Thought of the Day - Traffic Management Idea

Last week i was sitting waiting in a traffic jam caused by road works and it occurred to me that traffic management is not run in the most efficient way.

If you consider the bottleneck in the process to be the physical bottleneck in the road and the number of vehicles passing as throughput, then it is clear that the bottleneck is grossly underutilised. As the traffic is running in opposite directions, it is clear that the bottleneck can never be fully exploited as you must wait for the last car in one direction before you can move in the opposite direction. However i think there are still significant improvements that could be made.

Firstly as soon as the last car clears the obstruction in one direction the next car should be moving in the opposite direction. Secondly the speed of the cars should be maximized past the obstruction to increase throughput. Finally the time taken for the cars to move off when the light goes green should be minimised.


So what might my traffic management system look like? I would set the lights back from the obstruction by the same length as the obstruction and have the lights change in the reverse direction based on when the last car leaves in the forward direction. This would allow the cars moving in the reverse direction to move off and get up to speed before the obstruction maximising throughput and minimising wasted time. This eliminates the lag in the system for the cars to move off, it also maximises speed through the obstruction meaning the bottleneck is maximally exploited.

There are 3 issues i can see with this system:
The first is if you get a boy racer at the start of the second set of traffic who screams past the lights and then has to jam on the brakes to avoid the oncoming traffic. This would disrupt the traffic behind and impair the throughput.
The second is if you had a very slow vehicle (crane, lorry or little old lady) they would act as a further bottleneck that would reduce the throughput. Unfortunately almost every traffic management system would retain this problem and by giving the vehicle time to accelerate before the obstruction the problem is minimised.
The final problem is that you cannot always see the full length of the obstruction, in this instance if there was a very slow vehicle passing the obstruction the two traffic flows could meet in the middle and come to a stalemate causing chaos. Unfortunately it is not possible to have good visibility on all roadworks so this may limit the locations where this system could be applied. It would also be possible to have an 'emergency stop' sign just prior to the obstruction to prevent this from happening if all of the traffic had not cleared the obstruction.

All of the above issues could be somewhat mitigated through public eduction either via signs or media sources and completely removed if you introduced two convoy vehicles to pace and control the traffic. While the latter option would greatly increase the cost of traffic management it could be used in high profile or high volume situations where throughput was critical.


While i'm sure every motorist would love spending less time in traffic jams and technically they are the end customer. In reality they don't control the cheque books and the cost of the additional equipment might discourage companies from using it. After all the because the motorists aren't paying, best case is that the company gets less complaints. But as with the Heroes Vs Planners debate they are unlikely to get positive feedback, there will still be a delay and the motorist won't know how bad the delay could have been if the system was not used.

Thought of the Day - Barefoot Shoes

Ok the title sounds like an oxymoron, how can you have bare feet and shoes at the same time? You can't, but you can come close and now that i have, i would never go back.

It has now been 1.5 months since i bought my Vibram Five Fingers shoes and i still think they are great. On Tuesday i had to wear regular shoes for a lot of the day and i was surprised by: 1) how much my feet hurt, 2) how narrow the shoes felt, 3) that not only did my feet hurt but so did my lower back. I must admit i was a little bit sceptical at first, but the more i read and thought about it, the more the theory made sense. Now after some experience the practice makes sense too.

My biggest worry now is if in a few years time, what i can't find barefoot shoes?

Thought of the Day - Tasks I Achieve Flow In

This morning i read an article on how to achieve flow (link at bottom of post) and i realised that i really don't experience it in work a lot.

Some things in life i find it easy to achieve flow in, most notably; reading (both books and articles), researching a topic online and coding websites. At work it is much more rare, if i get some peace and quiet i can achieve it doing data analysis or creating a presentation. Unfortunately to achieve flow i normally need music on in the background, so it doesn't help that we aren't allowed to use headphones. One other area i think i might achieve flow in is delivering training, i must admit i haven't really thought about it but when i get going it does feel effortless, maybe something to look at in the future.

So if flow is an optimal state of working and i don't experience it in my job very often then am i in the right job?


