The River

I have spent a significant part of the last two years getting something “off my chest” and “out of my system”. When I was finished, I, at least, was pleased with the result. That effort had become the book that I always said I was going to write, and it got named Screen Saver.

But I had forgotten. Bruce Springsteen had accomplished the same thing with elegance, and he only needed to use four minutes and fifty nine seconds:The River.

Sadness

When I left IBM I was too young and too poor to retire. I waited until later when I was older and too poor before I retired.

In the first phase of my post IBM life I didn’t get very far from IBM. That was because the only post IBM way of earning a living that I was able to find in the short time that I had available for that discovery process was to be an IBM Agent.

Being an IBM Agent was something like being an Agent for an insurance company. The similarity was that, like an insurance company, IBM was a huge international corporation that wanted to reduce or eliminate as much direct sales expense as it was possible to eliminate without losing some semblance of loyalty from that replacement sales force.

For years that had been a work in progress. In Screen Saver I recount a number of stories about that ongoing process, including the time that I spent getting on a plane at LaGuardia or Newark every Sunday and returning from Atlanta every Friday. The week that that traverse allowed to take place in Atlanta had been filled with work on a three person task force which was trying to figure out how to sell new business solutions (small value-added computer systems) through some channel other than card carrying IBM employees. It was odd that the answers that the task force came up with ended up being my third-to-last IBM job and my first post IBM way of earning a living. Those answers were two things: independent businesses to be constituted as IBM Agent Firms and a new IBM function called the Complementary Resources Manager – an IBM employee whose job it was to provide for the care, feeding and IBM interface to those Agent Firms. I was the first CRM in Spokane and I later became the IBM New Business Agent Firm in Seattle.

As things turned out, the Seattle endeavor probably would have been successful, both for me and for IBM if IBM had not perceived itself as being in the process of going out of business. That meant that the expense of nurturing a brand new business long enough to become successfully independent was not an option and what probably needed to be a three to five year transition plan became an aborted one year. IBM tried to dress the abandonment of the Agent Program in its best go-to-meeting clothes, but I had worked for the company for too long to fall for that artifice. So after a year of being an Agent firm with four employees I went to being a loosely affiliated IBM ally with no employees who made more money from consulting and technical writing than I made from the IBM relationship. Ultimately we migrated to being soley a consulting and technical writing firm.

But during that start up year, the full twelve months of the non-diluted IBM Agent relationship, I had a lot of support from IBM. That support included office space for me and my employees in the IBM building, a monthly non-recoverable stipend for each of my sales territories, a variable payment for just taking the responsibility of the territory and commissions for whatever IBM goods and services we sold to our customers.

All of those payments added up over a little time to a surprisingly significant monthly payment from IBM. Those payments came to me in the form of a monthly check from IBM. For whatever reason, it seemed like a good idea to have my business bank account close to the IBM office. The closest bank was a small branch of US National Bank – at that time still a Portland business, and as an almost native Portlander I had had a US National Bank account in my previous life – so it just seemed natural to do business with them.

The branch was in a quaint, old, not many storied building that had somehow evaded the all too prevalent downtown Seattle wrecking ball. After US National, for whatever reason moved from the location it became a Starbucks. It was on the corner of 6th and Seneca.

I had two contacts. One was a dithering young woman who was, she assured me, my Personal Banker. The other was the Branch Manager. I didn’t have much contact with the Branch Manager, but since I was the CEO of a member of the small business community, a new customer, and it was turning out, a fairly significant depositor, my “Personal Banker” had made sure that I had been exposed to that level of executive bank contact.

The Branch Manager was a quiet-spoken, rather slight of build African American. In my little contact with him he seemed to care about his customers, know a lot about his business and how it might be of service to people like me and was credible when he said that if I ever needed help beyond what my Personal Banker could provide that he was ready to serve. I believed it and that was a tribute to his credibility. There are a lot of glad–handers in positions such as his; I felt that he wasn’t one of them.

But that is all told to set the stage for my short, sad tale.

One late mid afternoon I needed to go over to the bank to make a deposit. I left the IBM building and crossed over to the bank, tried the door and found that it was locked. The bank was closed for the day.

The sidewalk, being in the middle of down town, was fairly busy. As I turned to go back to IBM, and as I brushed by a few bustling passers-by I became aware of a person a little farther away from me than those that were immediately around me as I turned from the bank doorway.

I didn’t really look at him, but I must have glanced in his direction. Because I formed the immediate impression that he was a he, not a she. Somehow, because it was downtown and he was coming directly toward me, I formed the immediate impression that he was begging.

As the word “no” was forming for articulation, one additional random piece of data was added to my fairly amorphous grasp of the situation. The guy was African American.

Before I could say my incipient word he spoke. “We’re closed for the day, but the branch down two blocks is open until six.”

“Hey, thanks” I must have said. I never really knew because in that split second I recognized my “Personal Banker’s” boss, the Branch Manager of the bank.

As I walked down Sixth Avenue to the other branch I was unable to stop the instant replay of the whole just-completed encounter. And it always ended the same. And before long the only thing that remained, playing over and over and over until I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and not come out until it stopped playing was the same thing.

The only thing that remained, the only memory, the only real and tangible image being flashed by my personal screen saver then, and even now as I write this, was a look of utter and profound sadness.

This Will Be - Mercifully - Brief

Here are two things. They are related, at least in my mind, probably in no one else’s mind, but related for me. Call them threads in a larger, much more heavily threaded cloth of tragedy; call them key elements in the “decline and fall”; call them what they are: stupidity and cynicism. Whatever you call them there is a stench rising from them, although, to the cultured stench detecting nose, they differ slightly.

Abject Stupidity: A majority of Americans have no idea what the larval health care bill contains – as neither do I – but they are “agin” it. I’m not “agin” it.

