This morning, I turned on the television and watched the first stretch-wrapped pallets of the just-authorized vaccine being loaded onto a truck at a Pfizer plant in Michigan. From there, the pallets were headed to FedEx’s logistics hub in Memphis where they would be delivered to 153 locations across the 50 states. The event was both historic and mundane: Historic in that the shipments represent the hope of a nation that in the coming months, we’ll begin to put 2020—and COVID—in the rearview mirror; mundane in that this is a scene repeated millions of times a day, without fanfare, in plants and distribution centers across the country. Two of the basic, fundamental processes of the supply chain—make and deliver—are in the spotlight like never before. Not a subscriber?

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