Idea from: http://zenhabits.net/2008/06/guide-to-achieving-flow-and-happiness-in-your-work/

Thought of the Day - Ready, Fire, Aim

Sometimes a theory or and idea keeps coming up over and over again and in those situations it is hard to ignore. Recently i kept reading about the benefits of the "Ready, Fire, Aim" approach, it was in books, on websites and in podcasts and it made sense.

Most people use the "Ready, Aim, Fire" approach. Only it normally turns into "Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim ... maybe Fire", too much planning and not enough action. On the other hand "Read, Fire, Aim" relies on action straight away, the results of which can be used to improve your accuracy. It is like firing a gun for the first time, you don't know whether the sights are set correctly or if the barrel is straight, therefore until you fire the aiming might not matter at all.


Something i have been meaning to take action on for a long time (like since 2004) is updating my WebCV into the modern age. It was originally built like a site from 1996; a pain to update, not very modern looking and rubbish for search engine optimisation, frankly it was an embarrassment. At various times since then i have bought and read books about web design, i have felt guilty for not updating it and once or twice i have even started to put something together. But it never quite got done, i spent too long planning and worrying about how difficult it would be and how long it would take to get it perfect. Even the most recent time i made a start in March i had a big elaborate plan, it was gantt charted out over 3 or 4 months but of course after a week i lost interest and nothing ever came of it.

On Friday evening i was listening to a podcast from SXSW where various entrepreneurs who were renowned for being 'fast' were speaking on the topic. These were people who had built the likes of Twitter, Blogger etc which are rather complicated pieces of software and the timescales they were talking about from picking a concept to first release were ridiculously short, months if not weeks. At this stage i began to feel rather embarrassed, my WebCV really isn't that complicated, i have most of the skills to update it, so how come they can launch huge brands in a few months and i can't even build a website?

The answer is simple; they set a short timescale to get something out there, it may not be complete, it may not be perfect, but it is something that they can then build on going forward. Programmers call this "release early, release often". It is better to get something out and get real customer feedback about what needs changed than it is to spend years building what you think customers want only to find it isn't actually what they want or the opportunity has passed.


With this in mind i decided that 12 hours was a reasonable amount of time to build a website. I set key tasks that had to be done and decided if something was taking too long that i would accept something that was ok, rather than taking longer and getting something that was perfect. It was difficult, first off it is the weekend so it was hard to avoid distractions and secondly i had forgotten most of the CSS i used to know. But after 11 hours of work i updated my WebCV and uploaded to the site.

I would be grateful if anyone who reads this could go and have a look at my WebCV and provide any feedback they can think of through the contact link. So far my list of things to do includes:

• Validate the xHTML and CSS against the W3C standards
• Improve consistency across browsers (IE7 and Firefox 3 are ok but i suspect it needs work on IE6, Firefox 2 and IE8)
  
• Sort out the padding and margins to get the spacing between the headings and text right
• Make a better header (the current one will do but its not great)
• Make the navigation tabs a bit less bland and angular
• Think of some ways to make it more visually appealing without being tacky

At least i have something out there, a base to build on. It is a much less daunting task to make lots of small improvements than it is to come up with something brand new and perfect first time. So remember; if you are procrastinating, if a project seems to big to know where to start, set a tight timescale and "Ready, Fire, Aim".


Idea from: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/05/29/the-art-of-speed-conversations-with-monster-makers/#more-362

Thought of the Day - Process Improvements I Love To Hate

There is one process improvement in particular that i love to hate.

Anyone who has stayed in a Travel Inn or similar budget hotel recently has probably noticed the increase in Lux Shower Gel/Shampoo bottles in place of traditional soap and shampoo. If you weren't a process engineer you might wonder why. The simple reason is cost reduction, how many barely used bars of soap and mini-bottles of shampoo do you think are thrown out each year? So something that you don't have to replace after every guest is quite a big saving, huge infact, probably millions of pounds a year, especially for a hotel chain as big as Travel Inn. It is also good for the environment, the waste generated from individually packaged soap and shampoo must be orders of magnitude more than large bottles of Lux. Finally who wants to steal a huge bottle of shower gel that only fits in a mounted holder, so there must be a significant reduction in theft too.

