This is great supply chain insight from Matt Salefski of Rectangle. Understanding causality is critical in logistics. #logistics #supplychain #technology
Suppose you come across a fence blocking a road and you can’t see the reason for its existence. The modern tendency might be to say, "I don't see the use of this; let’s clear it away." The more rational approach would be to think, "If I don’t know why this fence was built, I shouldn’t remove it until I understand why it exists." What does this have to do with supply chain technology? The supply chain is both complex and old. But at the same time, for outsiders, it seems to be a trove of easy-to-solve problems that are well structured and simple. A thing simply needs to go from here to there. How hard can it be? Often, when a technologist sees the supply chain, they see a lot of fences in the middle of the road. “Let’s make an API that does that,” “we can figure out the optimal routing for all vessels,” “brokers are easy to automate.” But the reality is those fences are the collaborative work of very smart people over hundreds (thousands?) of years. After all, trade, and therefore logistics, is older than nearly every other industry. Before you can clear the fences, you need to understand why they are there. And unless you love logistics, love hearing about problems, and love the people behind the problems, you’ll never be able to figure out why the fences are there. That’s not to say there aren’t any fences to be cleared away. There are a ton. But it’s not simple to replace. You have to understand why they are there, the ecosystems that those fences support, and the second- and third-tier implications.