OMG! The Internet killed the Mall
Chapter 1 – Paradigm Shift in Retailing Logistics – Fulfillment
Discover how innovative storage and distribution concepts have changed the delivery side of retailing – the supply chains that move goods from warehouses to customer doorsteps in hours. The disruptors have weaponized these innovations into a pivoting enabler – using fast fulfillment to capture and pivot customers from brick-and-mortar to online. Fulfillment machines are rapidly disrupting all industries and no product or service is immune to these innovations.
Chapter 2 – The Evolution of Online Retail
Starts from eBay and gang, then Amazon fulfillment followed by first responses from brick-and-mortar stores. Insightful data tells the physical and economic growth story of the fulfillment machine. Through four phases of evolution, the smart disruptors leveraged data, technology, and decision models into a customer delight. Identify the four traits of successful machine builders: prerequisites, timeliness, technology enablers, and a long view.
Chapter 3 – Speed: The Necessary Condition
Explains why speed is the dominant process flow objective, and why fast fulfillment is the key to success in online retail. The dominance of Amazon is driven by an early and total business obsession with process speed. Models the relationship between fulfillment time and the point where customers pivot to online buying. Analyze fulfillment friction and speed bumps and differentiate fulfillment machines based on frequency and immediacy.
The Physical Machine
Chapter 4 – Mathematics of Fast Fulfillment
Probability theory explains why old designs cannot achieve fast fulfillment. Design facilities that are mathematically configured to respond to quickly to the highly uncertain online demand behavior. Mathematical transfer functions describe the physics or the cause-effect interrelationships of the process. Discover how intelligence driven design and control can accelerate fulfillment speed.
Chapter 5 – Innovative Differentiators
The physical Internet-of-Things is driving the development of innovative fulfillment machines. Discover how inventive, functional, and process innovations are being developed by the disruptors to create customer value. Use the uncertainty ideation worksheet to push the probability frontier and weaponize the innovation machine. Does your business have an innovation lookout team? Learn how to avoid the Nash equilibrium.
Chapter 6 – Last Mile Fulfillment
Every address has unique delivery options, design the process to keep products flowing constantly and with continuous tracking. Understand last mile parcel delivery and the channel options. The effect of density, proximity, and randomness on the delivery transfer function. Discover how crowdsourced delivery is being used as an efficient fast fulfillment option.
Chapter 7 – Humans and Automation
Physio-Digital innovations that accelerate process speed must leverage automation which is smartly blended with humans. Use the automation challenge analysis to drill down on automation opportunities – situation attributes, machine capability, performance boost, and constraints. Discover the three classes of automation focus – Alpha or productivity, Sigma or intelligence, and Gamma or societal.
The Intelligent Fuel
Chapter 8 – Brownian Organization
ERP driven streamlined flows are being replaced with Brownian process flows which dynamically adapt to the highly uncertain and highly temporal demand for products and services. Discover the Brownian catalysts – An Unbounded Selection, Crowdsourced Information, End of the normal distribution and Random is the new normal. The Brownian Multiplier to Idea process will facilitate the harvesting of digital and physical ideas to leverage uncertainty into a success.
Chapter 9 – Modelling and Optimization
Brownian models require an explosion in decision points, data points, and transfer functions. Learn how Very Large-Scale Flow (VLSF) models leverage computing technology with decision algorithms. Discover how to build Internet of Things (IoT) driven streaming data models that emphasize – nX data point multiplication, data latency, and decision latency. Focus on the four decision making capabilities – data tracking capability, cloud capability, action capability, and modeling capability.
Zero-Infinity Fulfillment
Chapter 10 – Machine Building
The utopic machine will have zero fulfillment time and an infinite variety of product options. Fast fulfillment is not easy and requires huge capital investments and deep modeling knowledge. Existing assets frequently are a disadvantage. Proceed with seven investigations to initiate the fast fulfillment project: Speed, Brownian Uncertainty, Physio-Digital Innovation, Streaming Data, Transfer Function Math, Automation Segments, and Decision Models.
Chapter 11 – Team Innovation
Product innovation usually results in a new product or new technology, and the innovators can visualize the singular outcome. Process innovation on the other hand is cumbersome, it is not immediately brilliant and the disruption is not obvious. A three-team sequential plan to design and build your fast fulfillment machine is introduced. This plan deploys the concepts and methods presented in the preceding chapters.
Appendix – Innovation Tool Box
- Process Speed Analyzer (PS-Analyzer)
- Lite-AI Builder
- Brownian Multiplier to Idea (BM-Idea) Generator
- Automation Challenge Analysis (AC-Analysis)