Cynical emulation of being principled: The republicans have found nothing in anything the new administration has proposed that they can favor. So they say. The facts are, they have a super minority with which, armed with the blanket threat of filibuster, they can bring down a presidency. They hope to then replace it with one of their own.

How nice.

The Bath At Cluny

There are a number of Roman ruins spread around France. Among them are the remains of a coliseum at Bordeaux and the still-being-used coliseum/bullring at Arles. But my favorite is right in downtown Paris. It is the Bath at Cluny. It is on Boulevard St-Germain not far from where Boulevard St-Germain bends to cross the river at Pont de Sully and becomes Boulevard Henri Quartre.

The Romans built it sometime in the early centuries of the first millennium, and, after they left it was turned into a monastery or convent, I never can remember which. Actually I can’t remember whether it was turned into either of those things. But it was turned into something other than a Roman bath, and that something – whatever it might have ever been - caused the then residents to install stained glass windows. I really like stained glass windows, which is odd because I don’t have any affinity for churches or religion.

Actually I have developed a great deal of affinity over the last few years for the cathedrals of Europe. Except for London and Brussels the only cathedrals I have ever actually seen are all in France, but it sounds more impressive – to me at least – to claim affinity with the cathedrals of all Europe rather than just those of France; and cathedrals, I have been told, are churches, although they have no similarity to the down-at-the-heel things that are called churches and are on offer in the United States; and I really like the Cathedrals’ stained glass windows. Even though Cluny has stained glass windows I don’t think it was ever a cathedral.

So that is what is imbedded in the beginning of this little drop of drivel.

I really wish that Blogger would let me, or I could figure out if it does let me and I am just too stupid to figure out how, to put my pictures where I want to put them.

But I guess campared to the implications of the new republican super minority in the US senate, or the bothersome realization flowing from the fact, that, thanks to the strictly constructionist five judges on the supreme court, we won't even get to choose who to send back to Washington to get bought by the lobbyists, my problems are really trivial.

The Joys OF Adobe Illustrator: Part Two

Recently my son sent me an email with this raster image – it was a bitmap (bmp) file. He asked me if I could work any magic that would improve it. At least that was what I interpreted his email to say. Emails from Joe are always terse to the point of incoherence. But that is what I interpreted him to be asking.

Imagine my excitement when I saw before me another chance to use Adobe Illustrator to make the world a better place. It looked to me as if just getting the clear color of a vector image to replace the muddy color of the starting project would be an improvement. I assumed that the ability to “scale” the finished vector product would be a plus. Scaling allows the finished product to be made massively smaller or massively larger, or any stop in between those extremes, and retain perfect clarity and resolution no matter what the level of the scale. That means an Illustrator file can be used for anything from logos on a business card to pictures on a billboard. I was not at all sure what anyone might want to do with the “challenged boaters’ forum” crest, but I figured that scalability couldn’t be a bad thing.

So, my return email said “I can and I will”. And then I set out to do it.

With Illustrator one uses “layers” and “sub layers” which are digital versions of acetate overlays. To use them it is desirable to decide ahead of time what the individual components of the illustration are going to be, what their layer order is going to be, and what if any sub-layers are going to come into play in each component layer.

In the case of this project the choice was obvious - at least to me. I started out at the lower left and planned to go to the right and up through the image.

Without going step by step through the nuances of how I got the thing finished, it is at least worth mentioning that the apparently easy starting point – the white flag with the red parallelogram – almost brought me to my knees. But I finally figured it out and ultimately triumphed.

Here is the finished product.

The Joys Of Adobe Illustrator: Part One

A number of years ago, for no apparent reason, I decided that I needed to enroll in a certificate program at Bellevue Community College. Actually I had a reason, but I really didn’t realize it at the time: it wasn’t until some years later when I had the time – time be damned; it was the inclination – to reflect on what I laughingly have refered to as my life, that I realized that I had been subject to the subtle influences of “they”. You know, “they” say that one needs to network; “they” say that one needs to have a number of different resumés; “they” say that one needs to keep getting additional education – and all of that “they” stuff.

Somewhere I had heard that Bellevue Community College had a really good multi-media authoring certificate curriculum.

I had no idea what multi-media authoring might be. In spite of that fact it just sounded good.

This had occurred at a time when I was in the midst of teaching myself HTML, with the help of Laura Lemay and her amazing how-to book for HTML 3.2. I was fascinated by it. I had never encountered anything that resembled computer programming that had such an immediate positive or negative reinforcement component. Having completed a chunk of HTML code – using MS Notepad as the editor – all I had to do was save it as HTM or HTML, click on it and get an immediate “it works” or an immediate “what were you thinking?” back from the browser. I used Netscape in those days since MS Internet Explorer was so rudimentary that it shouldn’t have even been called a browser. (The distance Microsoft travelled in almost no time from that Explorer to the one that they unleashed on the market shortly after the morning that Bill Gates must have awakened and realized he was about to lose the whole game if he didn’t turn his company on its axis, was nothing short of amazing; but the Explorer available when I was in my HTML-coder days was a joke.) Anyway, I was having more fun than it ought to be possible to have building my first web site from scratch. I was otherwise employed as an entrepreneur running my own IBM Agent and Wholesale Distribution Consulting and Technical Writing business with my wife, but I had plenty of time – sometimes until three or four in the morning - to pursue the HTML wil-o-the-wisp.

Somewhere during that time I heard about the curriculum at BCC. Under what must have been the influence of “they” (“they” say that multi-media authoring is the next big thing – perhaps) I decided to look into it.

In almost no time I was attending the first night class of what was going to turn out to be one of the three classes that I had signed up for that quarter. Before I finally became a community college drop-out I had accumulated almost sixty credit hours, had an almost four point GPA, and had learned a lot of stuff that was going to prove to be a fortuitous addition to my life as I entered unemployed – some call it retired – old age. I had learned how to make movies with Adobe Premiere, how to invent my own world with Adobe Photoshop and, I wasn’t really sure to invent what, with Adobe Illustrator.