Unfortunately i really really hate shower gel, i always feel greasy after i use it and never quite feel clean. So on a personal level i hate it but on a technical level its is a great process improvement and i only wish i had thought of it first.

Thought of the Day - Life As A Laboratory

Something a lot of people seem to find strange about me is that i experiment with things, not only that but i actually call them experiments. I don't just buy a new pair of shoes, i experiment with near-barefoot walking. I don't become a Vegan, i experiment with my diet. I don't wake up early, i experiment with my sleep.

To me life is a laboratory, all parts of my life can be optimised, improved and if necessary changed wholesale. On the other hand i think a lot of people get into a (un)happy rut and don't see the need to change, to try new things. While i am sure that i am guilty of that in some areas of my life it doesn't stop me looking to change in others. The great thing about experimenting is that if it doesn't work out you aren't committed to the path, you were just trying it out. It also doesn't preclude the possibility of future improvements or changes. For me one of the most reassuring things about science is that scientists can admit when they were not exactly right or even outright wrong. There are no absolutes, it only takes one exception to break the rules and set you looking for new rules.

I'm sure other people experiment with things and maybe it is because my experiments tend to be a little more extreme, but most people i discuss my experiments see me as strange or at best eccentric. What convinces me that i am on the right path is a lot of the most interesting people that i've met and authors who's books i've read have had a similar attitude to experimentation.

Thought of the Day - ToC For Traffic

I just finished reading Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. First off a great book and yet again i wonder why i have left a Chuck Palahniuk book sitting on my shelf for more than a year before i read it.

Secondly i had an interesting thought about one of the concepts in the book. I could be totally wrong but the way i understand it, in the book the government split the population into day people and night people so that the roads would be less gridlocked and accidents would have less of an effect on traffic. But it is an interesting point, even the busiest, most clogged of roads tend to be just about empty between midnight and 6am. So many of the problems that we face with traffic are because we shock-load the roads at certain times of the day. The overall capacity of the roads compared to the total journeys is probably adequate but because everyone is trying to go places at the same time.

In the book the unintended side-effect of the split was that the night people became an underclass that resented the day people but i can't help but think there must be another way to better balance the flow of traffic on the roads. Every time i drive on motorways my mind drifts (more on that in the book too) to Theory of Constraints, i still haven't come up with a way to apply ToC to the roads without a massive overhaul of technology but there must be something that can be done. Strangely leveling the flow across the day hadn't occurred to me before but it would be a great way to remove the need for rigid rules and a drum-beat to pace traffic. Then the question is how to incentivize travel outside of the rush hours to balance the flow without becoming even more nanny-state like.

On the downside if the flow was leveled my 7pm to 3am drives up north would be much less effective.

Thought of the Day - Hydrofoils

Why do you only see hydrofoils in russia? I'm sure other places must have them, there must be big benefits from the reduction in drag, so why don't you see them all over the place?

Thought of the Day - Idea Execution

My idea execution sucks. As with just about everything else i try, whenever i put an idea into practice i am kind of ok at it but not great. Hmmm not terribly clear, an example might help.

When i was a bit of an audiophile i took it into my head to build a headphone amp. There aren't many sensibly priced commercially available ones and you can build a pretty decent one really cheaply. So i bought some soldering equipment, some parts and set set about trying to learn to solder and build electronics. Only it turned out that while i could solder and get a working headphone amp it was never going to be elegant.

What i am wondering is whether i just suck at execution and am desitned to live in my mind or whether i just don't give each skill required enough time to develop.

Thought of the Day - Customer Focus

What my jobs have been missing is customer focus. Sure i have had internal customers but its not the same as engaging with a real end user, someone who chooses to pay for the product, who uses it directly for its intended purpose and who's life you could make better.

Sure i may have bitched and moaned about customers and the public in the past and there are certain aspects of customer service that would drive me insane. But talking to the customer to understand their needs and coming up with solutions that exceed the customers expectations really appeals to me. Alas while my job in LifeScan somewhat involved that, i was never allowed to talk to real customers, heck i wasn't even supposed to talk to marketing. In my current job i couldn't be more isolated from the real customers if i tried, there is zero customer focus and it frustrates the hell out of me.

