Why Target’s inventory problem is freaking everybody out - FreightWaves

Have you ever noticed how traffic jams, however they start, are note linear? I mean, you don't linearly slow down from 60 mph to 30 mph and then linearly increase your speed until you resume. Instead, you are cruising along and then quickly have to come to a complete stop. Then, you have stop and go traffic for a while and you have to be very attentive to the cars in front of you as you start to speed up because inevitably you end up stopped again. This is complex systems stuff. Flock of birds activity. You need serious math and high-end simulations to model it.

The pandemic did that initial stop to so many things in our life, and now we get to figure out how those systems come back to some level of stasis and what the start and stops look like in the middle. Keep your seatbelt fastened!