Nice article. I would love to know more details about some of the specific examples, though. Like this one:
Yellow Freight used to have some 700 “end of lines,” Powell says, which are sorting terminals where cargo is transferred to its end customers. Powell developed a model that delivered a counterintuitive message: Trucks were traveling farther to get to the customer with so many terminals. Today, he says, Yellow Freight has 400 end of lines. “That was the right number,” he says.
I can understand 400 endpoints being more efficient for some overall process, but I have a hard time seeing how it could reduce miles travelled without some sort of unmentioned complexity (like sending stuff to the wrong endpoints through confusion). Or maybe it includes miles driven taking stuff to the endpoints in the first place? That I could see.
Yellow Freight used to have some 700 “end of lines,” Powell says, which are sorting terminals where cargo is transferred to its end customers. Powell developed a model that delivered a counterintuitive message: Trucks were traveling farther to get to the customer with so many terminals. Today, he says, Yellow Freight has 400 end of lines. “That was the right number,” he says.
I can understand 400 endpoints being more efficient for some overall process, but I have a hard time seeing how it could reduce miles travelled without some sort of unmentioned complexity (like sending stuff to the wrong endpoints through confusion). Or maybe it includes miles driven taking stuff to the endpoints in the first place? That I could see.