Slack. It's not a bad word

I've been meaning for a while to write about the lack of slack in modern, highly-efficient distribution systems.  It's a foregone conclusion, really:  almost any business looking to optimise its distribution network will pare it to the bone in order to minimise capital and staff costs.  What's the point of having machinery and people sitting around, doing nothing, when you can operate at 99% capacity all the time?

The mantras of just-in-time, production-on-demand, and zero inventory make firms completely reliant on highly complex integrated distribution systems.  Usually, when the distribution systems hit a snag, it's easy to change suppliers.  But when the entire system fails, well, what then?  David Wighton, Business Editor at the Times, writes today:

One lesson we learn from Eyjafjallajökull is about the rigidity of modern integrated transport networks. Freight companies focus their operations by creating huge logistical hubs — DHL uses East Midlands and FedEx operates out of Paris Charles de Gaulle. Hugely efficient until ... a volcano erupts.

This fits with my recurring theme about resilience, slack, and systems that can bend but don't break.  Here we've got a system that broke due to an external event.  What would a system that wouldn't break in the face of a massive volcanic ash cloud and total air-traffic grounding look like?  I don't know, but I can tell you this much:  It would have a lot more slack and flexibility than what we've got now.

(One could read this as conflicting with what I wrote much earlier, on this site, about the efficiency of supermarket distribution systems.  A system in which individual farmers take care of their own distribution does have a lot more slack; it, or at least the road transit part of it, is likely, however, to be less efficient in carbon terms.  This is not to say that any resilient system will necessarily be more carbon-intensive, but that there may be trade-offs to consider.)