responses to Spanish but not the question is still unknown.