In the spirit of both the holidays and my desire to name less typical but nevertheless impressive examples of production, consider transportation in commerce. Especially this holiday season, when about 3 billion packages will be delivered in the US alone (800 million more than last year), as will millions of vials of COVID-19 vaccines, each requiring specialized protection and storage. Not only must every package reach its destination, it must do so swiftly, carefully, accurately, and affordably.
How? The well-known phrase “planes, trains, and automobiles” doesn’t begin to cover it. In fact, tracing exactly how this feat occurs, step by step, is a complex data-management undertaking that only specialized logistics organizations can do.
Of course, like other examples I’ve cited on this blog, transportation is not “production” in the usual sense. But if we ponder the millions of productive acts that make it possible, both to build the necessary infrastructure and use that infrastructure to scale ― it seems natural to characterize it in this way.
And to appreciate yet again the fundamental role of production in human life.
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