Maybe my next job needs to be in sales and marketing or in a company so small and directly linked to the customer that i can't help but get involved.

Book Notes - The Goal

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt [1984]

Summary:
Prime measurements should be: Throughput (sales), Inventory (valued as raw material) and Operating Expense (everything that doesn’t fall into the other two).

Steps for a Process of Ongoing Improvement (POGI) in production:
1. Identify the bottleneck(s) – Find Herbie.
2. Exploit the bottlenecks – Work out how to make Herbie Produce the maximum amount possible.
3. Subordinate Everything Else to the Constraint – Keep the kids together with Drum Buffer Rope, have Herbie keep pace on a drum and tether him to the front person with a rope of a fixed length.
4. Elevate the Bottleneck(s) – Lighten the load in Herbies backpack
5. If the constraint is broken go back to step 1 and repeat.

Rules of managing a bottleneck:
1. Balance flow through your plant (not capacity).
2. The value of parts waiting at a bottleneck is equivalent to the sale price of the products that are waiting for the parts.
3. Never lose time on a bottleneck.
4. Never have a bottleneck work on a part that isn’t required immediately.
5. Never have a bottleneck work on a potentially bad part.
6. Redistribute work from the bottleneck to non-bottlenecks even if it seems like they cost more.

Notes:
Page 40: “The goal is to make money.” While elaborated up on It’s Not Luck this is still the primary goal of every company and the other two goals are complimentary (like the golden triangle).
Page 46: Primary measurements of making money; Total Profit, Percentage Profit and Cashflow.
Page 51: The above measurements have no meaning to people on the shop floor, so other measurements are needed to convert the management metrics to shop floor ones. The meaning is probably lost, the conversion results in local optima rules.
Page 60: The three operational measures Goldratt advocates are:
1. Throughput – The rate at which the business generates money through sales.
2. Inventory – All the money the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell.
3. Operational Expense – All of the money the system spends to turn Inventory into Throughput.
Page 61: Inventory is deliberately only the price of raw goods and does not include cost of ‘value added’ activities to eliminate the confusion of whether a dollar spent is an investment or an expense.
Page 87: The reason no plant can ever be perfectly balanced is a combination of dependant events and statistical fluctuations. I.e. As the events are dependant the statistical fluctuations do not average out, delays are passed on but shortened times are not, therefore lead times stretch out.
Page 135: Any incentive system based on absolute output over a day or a week is fundamentally flawed, it encourages ‘hero syndrome’ at the end of the shift to meet the quota. Instead the incentive system should be based on how consistent they are in achieving the quotas on an hourly basis. Reduce statistical fluctuations as much as possible.
Page 217: Need to implement Drum Buffer Rope system to prevent an increase in inventory on the shop floor. Use a ‘drum beat’ to signal when to release raw materials into the process. Use a ‘buffer’ of a fixed size to ensure that the bottleneck always has material to work on, the buffer should be twice the statistical fluctuations in predicting when material will arrive at the bottleneck. Finally use a ‘rope’ so that there is a maximum amount of inventory between raw materials and the bottleneck.
Page 230: Benefits of cutting batch sizes in half:
1. Half the WIP
2. Half the cash tied up
3. Lead time is reduced as wait and queue time are halved
Page 238: Halfling batch sizes should increase efficiencies as the next steps will no longer be waiting for parts from preceding steps.
Page 269: For the Socratic method to be successful you must know what questions to ask the people you are trying to teach. To anticipate their questions and issues so that you can pose the right answers to point them in the right direction. The basis for these questions might come from a CRT.
Page 272: While every manager knows that inventory is a liability – cash tied up in the system, things you might not sell – on a balance sheet it is classed as an asset. Therefore by reducing your inventory it can show up as a loss in your P&L. Fortunately this only shows up as a one-time reduction in your assets.
Page 289: Example of Mendeleev and the periodic table, identified an underlying pattern in atoms that not only fit the existing data but was used to determine where there was missing or incomplete data. Rather than imposing an arbitrary order on the table he revealed and intrinsic order in nature.
Page 299: Key parts of POGI are; Improvement, you need the right measurements to know that you are improving and Process, it needs to be a step by step repeatable process.
Page 300: Chain analogy; in the cost world you are trying to trim the weight of the whole chain, in the throughput world you are trying to strengthen the whole chain.
Page 301: Steps for TOC production improvement:
6. Identify the bottleneck(s) – Find Herbie.
7. Exploit the bottlenecks – Work out how to make Herbie Produce the maximum amount possible.
8. Subordinate Everything Else to the Constraint – Keep the kids together with Drum Buffer Rope, have Herbie keep pace on a drum and tether him to the front person with a rope of a fixed length.
9. Elevate the Bottleneck(s) – Lighten the load in Herbies backpack
10. If the constraint is broken go back to step 1 and repeat.
Page 312: If you have spare capacity you can sell that capacity at any value above cost of materials because all of the other costs are taken into account already, the one proviso for this is that your market must be segmented so you do not have to lower the prices for everyone.
Page 317: Pick a hypothesis and then try to rigorously link it with other things using deductive logic.
Page 336: The questions that all managers should be able to answer are:
1. What to change? – Current Reality Tree + Conflict Resolution Diagram
2. What to change to? – Future Reality Tree
3. How to change? – Transition Tree + PreRequisites Tree

