Q Ok, given our current state of the country, let's put our lesson to something much closer to home. The original discussion was about Amazon's purchase of WholeFoods (see linked article below). Let's move this discussion to the idea of inventory in the context of the pandemic. I would like to take this down two paths: 1) The shortage of essentials that are critical to everyday consumers, especially with the Corona virus, such as cleaning supplies, medicines, etc. And then the other mostly essentials, (yes toilet paper is an acceptable topic here) at retailers. What can be done to mitigate these issues and how would you handle stock piling upstream of the retailer? 2) Inventory in the healthcare industry. a) As the lecture states, services have inventories of people. So, what are hospitals et al., doing to ensure enough capacity/inventory? b) ICU beds, medical supplies, ventilators, etc. What happens when these run short? What is the role of everyone (hospitals, government, etc.) in ensuring that supply > demand? • Amazon Puts Whole Foods on Fast Track to Conventional Supermarket - WSJ.pdf