Insight certainty 5/5 debate potential 2/5

Swartz: Granular conversions of top-down dollar sales forecasts are always wrong

Mike Swartz · a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops · Jan 2, 2019 · at 53:49

Mike Swartz, an operations expert, discusses the fundamental disconnect between merchandising sales forecasts and operational capacity planning during an a16z panel on logistics.

0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“You get a sales plan that's expressed in dollars, and then somebody tries to convert that to orders, and then they may extrapolate that to units, and they may take a monthly sale plan and then try to water it down to a weekly or a daily or sometimes by shift plan. It's always wrong. By definition, it's always wrong.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Mike Swartz

Insight
Swartz: Startups overestimate their execution abilities and fail at operations
“And I find over and over again That, ah, especially with startup companies, that where they tend to fall short and really need a lot of support, isn't something that they think they're good at, which is execution.”
Mike Swartz Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:41 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops
Insight
Swartz: Relying on human-driven systems is best for facility security
“Cause no, nothing does a better job of pattern recognition than a human being. So having tools for humans to use and really relying on people systems is probably the best way to secure a facility.”
Mike Swartz Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 36:35 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops
Insight
Swartz: Security systems should not punish 99% of legitimate customers
“And the other thing I took away from that was not designing your security systems and your hooks for the 99% that aren't a problem, right? You don't want to punish 99% of your customers for the one percent that's going to get you.”
Mike Swartz Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 36:51 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Swartz: Smaller startups will increasingly compete with Amazon on service
“The Amazons of the world are going to have a lot of competition from smaller startups on the service front.”
Mike Swartz Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 48:03 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops
Insight
Swartz: Process design is easy; organizational buy-in and soft skills are hard
“What's counterintuitive is that it's really the soft stuff that's hard. It's not the hard stuff that's hard. So, you know, figuring out the process and figuring out what needs to get done is actually the easy part of the job. The hard part is getting the buy-i…”
Mike Swartz Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:17 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops
Insight
Swartz: Established companies fail to understand metric variation and rely on averages
“And even well-established companies I work with, Don't understand variation. They do everything off of means.”
Mike Swartz Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:03 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.