Premiere and Photoshop, each in its own manner – Premiere with aggressive abandon and Photoshop with a passive-aggressive turn of character – deal with raster files. Think of Georges-Pierre Seurat’s paintings and you know what a raster file is. Raster files are goldmines of possibilities: they can be cloned; they can be flipped; they can be warped and woofed and reflected and distorted; they can be gray-scaled and they can be RGB’d or CMYK’d; they can be overlaid with varying transparencies to reveal their inner meaning; they can be selectively cut and pasted. If they happen to come with sound and thirty frames per second they can be cut, overlaid, titled and faded to black or white or in some inventive flow of imagery be rolled over to; those are called movies. The possibilities are apparently endless. But they always end up being in some way or another, just a subset of what all those pixels were when one started to manipulate them. And that is the point. A raster file has to already exist to be dealt with.

But Illustrator is different. Illustrator generates vector files. Think of Albert Einstein with a black board full of equations to understand what a vector file is. Because each line, shape, color, font, line thickness or drop shadow exists only on the basis of its co-ordinates on their page and on the basis of the mathematical characteristics that have been told to tag along with those co-ordinates. With Illustrator one can start with a blank page on a blank art board and, with various tools, keys and drop down menus, create a world from one’s mind where only blankness had existed moments before. To do that, of course takes artistic talent.

Lacking that one can trace things. That’s what I do.

But even tracing takes some talent and some imagination. Illustrator gives one more brush strokes, line segments and polygonal possibilities than it is possible to absorb in one, or even many, sittings. So, as one stares at the template of some raster file that is about to be traced to its eternal improvement, the choices of how to do it become something of an exercise in itself. And once the choice for any particular piece of the tracing has been made, the actual execution of that choice can become a career in itself. Making just the right curve – a curve that perfectly overlays that which is being traced – with the Bezier curve tool (called the “pen” tool because if you can make the thing do your bidding it produces lines that flow as if they had been produced by the quill of an old fashioned ink pen) can take many tries and require one’s entire cache of colorful expletives.

In the world of vector based artistry, the world of Adobe Illustrator, one can swear and draw, swear and draw, and swear and draw. But in the end, if one perseveres, one can produce something almost from nothing.

And that is a good feeling.

Ultimately the raster-based world has the last laugh, however. The World Wide Web only understands raster files, and of those file types only a few of that large family of image file formats. Chief among those are the JPEG and the GIF.

So, if one wants to promulgate the work of an afternoon’s (or a month’s) vectorizing to the Web, one ultimately needs to bite one’s vector-based tongue and export the masterpiece to one of those formats that the Web understands. Then it can be uploaded.

Here is the first major tracing that I ever did.
Several Years later I did this one, which I posted last year on this blog.

The Pipeline Is Dry

The Economist constantly points out that the US has the best University system in the world and that there really isn't a country in second or third place. In an annual survey by the Chinese (they are trying to figure out what they need to do to get to best of breed status, and they are moving forward with vigor) on the top 20 list they are all American Universities (I can't remember whether Harvard was first or not) except for Oxford and Cambridge which were both in the top ten. No French, nor German, nor Japanese were on the list. The U of Washington was number 20, interestingly enough.

Anyway, we - the United States of America - are imminently in position of pissing that advantage away. If the kids entering the system can't read, write, think or talk coherently, and don't know math and have no idea about where anything is in the world or what has happened in the world over the last three or four thousand years, (unless Bishop Ussher's statements which are believed by many of them are taken as valid history) the system won't last very long. And it takes years to fix that problem. An empty pipeline is probably going to be a major contributor to our undoing.

The Tombstone

Ruth and Noel and Joe and I went to Moscow Idaho one Autumn weekend. If you read Screen Saver you know that Ruth was my first wife and Noel and Joe were our sons. If you didn’t read Screen Saver, Ruth was nonetheless my first wife, and Noel and Joe were our two sons.

We went one time to Moscow to visit Jack and Ted. Again from Screen Saver, Jack was a close friend whom I had met in high school and who remained a close friend for a significant portion of the rest of my life; Ted was his roommate for awhile during their time in law school; Ted is still my friend.

We went to visit the site of their being roommates, a beautifully finished daylight basement apartment on Moscow Mountain, not far out of Moscow; Moscow is the home of the University of Idaho and the law school that Jack and Ted were attending.
The daylight basement apartment where they lived was the lower level of a recently built house belonging to Doctor Tenny, a professor in the English Department at the University. Doctor – inevitably he was called behind his back “Doc” – lived in the upper rest of the house with his wife.

The day we arrived we met the Doctor before we had found Jack and Ted. It was late mid-afternoon on a beautiful blue and gold shimmering October day. Doc Tenny was in the rather large driveway terminus that doubled as a parking pad directly in front of the windows of Jack and Ted’s apartment. Doc Tenny greeted us with almost courtly welcoming courtesy. The majority of that attention and courtesy seemed to be directed to Ruth, but that didn’t particularly surprise me. Ruth was thought by many people to look like Ingrid Bergman – I wasn’t one of them – and I assumed that the Doctor, a man in his seventies, didn’t often have attractive young blonde women as his guest. I quickly felt as if I were a hindrance to something, but that was a fleeting impression. One of the things I learned before leaving was that Ruth was certainly not of a scarce or unusual genre at the Doctor’s abode. He conducted an honors upper division literature class consisting mostly of young women not much different from Ruth, and part of the potential advanced credit curriculum involved visits to the Doctor at his domicile on the Mountain for in-depth literary analysis.