Quotes:
Page 41: “An action that moves us towards making money is productive.”
Page 88: “Most of the factors critical to running [a] plant successfully cannot be determined precisely ahead of time.”
Page 138: “Some resources have to have more capacity than others. The ones at the end of the line should have more than the ones at the beginning – sometimes a lot more.”
Page 158: “An hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour lost for the entire system.”
Page 210: “Making an employee work and profiting from that work are two different things”
Page 268: “Don’t give the answers, just ask the questions.”

Thought of the Day - Actions Vs Ideas

I was only yesterday cursing that Steve Pavlina had forsaken me, his blog hadn't been updated in over a week and then he made a great post (see link at bottom). Unfortunately this post was about something that profoundly troubles me, the balance between ideas and actions. His argument is that an idea that is not implemented is worth almost nothing. While i completely agree with him, it troubles me because i have great ideas and i am ok at starting to implement them (though sometimes even that doesn't happen) but where i really fall down is sticking with the implementation. I get bored and move on to the next idea.

Coming back to my Strengths Finder Results, none of my strengths relate to action, they are all about coming up with ideas, thinking, analysing and planning. My concern is that i excel at the easy part - having the ideas - granted they are good ideas, but my strengths do not allow me to (nor do i particularly care if i) actually implement those ideas.

I have two questions; 1) Is there a way to be successful just with ideas and not necessarily the implementation? and maybe somewhat related 2) How could i avoid implementation or at least become more effective at implementation?


Idea from: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/05/the-value-of-ideas/

Thought of the Day - TV and Social Surplus

I read an article today which argued that television represents 'social surplus', an abundance of time that people don't know what to do with. It suggests that it is like a security blanket that we need to hold on to because of the pace of change in society. Lastly it argues that this security blanket is needed only for a generation, then uses are found for the surplus and society as a whole reaps the benefits. I have a few questions: Of most global importance; is TV too addictive for people to give up and put the time to better use? This would result in a brain-dead society as is portrayed so vividly in Mike Judges excellent Idiocracy. Of most relevance to me, as i watch more TV than anyone else i know; what could i be doing instead of watching TV?

According to www.myepisodes.com in the last 3 years i have wasted; 2 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 9 hours and 45 minutes watching TV shows. I should note that is only counting the TV i care enough about to track, the real number is probably a good bit higher. As a comparison, that is probably round about the amount of overtime i have worked in various jobs in the same time period, but still it is not an inconsequential amount of time. We're talking about 1 month per year (~9%), including sleeping (~42%) and working (~23%). That means that 75% of my time is spent doing things that aren't really that exciting. I wish i could say i filled the remaining 25% with bungee jumping and dog sledding across Alaska but in reality most of it is probably filled looking at random stuff on the internet.

