Our “Unplugged” interview series is always among our most popular features. We recently were able to snag Santa Clause for an in-depth interview on the North Pole’s supply chain and logistics challenges. Highlights below:
Gilmore: I understand the elf population is aging, and younger elves are going into other lines of work. How is this impacting your supply chain?
Santa: It’s a definite issue. We’ve taken two key steps. First, we’ve had to move quite a bit of production to elf manufacturing facilities in China. Second, we implemented an Elf Management System in our distribution centers to drive productivity gains against engineered standards. We’ve been able to move 10% more toys with 20% less elf labor. Incredible. But developing the standards was tough. The firm we used had never worked with associates that average three feet tall.
