John Konrad on gCaptain has some definite opinions on the operation of the Port of Los Angeles, and where the dude in charge should be borrowing tactics:
The Marine Corps is not the only entity to latch onto [Air Force Colonel John] Boyd’s theories, the Toyota production system is heavily fashioned after his work, and so is the operations of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook today.
What does this have to do with port congestion and logistics?
Well besides the fact that we are obviously playing the game of attrition – building bigger ships and sending them hey diddle diddle, right up the middle from China to Los Angeles – which always leads to trench warfare and ultimate defeat… there is more to this story.
The academic study of logistics is fairly new. In fact, one of the first master’s degree program in logistics was started by Dr. Shmuel Yahalom at SUNY Maritime College. Guess who else ended up teaching at this small and relatively unknown school. General Alfred Grey, USMC (Ret) who was commandant of the corps during the Gulf War, with Captain Anthony Piscitelli who wrote the book “The Marine Corps Way Of War” which details the adoption of Boyd’s theories.
One user of a tactic is a footnote. Multiple users across multiple domains is noteworthy. If you’re involved in a War of Attrition, you might want to read his post.