As a part of the welcoming pleasantries the Doctor gestured vaguely in the direction of what appeared to be an automobile. It must have been a 1957 Dodge, but it was somewhat hard to ascertain its exact lineage because where there once had been fins and fenders and lights there were dents and holes and bumps and roundness. Not long in the future from that October day the snows would come and, being on a mountain, the ice would follow. The garage and driveway during that time of the year became a place requiring caution, and caution was a thing that the Doctor, it seemed, lacked. Old Overholt apparently made a bad time of the year for driving not seem so bad at all; apparently due to that spiritual influence, the Doctor’s car had gradually become a shapeless lump of dented and rounded sheet metal. Jack and Ted said watching him get the vehicle out of the garage and launched out of the parking apron, down the mountain-trail-like driveway to the main highway was an experience not to be missed; the return, they said was equally exciting. The essence of the fins could still be perceived, which is how I knew that it was a Dodge; it was a well used vehicle.

The gesture to the lump-like automobile was accompanied by a running dialogue in something resembling drunken Elizabethan (or at least not contemporary American) English. “Behold yonder stands the noblest of steeds. She carries me unto battle and victory over the stanchions of evil.”

Noel and Joe were beginning to pay attention. Ruth didn’t know what to say. Nor did I. With murmurs from the two boys – murmurs of something between admiration and caution – and silence from Ruth and me, he continued. “I gainsay those who call her a cheval qui a la coeur brisé. She is merely reaching her threshold of greatness.”

With that he lurched toward the steps leading to his portion of the domicile. “Join me, children, in the curtilage for an imbibement. “ And up and in he went.

We were just looking at one another, wondering what to do next and wondering where our friends and hosts were when they appeared.

“We saw you coming and saw him out there and decided the only proper entrance for you – since such an opportunity was available – was for you folks to get a shot of the Doc unfiltered. You would have thought we were making it up otherwise,” said Ted. He was something of a poet. “He invited us in, and that isn’t an invitation to be taken lightly,” said Jack.

“What dost thou desire, fair damsel?” boomed across the large great room-with-massive-fireplace. Ruth being the only damsel present, I assumed the Doctor was addressing her. “Gin and tonic?” she asked. “Your every wish shall be granted,” rejoined Doc Tenny. And he set about making one.

As we all sat around talking, and drinking - Jack and Ted and I had helped ourselves to beer from the refrigerator, and the Doctor had poured a large tumbler of Irish without ice – time just seemed to pass. In spite of the awkwardly surreal nature of the encounter to that point, I had to admit, and I assumed the others had had to as well, that the Doctor was a good host and terribly entertaining.

After some time and some drinks he began to speak in a more contemporary manner. “ I have a treasure in the trunk of my car that I rarely share with others, but for this august group, I would like to make an exception.” Ted and Jack just looked at one another. I saw a flash of something pass between them, but I had no idea what it might be. “Yes, after our next re-fill we must go out; we must go out before darkness settles upon us, and I will show you my treasure.” And then we did another round.

Once out on the twilit parking apron, the Doctor moved to what must have been the rear of the amorphous mound of metal that was his automobile, and with a flourish withdrew a key, shakily thrust it in the direction of what was most probably the trunk and a piece of flattish metal popped up at a forty five degree angle.
In the waning light one could see a mass of things, but there was one thing of note. It was the biggest thing in the cavity: it was about three feet in length, eighteen inches in width, was curved on one end and was flat on the other end. It appeared to be made of stone. It was a tombstone.

“I found this in the woods several years ago, and I want it to adorn my grave when I’m gone. It sums me up better than I could have ever contemplated doing myself. I doubt even if Marian would have done as well.” And he, with grimaces and grunts – it was, indeed made of stone – horsed the thing out of the trunk and leaned it against his leg so that all could see. In the rapidly waning light it was still possible to read the chiseled words: “He Was A Good Woodsman”.

Thinking about this story and then telling it as I just have completed, from the vantage point of all of those intervening years has caused me to ponder what might be my exit line, my epitaph. And, I think I have it:

He Nearly Accomplished Quite A Number Of Things

No No Fly List

I couldn’t have been more disappointed.

Today, 7 January 2010, the president spoke to the American people. This President, unlike his predecessor, has an intellect and usually applies that intellect to the things that he says – snippets or speeches.

His predecessor lacked that sort of intellect, so there was nothing to apply to the things that he said – snippets or speeches. He was pretty good at speaking, it was just that what he said was what someone had told him to say. His pronouncements were always the words of a ventriloquist’s dummy, although he stood alone rather than sitting on the lap of the ventriloquist.

Today, at least from the viewpoint of the message delivered, the ventriloquist seems to have come back. Because the message was identical to what would have been expected from Bush; as such it was just plain wrong.

The President said that the system failed.

The system didn’t fail. The system doesn’t work. In fact that which the President says has failed isn’t even a system. There really isn’t any system. What there is is an organization. It is an organization that is set up like a corporation. It is not organized like a corporation such as one finds among the successful businesses of the 2000’s, it is a corporation such as one found at the turn of the nineteenth century. It has many levels of command control and information passes slowly through the semi-porous membranes that separate the various layers.

And worse yet, it isn’t just one multi-layered corporate-like structure. It is multiple such entities. They all sell the same product: useable intelligence information. But their manufacturing process is slow. And there really aren’t any standards as to what the finished product might need to look like. As a result, they aren’t really manufacturers at all; they are job shops producing infinite numbers of one-of-a-kinds that they think up to fill their time. And they never are really sure what these individual one-of-a-kinds ought to look like, or how they might be used, or who might want to buy them. In any event, even if they did know, many of the components that they would need to make something if they ever figured out what it was that they ought to be making are in the hands of their competitors, the other manufacturers.

In spite of these challenges, the manufacturers employ really talented, imaginative employees who are really skilled at their craft. They produce a lot of very useable product in spite of all the problems.

