[onion2k]

These are all things that most people never notice because they just work.

Taking the example of grocery store logistics, the number of times products are unavailable in my local store makes me thing that's a thing that doesn't "just work". It's something that breaks down regularly, and possibly has lots of people working hard to keep it from breaking even more often.

The same is true for lots of things. Stuff like water delivery and silicon manufacturing doesn't break all the time because lots of people are fighting to make it work, and are actively maintaining it all the time.

I think it's possible that most things don't "just work", and we're just fortunate that there are teams of people out there stopping us seeing the effects of all the failures.

[hef19898]

That's no contradiction. Logistics and manufacturing works because people are spending their professional lives maintaining them. It's the outside that doesn't see these efforts, for them it "just works". Like electricity.

[ksec]

As I wrote recently, [1]

> And it also pretty much sums up how most people in Tech have minimal understanding of Supply Chains and logistics works. Even distribution alone, within a single country ( ignoring the cross border logistics ) is complex enough.

Let me tell you supply chain and product availability in store ( especially grocery ) is still an unsolved problem. For a lot of different reasons and market dynamics. But mostly because grocery stores also have their own brand which compete with other products, and sharing sales data for better forecast is still a big no no. Compare to let say Smartphone, your average retail store will have zero chance completing with Apple or Samsung. So every time an iPhone is sold Apple knew instantly and can better manage their supply chain. Both domestic and international.

If we didn't had COVID and Chip Shortage, most of the world still doesn't give any credit or importance to Supply Chain management. Even though it is the basic fabric of our society. And that is speaking with experience working with Fortune Global 500.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30662680

[orzig]

Are those people optimizing for having every product available at every time? They have to balance against the very real cost of spoilage, so I don’t think they consider the occasional out–of–stock as the system breaking

[lozenge]

Yes they are. Product availability is the most important factor in choosing a grocery store, as unavailability makes people need to visit additional stores or change recipes/plans on the fly. Some spoilage is factored in and is just a minor bit of negative PR. However, the supply chain disruptions since 2020 are too big for any grocery chain to "solve".

https://hbr.org/2004/05/stock-outs-cause-walkouts

[michaelt]

The answer is actually "It depends"

For some products like pasta and canned tomatoes, you can hold enough stock to deal with a 99th-percentile day without any wastage at all; if it doesn't sell today, it'll sell tomorrow.

But for those little packaged sushi snacks with a one-day shelf life? Any overstock is going in the trash at the end of the day.

And sushi snacks mostly sell to workers on their lunch breaks. You'll see big fluctuations in demand if a nearby office changes their work-from-home policy, or has a big all-hands meeting that gets everyone in. Even the greatest demand modelling can't predict such things, as nearby office meetings aren't available as a model input.

Some products are also easily more easily substitutable than others: If the 1kg pack of mid-priced spaghetti is out of stock, maybe I buy the low-priced brand, the premium brand, the 500g packet, the wholewheat version and so on.

[ghaff]

>Product availability is the most important factor in choosing a grocery store

For many people, price is almost certainly at least as big a factor. Many, perhaps even most, people are willing to accept things being out of stock now and then for 10% lower prices.

[lupire]

Spoilage is more an issue of waste than accidentally selling a spoiled product.