Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - April 4th, 2021

Happy Easter!

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• CDC Says Travel is Safe for Fully Vaccinated People, But Opposes Non-Essential Trips. (NPR)
• Here's the Story Behind the Amazing Moscone Center Vaccine Playlist. (SF Chronicle)
• April Fools' Day: 10 Stories that Look Like Pranks But Aren't. (BBC)
• How NFL Teams Use Sophisticated AI Projections in the Draft. (ESPN)
• Mark Cuban On the Company that Made Him a Billionaire: Why He Knew It Would Succeed Despite Many Naysayers. (CNBC)

 

Trading Links:

• The Microchip Shortage Explained: How It's Impacting Car Prices and the Tech Industry. (USAToday)
• The New Stock Influencers Have Huge and Devoted Followings. (Wall Street Journal)
• 3D Printed Architecture that Shows Why this Trend is the Future of Modern Architecture. (YankoDesign)
• What the U.S. Can Learn From China's Infatuation With Infrastructure. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Death of the American Mall Was a Warning Sign that Our Dystopian Future Was Closer Than We All Thought. (BusinessInsider)

 

Tracking Shipments with Import Yeti

While I'm not really in a supply chain business, they are interesting to me because they do with physical things, many of the same things I do with virtual things.

Supply chains use complex systems to achieve "simple" goals.  Figuring out how to streamline processes is both an art and science. 

Global supply chains remind me of the complicated machinery and gearing that goes into a finely made analog watch ... the watchmakers know that even if you don't know how the watch was made or what a mechanism does, it's still interesting to watch it tick and admire the engineering. 

Recently I found a website - ImportYeti - that tracks over 60 million companies' sea shipment records.   Here is an example showing Tesla.

via Import Yeti

It uses bills of lading and other public information to tell you information about the frequency of shipments, the suppliers, and what they delivered.

There is a ton of interesting information here.  Hope you find some creative ways to use it. 

If you are interested in this, I also suggest looking at Eli Goldratt's The Goal, which describes the "Theory of Constraints," which deals with how bottlenecks limit performance.