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In Search of the Sustainable Supply Chain

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Greenwash Flies Again

You all know what greenwash is, I’m sure: ”Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image” will serve as a pretty good basic definition. Basically, companies lie to you. I mean, companies lie to us all the time – it’s called marketing – but when they mislead customers in a way that causes them to make choices that are bad for the…

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That Shrinking Feeling

There’s a moment in George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ where the protagonist learns that the chocolate ration is being increased to twenty grams a week. He remembers, quite clearly, that the ration was reduced to this level shortly before and he wonders if he’s the only person who can see through the propaganda. Thus, we are introduced to doublethink. Seventy-five years on from the…

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Winners and Losers in the Year of COVID-19

Winners and Losers in the Year of COVID-19

Things in the UK haven’t changed this much, this fast, since the Second World War. Historians, economists and other scholars will sift through the wreckage of 2020 in due course and no doubt there will be interesting things to discover – but supply chain people are generally less interested in history; more interested in problem-solving.

There was a time when a significant chunk of my research…

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Beer and Number Crunching

In these turbulent times of panic-buying, empty shelves and the police cracking down on Easter eggs one crumb of comfort is that I won’t run short of beer any time soon. I brew my own, 23 litres at a time.

I’ve often enjoyed learning about jobs that are normally done for us by experts with their own terminology, tools and tricks of the trade. Too many things are “done in a factory” far away, and…

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Shameless Plug We interrupt this hiatus to bring you… a shameless plug. There’s an awful lot of logistics and supply chain activity going on, in the modern world.

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Hopping Mad: “riding the rails” in the 21st century

Hopping Mad: “riding the rails” in the 21st century

For a few weeks, I’ve been doing some research (just desk research…) on the subject of freight hopping: something I’d never heard of until I received a video recommendation from YouTube. This is a crime, pastime or way of life (opinions vary) with a long history and a great deal of present-day relevance.

Join me, as we ride with Jim (‘Stobe the Hobo’), Mark (‘Hobo Shoestring’), Dave (‘Brave Dave’…

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Turtle Environment Science

Tilly the Turtle swims through the air, atop a column of waste plastic. She’s on display outside the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, where she featured in the British Science Festival and then the Hull Science Festival.

At 3.5m tall, this Trash A’Tuin is an impressive sight… even if it is technically a rubbish sculpture.

This giant chelonid was made from waste plastic collected…

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I’m Bricking It

“If the ocean dies, so do we” says Margaret Atwood, a novelist who has long been an environmental activist as well. In this, she’s not wrong.

Phytoplankton are microscopic, single-celled organisms that inhabit the sunlit layer of the sea, absorbing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Few people realise that organisms in our oceans provide almost as much oxygen as we get from trees.

Trouble is,…

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Bananas for Bioplastic

We’ve heard recently that the ocean gyres where waste plastic is accumulating are larger than we thought, and plastic particles are now showing up in just about everything. Some believe that by 2050 there could be more plastic in the sea than fish. We’re getting in a bit of a pickle, here.

Albatross chicks are starving to death, their stomachs filled with plastic waste. This is just one…

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Stretcher Case

I was out walking with my son recently, and I pointed out where a row of iron stumps could be seen, protruding from the limestone capping on a low wall outside a civic building. As anyone who grew up in the UK knows, our built environment bears these scars from the early 1940s, when Britain found itself under siege and struggling to re-arm against the Nazis. Park railings and the gates of…

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A Window on the Past

I recently went to the excellent RAF Museum at Cosford, with the particular aim of seeing one rare ’plane – but not in the conventional sense.

The aircraft in question was sequestered away inside a pair of “conservation tunnels”, being sprayed with a citric acid solution for reasons of preservation. Was my journey down to Shropshire a waste of time, then? No! Admittedly I don’t usually drive 130…

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In Search of Bigfoot

If you think that ‘SPSS’ refers to the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software tool, as used by so many of my students, think again. Today we’re in the domain of law enforcement, looking at Self-Propelled Semi-Submersibles.

Back in the 1980s, the preferred method for getting cocaine from Colombia to Mexico was to make a dash in a “cigarette boat” – a small, fast vessel that might…

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Mastering the Logistics Game

Mastering the Logistics Game: a review of ‘Business on the Move’

The watchword for UK educators, nowadays, is employability. We need to ensure that our students have better prospects as a result of the time they spent with us (not least because of debts that they commonly acquire during their studies) but how do you prepare a student for a career as a supply chain professional?

The Very Enterprising Community Interest Company think they have the answer – along…

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The Changing Shape of the Supply Chain

The Changing Shape of the Supply Chain

Some time ago, I was stuck in a meeting. Not exactly The Meeting From Hell but definitely somewhere on the outskirts, like maybe Erebus, or Tartarus. Naturally enough, I decided to use the time more meaningfully, and began doodling.

Procurement, operations, distribution: those are the three elements of a supply chain strategy, according to what we tell our students.

I drew them vertically, for a…

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A Little Less Conservation, a Little More Action...

A Little Less Conservation, a Little More Action…

In Greenwich, London, the Cutty Sark is a popular tourist attraction. A British merchant ship, she’s a rare survivor from a vanished, glamorous age of commerce by sail.

Exceptionally sleek and skilfully constructed, it’s a shame to have to report that this beautiful ship was just about obsolete from the outset: she was launched in November 1869… the same month that the Suez Canal was completed,…

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Ignorance and the Divided Circle

Ignorance and the Divided Circle

In addition to supply chains and sustainable manufacturing, I’m quite interested in art. That’s why I came to be looking at a list of lost artworks: pieces that are known to have been destroyed or have otherwise gone missing over the years.

There is a long, long list of art that we can no longer see. The final portion of the Bayeux Tapestry, for example, or Leonardo’s Leda and the Swan. Even that…

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Staying Up Is Hard to Do

Staying Up Is Hard to Do

Capacify has introduced readers to some distinctly odd forms of transport over the years, from missile mail to quick-turnaround aircraft with swappable passenger pods; from seagoing trams to transporter bridges. I like to bring you the good, the bad and the ugly of the logistics world, and today is no exception as we look at Brennan’s Gyrocar: monorail, the hard way.

When you design a train to…

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