But the product doesn’t get distributed on a very broad basis.

That is because the distributor is small and has limited product expertise. It is called the no fly list and it only deals in absolutely known problems. Those problems – the product of the manufacturers – are few in number because no matter how skilled the employees of the manufacturers might be – they don’t know all the possible combinations of use that could be made of their product, so they only ship the product that their limited, albeit highly skilled, knowledge tells them has a market.

But the market is huge. And the customers in that market, in aggregate, know vastly more about all the combinational possibilities of use of the manufacturer’s product, a product that when viewed in this manner is really a monstrous tool kit of components that could be used with great success by that vast market of customers, if only those customers could get that tool kit. But they can’t. The distributor is too small and limited.

So the answer isn’t to try to make the existing multiple competing manufacturers more efficient and more accountable and bigger. The answer is to totally re-organize those manufacturers into a single level – get rid of the layers; look like a modern corporation - processing entity, taking the raw material and turning it as rapidly as possible into useable components, putting them in a gigantic tool kit and sending the kit on a constantly updated basis to all the customers who can use the components each in their own way, having completely eliminated the distributor.

There would be no no fly list. There would just be useable information real time, on line available at all times to those who need it to make the decisions that should have been made in relation to the crotch bomber.

This is a systems problem, not an organizational problem.

There is more on this, including a flow chart for the suggested system at “A Modest Proposal for an Intelligence System” and “Intelligence System”.

A Modest Proposal for an Intelligence System

Preface

A number of the story lines in Screen Saver revolve around the fact that I was an Intelligence Officer in the Air Force for four years, including a year in Vietnam and several months in Japan related to the Pueblo Crisis. So I feel as if I have some platform from which to make the following observations.

For all the money we have spent on TSA, and for all the inconvenience, all the shoes removed, all the grandmothers and cripples who have been frisked, all the totally legitimate items that have been expropriated: jeweler’s screw drivers, finger nail clippers, and vieuve clicquot, we have apparently apprehended two would-be suicide bombers. And both of them were apprehended in the act. They got through security, got on the plane, and after the plane was airborne they attempted to detonate. Fortunately they both were duds.

"But that can’t be right", I thought I heard someone say. Surely there have been many, many, many apprehended in the act of trying to get through security.

If so, why haven’t we heard about them?

"Because those many successful apprehensions have all been kept strictly secret", I thought I heard someone say.

"Oh. Then why haven’t we kept the two actually almost successful attempts strictly secret?" I thought to say.

"Because all the passengers on those planes knew about it and it would have been impossible to keep them all quiet", I heard that voice again pipe up.

So, in all the vast number of successful apprehensions that have been nonetheless kept absolutely secret there were no people around. Those successful apprehensions all occurred when there were no other passengers in the check in line? Or, alternately, given that indeed the likelihood of no potential witnesses being in line is zero, in all that vast number of TSA successes, the would-be bomber didn’t talk, didn’t resist, didn’t even twitch? Didn’t even shout "Allah akbar"? That sounds like the plot of a Dean Koontz book.

But ultimately whether there have been two very public failures accompanied by vast numbers of successes or just two failures, the fact is that we are bringing our air transport system to its knees (and what happens when the bombers decide to go after trains and buses?) that we are spending vast quantities of money and are still not solving the problem – we just remove an additional item of clothes every time a new terrorist thrust succeeds – and look amazingly inept to the world of Islamic terror.

But I guess clearer heads at TSA are prevailing. It is obvious that the response to a guy hiding a bomb in his crotch is to ban carry-on baggage. That logic has a massive precedent: we thought that the 9/11 attackers came from Afghanistan so we invaded Iraq.

But assuming that somewhere there are people in our intelligence apparatus that are not cretins, how about we put an intelligence system in place that would go well on the way to solving the problem?

"Well you have to understand how hard it is to connect the dots", I thought I heard someone say. "It’s just too hard. And we have to avoid profiling. And the agencies have trouble communicating. And, anyway, it all pays the same. Whether we succeed or fail we get our paychecks, get our health care, get our government retirement. We’re working as hard as we can, but it’s just real hard."

I have a suggestion. See the post down in the stack after "End Game".

Christmas Day 2009

It was I nice day and I was there.

End Game

I got an email today that set me off. It was forwarded to me by a friend. It pointed out that the ten poorest cities in the US - Detroit, Cleveland, etc. - hadn’t had a republican mayor in many years. From that information they deduced the fact that the Democrats drive poverty.

I sent back a fiery response to my friend who hadn’t written the thing, he had only forwarded it to me; but I couldn’t get at the original sender, so I let loose on my friend. He replied with his typical equanimity and I fired back the following.

I admire your dispassionately detached viewpoint, and I am capable of taking that point of view as well.

But then love of country and fear for its continued existence boil up and I start screaming.

People like the one who put this diatribe together are not capable of balanced rational thought. Both of those are required for successful self government. If one starts with the assumption that people who are only capable of this quality of thought are in the majority (not a large leap of assumption- just watch Fox) add to that majoritiy's profile stupidity, meanness and selfishness and racism, and then top it off with their introspectively overwhelming prejudice of all viewpoints but theirs and you have fertile ground for a demagogue.

Then add the fact that WE may elect people, but the LOBBIES tell them what to do, then add the imminent decision from the Supreme Court that will allow CORPORATIONS to spend all they want in support of political candidates - which means that WE won't even get to choose the people who take orders from the LOBBIES; it will be, instead, the candidate of the ENERGY INDUSTRY versus the candidate of the MEDICAL/DRUG COMPLEX, or some other match up of puppets from leviathan alliances of corporations. You have END GAME.

So I have trouble being dispassionate.

