JIT and some thoughts on Technology

     As you can see we got a little sprinkling of snow this morning and we are in a little bit of a lull at the moment, we do have more on the way though. I ponder a few thoughts as I sit here next to a nice warm fire with a hot cup of coffee. In this day in age with our wonderful technology you would think that weather events would only be of the most minor intrusions to our lives, guess again. Case in point, Mr. Weather man comes on the information dissemination device and informs you that some type of weather event has decided to come visit your area and it might get nasty. What is one of the first things you notice happens?  it's the run on the grocery store for supplies, water, bread, milk, pretty much the basics. You also notice that the store looks pretty empty within a very short period of time depending on the severity of the coming event. We no longer have the “back room” of a grocery store, what you see on the shelves is pretty much it now.

      Most business models now follow the JIT or Just In Time delivery system. This model which is highly computerized determines what products have been sold in say a 24 to 48 hr period of time and generates a list of replacement items to be sent to the store Just before the product is completely sold out.  Now again this business model saves everyone time and money and works great when everything is normal but when things are not normal you have a big problem. If you take almost any system and push it beyond it’s means you are likely to see a failure and JIT delivery is no different. Do you really want to be one of the hordes of people dashing out to the store to pick up the basics? You shouldn’t have to.

     There is a simple and easy way to avoid this problem and that is to have a few days worth of supplies that can be easily prepared with minimal effort and no I am not talking of having any expensive freeze dried or any other high dollar food, those are for completely different situations, here we are talking about short term 2 to 3 days situations. One reason why I stress easy to make options it to take into account the possibility of power failure, water failure, gas failure or any combination of the above. It will do you no good to have foods that you can’t cook due to utility failure so keep in mind that simple is better, it may not be gourmet but you won’t go hungry either.

     Our technology can be a wonderful thing and it makes some things easier with respect to quality of life and other aspects but it can and does fail with regularity and most people are far too overly reliant on it and that’s where the problems begin.

     Now if you are feeling adventurous try this for a weekend, shut off your electricity by way of your main breaker, shut your water off, shut your phone off, that pretty much covers your utilities. Now try to live with what you have without cheating and you will see what I mean about how dependent we are on our technology.

Prepology

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