I initially went into this post wondering what i should replace my television watching with, but in reality i could keep it more or less constant and still have an abundance of time to be doing other things. The question from a paragraph above still remains though; what could i be doing instead? Something that adds value to me (learning, travelling, working out), adds value to the community (voluntary work) or adds value to the world (creating something new).

I don't have a shortage of things that i could be doing (improving my web design skills, learning a foreign language, selling my excess possessions on e-bay etc etc), i just can't think of something that i have enough motivation to do properly. I suppose the first step in any change is an awareness that you want to make the change, now i just need to work out what to change too.

Idea From: http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

Thought of the Day - Time Constraints

Today i happened across an advert for possibly my ideal job - Business Design Consultant with IDEO, the daddy of all creative consultancies. There was only one slight problem, the closing date was the 25th of April ... today.

It was 20:30 and my first reaction was; "stuff it, not enough time, why bother". Then it occurred to me that my CV would probably only need minor tweaks and really 3.5 hours should really be plenty to draft a cover letter and project report. So i whipped up a plan with some tight deadlines and set to it. Turns out i didn't even need until midnight, i finished 30minutes early!

About half way through the work i realised that if i had found the advert earlier i would have procrastinated or forgotten or not really worked on it until now. So really having a very challenging time scale was probably beneficial to me. Unfortunately we can't rely on serendipity to bring tasks to us at exactly the right time but it has convinced me that Goldratt is right in Critical Chain. What i really need to do is work out how to manufacture that tight deadline, that stress, so there is a cut-off to each task and i don't continue tweaking for longer than is required.


Ok so the chances of me getting the job are virtually zero, but i would have always wondered 'what if?' if i hadn't applied. The worst that can happen is i don't hear back from them, anything above that is gravy. If they call me i can ask what i could do to develop more, if they interview me i get a free trip to London to the meca of creative consultancies and while it is a million to one shot, i might even get a job out of it.

Thought of the Day - Limitations and Local Optima In Life

The strength of the human race is that we have adapted to survive, but now that survival is not really an issue for a lot of people, should we be questioning whether the adaptations are really the optimum?

The reason i bring this up is that i read an article on the benefits of 'barefoot' walking (see link at bottom), which blamed the 'features' of current shoes for various foot, ankle, leg and back issues. You can understand that in the past having a covering on your foot would be beneficial; less cuts, less chance of infection and a bit of protection. It then became even more critical as we moved to colder climates and didn't want our feet to freeze and fall off. Shoes allowed us to cope with conditions.

Of course it then became important that the sole of the shoe was durable and strong to prevent puncturing, which meant that stiffer, thicker materials had to be used. To make these stiff, thick soles more comfortable we added arch support, padding in the heel and rockered the sole to try to make the gait more natural but all we were doing was accommodating a limitation. Related to my notes on Beyond the Goal [coming soon] it seems that these local optima rules (padding, shaping etc) to accommodate the limitation were made so long ago that people no longer notice the rules or the limitation. With new advanced materials, a puncture-proof durable sole can be much thinner and more flexible, so why aren't they? One simple reason; people are used to what we have at the moment. Most people associate soft foam soles and thick padding with comfort, heightened heels are ubiquitous and hey if they are good enough for Olympic athletes they must be good enough for us, right?

Wrong. There is growing research which indicates that rather than making our feet more comfortable and protecting our joints from damage, that most current shoes actually cause these problems. So what is the solution? As with all good ideas it is very simple; use the millions of years of evolution in the human foot and interfere with it as little as possible. Provide protection without hindering the natural movement of the foot.


Recently i have had similar thoughts about a vegan/raw diet. That humans added cooked foods, dairy and meat so that we could overcome the limitation of seasonal fruits and vegetables. The only way to survive was to get calories any way we could and we adapted. But that adaptation is relatively recent and given that in the modern age we can get fresh fruit and vegetables year round is that adaptation the best decision or is it based on a local optima rule that helped us to survive in the past.


I am no Luddite, i love technology but i think we need to question the rules and assumptions of society to ensure that our choices are the optimum based on the current situation.


Idea from: http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

Thought of the Day - Learning

I read an interesting article today on Wired, it was about a method to optimize your recall of information. If you are interested in learning facts for training/university or learning a foreign language i strongly suggest you check out the link at the bottom of the page.