Intelligence System

This flow chart shows how we could get ahead of the game and handle situations such as the crotch bomber. In that scenario we apparently had the information that should have caused someone to ask him some questions and check him out - maybe even do a good deep pat down. The system that I am proposing is unitary. All the data is in one data base. It is a kluge but it's one and its in one place, logically. Physically it's spread all over hell's half acre. The idea is to get everything, anything, even almost nothing in the kluge. World wide intelligence officers would have the job of analyzing the kluge, each in his or her own manner. Each in his or her own manner would sort/sift and decide what items, situations or people were off center from a terror avoidance point of view. If for any reason someone or something catches their attention they put it into a world wide Problem Data Base.

At that point - the assumption is that some sort of order would be superimposed upon that data base; I would aggressively consider a Google User Interface, or, perhaps a Google/Bing hybrid - it would be huge but not any more a kluge. Rather than spending billions more on body scanners and making the lines get bigger and slower with the need to remove more clothes and do more ridiculous things while trying to get on an airline it would be the responsibility of all affected worldwide entities, like airlines and embassies, but by no means limited to them, to enter the identication information of every person asking for service from those entities into that problem data base. Obviously that data base will need to have been installed in such a manner that it can be easily integrated into each entities' line of business systems. If the entry comes up a "hit" - the person is in the Problem Data Base - they would be taken off line for special and appropriate attention. And that would be long before the person got anywhere near a check in line.

This approach addresses the problem that we currently have two data bases that don't talk to each other, and only one of them is used to take the "special and appropriate" actions mentioned, above; and the one that is actually used is very small compared to the other one. So a huge data base of identified "likelies" sits in an untouched nether world unused until one of its inhabitants tries to blow up a plane or some accidental encounter between our various duelling intelligence apararati "connects some dots". And every time somebody beats the system we hear how hard those dots are to connect.

I am proposing that we ignore the dots and drive all the information that professional intelligence officers glean and gather straight to the people who need it to do their business and provide the first realistic line of defence against terrorists. I am proposing that we get rid of holding tank data limbos and all the middle men and all their god damned dots.

The Hive

Ten or twelve years ago I liked to pontificate to anyone who would stop long enough to listen to more than three words - and there were more of people who had that longer form of attention span at that time than there are now, but not many - that it seemed to me that the way the internet was evolving was going to cause the human race to adopt an organizational form similar to a hive of bees. I had no vision at the time of Facebook, My space and Twitter, but I did see the direction that email and AOL instant messaging seemed to be pointing.


I certainly didn't think that in ten years that observation would not only turn out to have been fairly accurate, but nearly a fait accompli.


With that capability - the ability to "know" what we are all thinking, doing, considering doing and likely to do - we don't need to travel as much, or perhaps at all. We can just commune with one another in real time; we can order things from on line retail - even from Starbucks - ad hoc, as the needs for those things arise and we can all sit at our keyboards and "communicate" instead of "travel".


The human race will begin to make maneuvers that, to those not plugged into the network, will look like the amazing close-ordered flying that one sees in large flocks of birds

The Economist recently had an article about a new generation of printers that "print" solid objects. It is possible to go straight from CATIA logic to the print button and end up with a finished item. Jay Leno owns one from StrataSys. He uses it to produce parts for some of the completely old and out of production members of his automobile collection. The parts for many of those cars are just not available, so Jay has had them redesigned using 3D computer design technology then he "prints" the parts.


Apply that logic to being at your keyboard, communing with the hive and ordering on line as the need arises. This printer trend seems to point to the possibility of having the item that you have ordered appearing at the solid state printer installed on your computer.

Probably not Starbucks

A Walk Through a Warehouse

This is something I wrote back when I was starting my wholesale distribution consulting business. It has some entertainment value. In any event, having a blog drives one into publish or perish mode, which drives one into one's archives upon occasion.

Warehouse Automation

Introduction

There are over 325, 000 distribution centers in the United States. Currently less than a third of these DC’s are thought to have revenue structures large enough to support the investment necessary to acquire a Distribution Center Information System, but with the cost of hardware technology continuing to fall and the power of software continuing to rise, more and more of the 325,000 will be able to afford a system in the next few years. In fact, as the number of installations increases, the application of technology for logistics information handling systems will shift from being a LEADING EDGE application to a MANDATORY process, necessary to SURVIVE in the competitive game of being a Distributor. “Facing the Forces of Change”, the DREF Report, the Arthur Anderson study commissioned by the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors, refers to this transition as changing from being an “investor” in technology to being a “satisfier” in the use of technology.

With the exception of the few who have already invested in and successfully installed such a system, the rest are in the following situation:
1. Spending 10-40% too much on labor.
2. Spending too much on material handling equipment, directly related to the excess labor.
3. Investing 5-25% too much in inventory safety stock.
4. Constantly running out of space and either renting additional space or making expensive capital investment in additional square footage.
5. Losing significant money due to errors.
6. Losing sales due to errors.
7. Investing several days’ labor a year to physically count the inventory.
8. Not shipping product, and therefore losing revenue during the physical inventory count.

When the aggregate dollar effect of the above is effectively analyzed, the amount of money being invested in non-production and errors is sufficiently large to pay for an automated system which will reduce or eliminate these dollar-draining factors.

The intent of this article is to clearly illustrate the advantages of an automated warehouse information system by taking a walk through a hypothetical wholesaler’s warehouse and see how they are doing things now, function by function, and then have a discussion among ourselves, out of earshot of our hosts, of things that we have noticed about their current system. When we are finished with the walkthrough we will install and discuss a hypothetical information system, replacing the manual one we see during the walkthrough.

