Second, I knew computers affected the development of SCM; that seems obvious. What I didn't realize is that logistics, and inventory management in particular, directly affected the development of *computers*. All three early database models were designed to store inventory data.

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And, indeed, SCMs and LLMs have a great deal in common, from their ravenous appetite for data to the black holes of responsibility at their centers. That's because they share a common heritage in the mid-century sciences of systems.

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A couple things that surprised me: first, SCM exponents often describe a well-managed supply chain as intelligent, virtually sentient, because it reacts so precisely and quickly to changes in market conditions. In fact, you might say they view a supply chain as a kind of artificial intelligence.

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I get pretty deeply in the weeds of data models and software specifications, because part of my argument is that these things affect actual labor conditions.

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The book tells how the profession of supply-chain management came to be, with a focus on the technology companies have used to organize and track their products. We move from the first efforts to track manufacturing with computers during the Cold War to today's hyperscaled supply networks.

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