Do Patent Leather Shoes Reflect Up?

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

It'll take more than parochial school to answer this poser, won't it?  Meanwhile, patents do dominate the supply chain news these days.  Amazon,already has some 45,000 or 50,000 robots that command the goods-to-picker space, thanks to the acquisition of Kiva.

Now, Amazon, has patented a case picking robot that will take untold thousands out of their workforce.  Not bad for a people-dependent enterprise.

This from an innovator that is making the blimp and its dispersed inventory all its own.

Who else is disrupting supply chain operations?  Look, we've got a handful of inventors and backyard mechanics who are puttering around the fringes.  But, transforming SCM fundamentallly and on a regular basis appears to be the purview of a mega-organization that is devoted - devoutly - to changing the game, one that rewards innovation and industry dominance.

The equation is not likely to change - and that's good for me, for you, for all of us, but maybe not so much for Amazon's competitors