Utopia, you are standing in it!

The above picture is not a picture of a child in  Sub Saharan Africa but it is in fact a picture of a child in the Netherlands in 1944/45.

The Netherlands is a country divided by rivers and in the winter 44/45 ,what side of the river you were would determine whether you would have food or not.

The Dutch famine of 1944, known as the Hongerwinter (“Hunger winter”) in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces north of the great rivers, during the winter of 1944–45, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived because of soup kitchens. As many as 22,000 may have died because of the famine. Most of the victims were reported to be elderly…

This may seem a strange title for a WWII related subject but in fact it is probably more appropriate then you’d expect.

One of the definitions of Supply Chain Management  is “the management of the flow of goods and services,involves the movement and storage of raw materials, of work-in-process inventory, and of finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption”

Replace the word “consumption” with “action” or “combat” and you can apply the principle of Supply Chain management to Operation Market Garden or a great number of other operations during WWII.

The reason why I chose Market Garden is twofold. Firstly because it had a great effect on the country I was born in.Secondly It was the largest airborne operation up to that point and is one of the best recorded mistakes by the allied forces.

Planning is key to successful supply chain demand and the forecast…

Today marks the 74th Anniversary of Operation Market Garden,mostly associated with the book of Cornelius Ryan’A Bridge too Far’ which was made into a star studded block buster movie in 1977 with the same title.It is a lengthy blog but it is an important story to be re-told because the effects of this operation were felt long after the war.

Operation Market Garden was in fact two combined operations.

• Market – the airborne forces, the First Allied Airborne Army, who would seize bridges
• Garden – the ground forces, consisting of the British XXX Corps.

  

On 17 September 1944 thousands of paratroopers descended from the sky by parachute or glider up to 150 km behind enemy lines. Their goal: to secure the bridges across the rivers in Holland so that the Allied army could advance rapidly northwards and turn right into the lowlands of Germany, hereby skirting around the Siegfried line…