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Rebekah and I went to the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region's Critical Infrastructure Resilience Summit today.
It was a stat-filled day about various aspects of the Pacific Northwest's critical infrastructure. I learned things like how many automobile bridges we have in Washington State (2900), the average age of our bridges, (41 years), and how many bridges are structurally deficient (82...though I was unclear if that included the Hood Canal, Evergreen Point, and Alaskan Way Viaduct bridges). I learned that 80-85% of critical infrastructure is privately owned (a US figure). I heard that it took around 8 hours for the city of Centralia to reroute wayward cars and frieght out of their downtown after I-5 was shut down by flooding....
But my favorite bunch of stats given are about Safeway and their just-in-time (JIT) inventory system. This is what I had time to jot down:
- The majority of products delivered to the stores are from outside the PNWER region
- Every store receives 2 deliveries a day on a 12 hour cycle
- 120-150 trucks make deliveries in a day
- Deliveries are made 6 days a week
- Around 1.2 to 3.2 miliion pounds of food are delivered to stores a day
- 90% of trucks are on the road (i.e., not at the store or distribution center) at any one time
- There is no communication system on board the trucks to link them to distribution centers
- Alaska and Hawaii get deliveries from the Auburn, WA distribution center
- Their most critical infrastructure (in rough order) is:
- Transportation
- Fuel links
- Electricity
- Telecommunications
- Water
- Transportation
- Each distribution center has no more than 3 days of fuel on site
- A fork lift battery will last 12 to 24 hours without needing to be recharged
- Water is required to operate the compressors of the refrigeration systems
At the end of the session, they had us write our questions on a card and hand it up to the moderator for asking. My question never got asked:
Assuming JIT, wasn't invented/designed to be disaster resilient, what would a distribution system look like that was?
What did the distribution system of Safeway look 50 years ago and how did it perform in past disasters?
4 comments:
It would be interesting to see what plans other food distributors in Whatcom County have in the event of an I- 5 closure, or bridge collapse. Every night places like Haggens and Cost Cutter's have deliveries come in from Seattle.What if all access was cut off from Seattle for at least a week?
I think the comments by hux435 raise an interesting point. What would a I-5 closure near or in Seattle mean for us here in Bellingham? A closure north of town or multiple closures could indeed make it difficult for supplies (food, medicine, and emergency equipment) to flow easily northward. There are always multiple options like driving through eastern Washington or using ferry service. Disasters tend to bring out flexibility and creativity. However, in the event of a closed I-5 and a major disaster in Seattle, Bellingham may suffer from simply a lack of attention.....one of the issues of being in some senses a satellite city. Alaska, which also relies upon Seattle extensively, would be in a similar situation. For this reason along, it seems important to build in multiple redundancies. These may include not only a strong local and regional supply system but a close working relationship and memorandum of understanding with our closer neighbor to the north, Vancouver. The PNWER conference stressed this by looking at infrastructure interconnectedness from Alaska, down through the Yukon, BC, Washington and down into Oregon.
Right. These stats are very dramatic. This is obviously geography-specific, but some areas might obtain food via barge (Washington-state islands) or air-lift -- assuming fuel supply is not compromised. Clearly, such concerns need to be incorporated into any regional/community food assessment -- and strategies for procurement, the "multiple redundancies" that Rebekah was talking about.
Such multiple redundancies live strongly in every village in developing economies. It is daunting to consider the finding that approximately 90% of the world's food is consumed within 30 km (approx 20 miles) of the point of production (as a gross world average). Perhaps it is time that we, in the overdeveloped economies, should reflect on food procurement strategies that enhance community resilience.
I feel like I've heard this term "overdeveloped" more and more recently -- usually for comparing the US to most of the rest of the world. I'm not in the development trade, per se, and find the term distracting. There's no question that the US is "over-consumptive" with respect to the rest of the world, but everything else in these posts seem to indicate that the US has a lot more development yet to do -- increased redundancies, bridge repairs, cross-border relationships. We may be dysfunctionally developed, but certainly not overly so.
The real issue seems to be that the systems that we rely on most have developed organically throughout our history according to relatively short-term economic drivers. Investors expect constant growth and positive returns within a few years. Politicians need to show dramatic accomplishments within every election cycle. The US spends billions a year now cleaning up after industries that we spent billions subsidizing in the first place. Developed though we may be, decades of short-term decision making and anti-government rhetoric have taken a toll. Without a strong enough central government, we lack the ability develop and enforce the controls for a truly resilient and equitable system. There is no lack of theories on how to change course, but for now we work in a system where a lack of resilience and rampant inequity produce the best looking profits.
This Safeway example leads me to think how the dysfunction of our development could be viewed in terms of a systemic orientation around commodities. We have a healthcare industry that treats individuals like commodities. The hub-and-spoke system of airline travel has us all behaving like self-sorting luggage in the world's terminals. But systems that are actually designed for commodities are remarkably effective and efficient. The JIT system that Safeway (and most other retailers) use is a good example of this. Big retailers get a negative rap for pushing out the small businesses, but in the event of a disaster these big retailers provide a major asset. With their sophisticated logistics systems and worldwide reach they are going to have the connections, resources, and general wherewithal to overcome barriers and make critical goods available quickly. How, when, and why they may choose to exercise those resources is what troubles me.
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