The theory is that over time your chance of recalling something gets less and less but the optimum way to learn is to recall the information as long as possible away from when you last thought about it. In other words you first read a fact, then you wait until there is a 90% chance of remembering it before you test yourself again. Then after that test you wait a longer time until you get to a 90% chance of recall before you try to remember it again. You repeat the process until the time between remembering is so long that it is effectively embedded in your mind. The advantage of this method is that you don't just memorize the information for a few weeks or a month like you would with traditional cramming, it stays with you almost forever.

So if you are somewhat astute you will have spotted the obvious problem; how do you know how long to wait before retesting yourself? The duration depends on the person, the type of data you are trying to memorize and how many times you have recalled the information. As you can imagine this would be difficult to work out for one piece of information never mind the hundreds or thousands of pieces of information that you are likely to want to recall. Fortunately Piotr Wozniak has created some software that has an algorithm to automate all of this for you. You can input your own information or you can buy 'Libraries' of pre-compiled factoids.

Your next questions are bound to be; If this method is so great why have i not heard about it? Why is every language, law and medical student not issued with a copy of the software? Why is it not taught in every school? Unfortunately i can't answer those questions but i am sufficiently intrigued to put down the $45 to get the software.

Lastly the thing that i find the most interesting is that the method seems to have benefits beyond simple rote memorization. It is suggested that due to the random nature of the questions it can help you creatively too. Your brain has to be used to jumping between topics and the questions in a random order might help you to see linkages where you did not see any before.


Idea from: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak

Book Notes - The 4-Hour Work Week

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris [2007]

Summary:
Alas not many notes from this book, it is just so different from anything I’ve ever read before I’m not quite sure what to write down. I suspect that some reflection and re-reading will be required before I have full notes.

I kind of feel like I’m being exploited by the book, that the lifestyle it espouses requires you to exploit other people (in this case me), the author highlights an adware pioneer as someone to aspire to after all. But at the same time there is definitely some gold in there and it is thought provoking and eminently quotable.

I think the concepts in this book could help you run any business. While a more morally acceptable product would not be as profitable or easy as the products the author suggests, the methods are applicable.

With all of the above said I think Timothy Ferris is very astute, he is giving away his secrets because he knows people will pay good money for the dream it sells but very few have the courage and determination to see it through. For other examples see Toyota or Eli Goldratt.

Notes:
Page 4: People don’t want to be millionaires, they want the millionaire lifestyle.
Page 77: Three times a day (at set times ask yourself; “Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?”
Page 101: The author suggests batching things (E-mail, phone calls, bills payments), it sounds rather un-lean to me, maybe an alternative self-help book would be how to lean your life. It is a bit strange because a lot of the other things in the book sound very like Theory of Constraints and Lean ...
Page 120: By outsourcing things to other people you will be surprised how many tasks don’t need done if you have to pay for them directly.
Page 192: Offer limited options, while you can charge heftier premiums for customisation it can create more problems than it is worth. Firstly options attract pedantic picky people who are more likely to complain if it is not exactly what they want. Secondly too many options can make customers more indecisive and hence less likely to buy, they worry about the benefits of one product over another etc.
Page 193: Try to avoid high maintenance low profit customers, they will waste the majority of your time and provide the lowest income.

Quotes:
Page 13: “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field” – Niels Bohr
Page 46: “What we fear doing most is normally what we most need to do.”
Page 74: “Parkinson’s law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.”
Page 168: “To get an accurate indicator of commercial validity, don’t ask people if they would buy, ask them to buy.”
Page 220: All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it is impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Develop strength to do bold things not the strength to suffer.” – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Thought of the Day - Student Syndrome

“Parkinson’s law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.”

Sounds a lot like the 'student syndrome' discussed in Critical Chain. My question is how do you artificially shrink the time you allocate to tasks; do you postpone them until just before the shrunk deadline or do you do them now with a set end time ... Both have motivational issues and it sounds like the Start Early Vs Start Late debate in project management.

Therefore the question becomes; how do you determine the Critical Chain in your life so that it doesn't matter when you start the non-critical tasks?

