Supply chain humor pops up on YouTube

Occasionally, we wander through the wilderness that is YouTube, looking for educational logistics- and supply chain-related videos. There are plenty out there, including both high-quality professional films and amateur productions that offer useful content. There also are some humorous offerings online. The quality (in terms of both humor and production values) is all over the map, but they offer a welcome break from late-night work sessions. Here are just a few examples:

• "Logistically challenged: A lot less than truckload," posted by 1TradeLogistics, has a boss's son (who appears to be channeling the character Michael Scott of "The Office") forcing a skeptical traffic manager to turn an LTL shipment over to a "trucker" he found on Craigslist.
• "Moving up the supply chain" pokes fun at how buyers put pressure on suppliers and expect them to take all the risk for very little return. Posted in 2009, but still valid.
• Kinaxis, a provider of supply chain management and sales and operations planning (S&OP) software, has created several very professional "supply chain sitcom" video series. The first, "Married to the Job," features a husband and wife who both work in the supply chain group of a manufacturing company and have distinctly different approaches to decision-making and problem-solving. More recently, Kinaxis produced "New Kinexions," a series of commercials personifying bad supply chain software as annoying ex-girlfriends or boyfriends. And then there's the very witty and well-acted "Suitemates," about the sleazy CEOs of two enterprise resource planning (ERP) software firms who end up as cellmates in prison after their companies complete a dubious merger.