MIT's Dr. Jonathan Byrnes on the Pandemic's Supply Chain Shocks

Lean Blog Interviews - Healthcare, Manufacturing, Business, and Leadership

Senior Lecturer at MIT, author, entrepreneur

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/412

My guest for Episode #412 of the Lean Blog Interviews podcast is Dr. Jonathan Byrnes, the co-author of the new book Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive. He is is a Senior Lecturer at MIT, where he has taught about supply chain management and other topics at the graduate level and in executive programs for over 30 years.

He is Chairman and Founder of Profit Isle, an innovative profit analytics and profit acceleration SaaS software company — AND is President of Jonathan Byrnes & Co., a focused consulting company that he founded in 1976. Dr. Byrnes earned a DBA from Harvard University in 1980, and an MBA from Columbia University in 1974.

Topics, questions, and links related to today's episode include:

• Article: “How to Manage your Supply Chain Shock Waves“
• May 2020 — what did you predict in that article and how did it play out?
• The bullwhip effect
• The MIT “Beer Game” or “Root Beer Game“
• What can you do when there is variance in supply and variance in demand?
• Lean as a system, including level loading and local suppliers, not just low inventory
• Lean as “cycle time compression” that makes lower inventory possible
• Today's glut of hand sanitizer
• NY Times: Widespread Commodity Shortages Raise Inflation Fears
• WSJ: Auto Makers Retreat From 50 Years of ‘Just in Time' Manufacturing
• Mark's blog post about that

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

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