Scenario

Typical Wholesale, Inc. is a mixed-goods distributor. They generate $80 million a year in revenue and are growing at about 7% a year. They ship all of their product out of one 250,000 square foot distribution
center. The DC has 40,000 square feet devoted to bulk floor storage, 90,000 square feet devoted to pallet rack storage, 14,000 square feet devoted to hazardous materials and a 40,000 square foot, two-level mezzanine, one level for “repack” items, which are small items picked as “each” and one level for case and bulky items. The DC has 18,000 square feet devoted to receiving, with 10 receiving doors. They have 30,000 square feet devoted to shipping with 15 shipping doors. There are 125 DC employees working staggered shifts from 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM. They also distribute a significant number of lines from their original distribution center, a location that was supposed to be completely vacated with the advent of the new, recently opened distribution center described above. It hasn’t happened yet.

This company has a central computer system which has all the traditional accounting and management functions automated. Their systems are fairly advanced and have done a good job of giving Typical good leverage on their assets of inventory and accounts receivable. Recently they have invested in advanced buying system software which gives them the ability to forward buy, thus adding a new dimension to managing their inventory asset. All of their computerized systems depend upon the movement of paper through the organization, and nowhere is this more apparent than in their distribution center.

To get an idea of how the distribution center operates, we are going to take a brief tour or “walkthrough” of the warehouse facility. We have been fortunate enough to get as out guides through the facility both the warehouse manager, and his superior, the Vice President of operations. The descriptions we will encounter as we walk through are seen through the eyes of these two people and filtered by our own understanding of what they are saying.

Another thing to factor into the picture this walkthrough generates is the fact that this is a simulated walkthrough written on paper. In a real walkthrough you find yourself in a huge cavern of a building with racks towering 25 or more feet or more above you and with people and equipment flying in all directions. apparently all at once. Completing the overall environment in a real walkthrough, the lighting is marginal so you can’t always see with any degree of certainty what is really going on. The location by location description of this written account gives the inaccurate impression of quiet and calm, and organization; it doesn’t give an accurate impression of the fact that there are multiple people performing each of the operations we will “see”. So multiply all your impressions and observations by several factors and add a degree of controlled chaos to get a more real impression.

Receiving

Typical’s receiving operation emanates from the operations office, which is quite close to the receiving area and has large glass windows viewing the distribution center. In the operations office there are usually a number of operations and supervisory people milling around. There are also a number of computer workstations and printers which are attached to the central computer and which are used for a number of functions. The function that starts receiving is the printing of the receiving package for about-to-arrive inventory. This package includes a purchase order and a set of extremely clever, complicated and expensive sticky removable labels which serve a variety of functions in the receiving and putaway process. The person who “pulls” this package is a fairly senior warehouse operations employee, named Marv.

The receiving personnel pick up their receiving packages from Marv and they go to their receiving stations. Actually, the trigger for the receiving package was another activity performed in the operations office. That activity was the scheduling of the arrival of an inbound shipment at some pre-arranged time at a pre-arranged receiving location. So if things work as they should, the receiver, named Rick, goes to a specific receiving location and finds the open back end of a truck full to the brim with pallets of merchandise. A typical configuration of sticky removable labels, mentioned previously, consists of a group of rather small removable labels printed in typical small computer printing, and a group of rather large removable labels with very large letters, much bigger than computers typically print. Rick uses these as follows: using his pallet jack he moves a pallet off the truck and moves it into the staging area on the freight dock immediately adjacent to the truck. He removes one of the large sticky labels, one which accurately describes the merchandise on the pallet and puts it on the upper right hand corner of the carton occupying that position on the pallet. He then removes one of the small sticky labels, again, one which accurately describes the product on the pallet he has just removed and he puts that label on the purchase order next to the line item for the pallet he has just removed. This indicates that the line item, a full pallet, was received. Nothing ever being quite that simple, in this shipment there are two pallets that have mixed product, requiring Rick to disassemble the pallet and put a large label on each carton and a small label corresponding to that carton on each corresponding line on the purchase order. For this operation he ends up with a non one-for one relationship between the large labels and the small labels. There is one small label for each unique line item, but there are multiple large labels for each small label, reflecting the fact that the quantity being counted for that line item is a quantity greater than one. He makes a “tickie” mark on the purchase order next to the line item representing the case he has offloaded and labeled. When he runs out of cases for that line item on the purchase order he counts the “tickie” marks and compares that to the quantity ordered. If it is the same he initiates the same process with the next line item until he has unloaded the two non-homogenous pallets. If it isn’t the same, he circles the current line item and notes it as a short count, showing the total of his “tickie” marks. When he is finished unloading the truck he takes the receiving package back to Marv. Marv, when time allows, keys the results of the annotated and “tickied” PO back into the system so inventory and payables can be updated.

Things To Note

Several things. First, the paper that supports this system is labor intensive both in its production and in its use. It is also expensive paper, being special stock, weight and adhesive. It is really a system itself, ingeniously designed to assure accurate receiving both by count and by product type. The question is whether it is really accomplishing those two goals. Which leads to the second thing to not about this approach. If Rick forgets to make a “tickie” mark when he puts a label on the box he has created an error in the count that won’t be corrected until the vendor disagrees with a short shipment notification, and the inventory count will be in error, being corrected, if ever, only after the vendor has confirmed full shipment and somebody from the “error checker” department finds an extra case of the supposedly short shipped product in stock. Proliferate this sort of potential error and error recovery over the thousands of receiving transactions the warehouse has daily, and over the number of days necessary to recover and adjust inventory counts and you lead to the third, fourth, and fifth things to note about this system. Third, the inventory count is never really correct or dependable, and it is potentially understated, so, fourth, the buyers must use their intuition more than their information, leading to overbuying, and fifth there is an undue amount of ongoing labor being invested in supporting error correction for an already labor-intensive system. (Remember, Marv needs to re-key the PO, including any of Rick’s errors, back into the system.)

Putaway

As Rick unloads the truck he is building an array of pallets and cases in the area immediately adjacent to the truck he is unloading. This is by design; it is the staging area and is the point at which putaway starts.