Book Notes - Necessary But Not Sufficient

Necessary But Not Sufficient by Eliyahu Goldratt [2000]

Summary:
The inherent conflict in software development is adding features to keep the customers happy Vs keeping the software easy to maintain and use to keep the customers happy. This conflict can be avoided if you focus on adding value to the customer, if they are making bottom line benefits they will not be interested in adding features that do not add value.
To add value you must work out what limitation your software can overcome. Moreover you must work out what rules are in place in the company to accommodate those limitations and then replace those rules with new more suitable rules. Only once the rules that accommodated the limitation are removed will you see benefits.

Notes:
Page 60: Have the client meet the project team before the bid goes in, while it does mean you need to have excess staff it can work very well to motivate the sale. If the client can get a feel for the project team and their competence they are more likely to select that vendor.
Page 61: Companies spent a lot of time making their new tools (ERP systems etc) look like the old tools, the problem is if they looked exactly like the old system then what is the point in upgrading.
Page 114: Refer to these 5 pages for discussion on finite capacity scheduling, along with its pros and cons.
Page 124: The key to finding the where the benefit lies in a new technology is to understand what limitation it overcomes, but moreover work out what rules helped us accommodate the limitation and what we should replace them with.
Page 130: Concept of time buffers as well as material buffers. Also concept of dependant setup times (going from black to white parts in injection moulding). Even more complicated if dependant setup on two machines overlaps and causes the bottleneck to shift between them.
Page 163: To make sure clients don’t focus on stupid little details you need to offer them sufficient value that they don’t care about the little details only the bottom line benefits.
Page 175: TOC can be devastating to a system if you only introduce it to one section at a time. If you introduce it in production and sales can’t keep up you have too much capacity for no reason. If you increase sales but production can’t keep up then you annoy your customer. The same is true of all other dependant functions.
Page 176: Forecasting at a warehouse level and particularly basing Min/Max Replenishment on forecasts is an easy way to build inventory, the solution is not to have a better forecast but to be flexible enough to make product to order.
Page 183: Oral presentation of the conflict between production, distribution and sales, example of presenting a transition tree.
Page 190: Forecast accuracy for various sample sizes like central limit theorem?
Page 192: Have a pull system with each plant holding ~3 weeks (dependant on replenishment time) of inventory of everything and shipping what each warehouse sells on a daily basis. As the shipments are for all sales, not just one product, the transportation should be still be a sensible cost.
Page 198: Measure your pull in throughput dollar days both for inventory and for missed shipments.

Quotes:
Page 4: “To be paranoid you must constantly assess the impact of your actions on the global picture. Which means that first you must relentlessly search for a deep understanding of the global picture.”
Page 62: “The customer is not always right but they are always the customer.”
Page 124: “We expect that a new technology will bring benefits when and only when, the new technology surpasses an existing limitation.”
Page 224: “As long as the end customer in the supply chain didn’t buy, nobody in the supply chain has sold.”
Page 226: “Trust is nice as long as there are measurements that serve as a watchdog.”

Thought of the Day - Simple Solutions

I have a problem ... all of my best solutions are too simple.

When i start working on a problem the solutions are not obvious at all and in many cases the company's plan is to do completely the opposite of what i end up suggesting, but sure enough by the end of the project the dissent has started. The suggestions that the solution was obvious, that the company would have come up with it without me, what have i been doing the last few months etc etc. It is really frustrating that the best solutions always seem obvious in hindsight and it does make it particularly difficult to get the credit you deserve. As Einstein once said; "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.", add to that spending money on things a company doesn't really need and you have the essence of my philosophy.

Which leaves me with a dilemma; should i make my solutions appear more complicated than they really are or can i somehow make the people involved realise how completely counter-intuitive my solution was to start with? The latter is definitely preferable but without knowing the solution how do you know what to record to prove the solution was not obvious at the time? More to the point how do you record the information so that it is undeniable and impossible to rationalise away when you present it?

Maybe i just screw myself by presenting potential solutions too early in the project. In one way you want the leadership to know that you have a plan, a goal an idea of what to do but in another you want them to see you struggle and then have that light bulb moment after the work has been done.