A forklift driven by Betty, a long-term employee I this distribution center appears as the staging area fills. Her job is to take the stock that Rick has unloaded and put it into bulk storage. Bulk storage is the place where product is kept prior to being put in its picking location for picking and shipment. She knows where to put stock by reading the large labels that Rick has affixed to it. One of the things on the label is the primary putaway storage location. So Betty forks a pallet, looks at the location and takes the pallet to that location. As luck would have it that location is already full of product, presumably the same product type that she is now attempting to put away.

One of the reasons Betty has the putaway function is that she is a senior employee. This distribution center uses its best and most experienced employees for putaway for many reasons, one of which is to cover situations like we have just encountered. Although the primary location, the one indicated on the label, is full, Betty, due to her experience knows several other places that have the space necessary to store a pallet of this size. So she searches until she finds a vacant one and puts the stock in that location. Luckily for future pick location replenishment Betty has a photographic memory and always remembers where she has put stock. She goes back to Rick’s staging area for another pallet and another putaway.

Things to Note

In non-priority, purely stream-of-consciousness order, here they are. First, Betty’s memory, photographic though it may be, occasionally produces blanks, just like any good camera. She also has been known to miss work due to illness or to take vacation or personal time off. In her absence, the only known way to find stock that she has put in a location alternate to the primary storage location is to wander and look. Depending upon how creative she has been in her choice, that endeavor can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours. (It has been known to occur that only the annual physical inventory uncovers some of the most inventively chosen locations.) This generates the next thing to note which is pure and simple labor waste. Just because something can generally be found in a “reasonable” length of time, whether by the person who originally put it away, or some relatively skillful backup doesn’t mean that the extra labor necessary to support that kind of a system makes any sense. In a distribution center doing thousands of activities a day, a few minutes per activity can add up to hours or days of wasted time; and time is money. Another factor, related to this is that if the primary location becomes empty after Betty has chosen her own personal backup location, and a new shipment of that product is received, and the new shipment is put in the primary storage location, any chance of having a FIFO system has just been eliminated. The primary location becomes empty, the new stock is received, and since the primary location is empty the new stock is put there, and the stock that Betty put “somewhere else” stays “somewhere else”. In the distribution business of today, with constant change in products generating an actual decline in value or sellability of products as they age, a system that does not assure that the oldest stock is always the stock that goes out first is not acceptable. Instead of FIFO, the “Betty System” leads to an inventory strategy known as FISH (first in still here). Another factor ill-served by this sort of a system is that the stock not in primary locations is stored in a manner that has no consideration for the best use of space (cube) and it contributes to the ever present “need more square footage” syndrome faced by all distribution centers. This wasted square footage costs money either in terms of space rented to accommodate overflow or actual capital investment in additional square footage.

Picking

There are two distinct picking operations in Typical’s distribution center. One is for case quantity orders, the other is for broken case or “each” orders. They are called “case pick” and “repack”.

The vast majority of orders come in to the central computer in some type of electronic form. The central computer assesses the order, and depending upon whether it is case quantity or repack it does different things.

Case quantity orders cause the computer to generate “case labels” which are more of the removable sticky variety of paper stock that we saw earlier in the receiving operation. In this instance, case labels are 12 to a sheet, 3 by 4. The computer prints on these labels the item to be picked and its picking location. There is one label for each case ordered. If you are wondering how the number of cases ordered always matches the number of case labels on the form, they don’t. The form is a continuous computer form that has twelve removable sticky case labels per continuous form sheet (perforation to perforation) and if they don’t match exactly, the balance are discarded.

The other picking operation is the repack operation. This function fills orders for each and broken case items less than 30 inches in size. Again, the central computer initiates the process be receiving an electronic order that, instead of ordering by case, orders by broken case quantity, or each. In this instance the computer generates an extremely ingenious form. The top consists of multiple small removable sticky labels and the bottom is a pick list.

Actually, there is a sort of hybrid third picking operation. It is called the “hand stack area” and is the lower level of the two level 41,000 square foot mezzanine. This area has pallet racks that accommodate either cases or repack items that are bulky or longer than 30 inches. Certain types of garden tools are an example of bulky items.

In all cases the picking documents are produced on the central computer’s high-speed printer and transported every few hours by courier to the distribution center which is 8 miles distant.

Elmo is one of the case pick pickers. He drives a “tugger” with two small flat open trailers in tow. He picks up his stack of case labels from the shipping office and commences his pick run. The pick operation has been sorted by the central computer in warehouse location, and the warehouse has previously been organized in most to least ordered (A,B,C) merchandise order. As Elmo traverses the racks he stops, picks appropriate cases, removes case labels and puts them on the cases. Elmo has a supply of red sticky labels on the electric vehicle which serve as out of stock flags when he finds a designated pick location empty or when his order brings the pick slot to out of stock. The replenishment crew is responsible for assuring that these red label conditions are corrected as soon as possible. In theory there shouldn’t be very many of these out of stock conditions, because the inventory system and the order entry system on the main computer periodically monitor the inventory level relative to known order requirements. As the computer notes imminent out of stock conditions it generates replenishment advises for the replacement crew. But as we have seen in other areas already, theory and reality in a distribution center are sometimes different from one another. As Elmo fills his tugger with completed orders he offloads the cases to the conveyor system and continues his picking operation. When he has completed the picking operation he takes the remaining paperwork to Joyce in the shipping office.

The repack area is on the second level of the mezzanine and is designed to be a very fast pick area. Approximately 60% of Typical’s total numbers of lines picked come out of this area. Lorraine is one of the repack pickers. She obtains a stack of pick lists sufficient to occupy approximately half a shift according to the computer’s assessment of the number of lines compared to the going line per hour rate. She has a cart with shelves sufficient to accommodate several empty cardboard boxes that function as the containers for the orders. Since each pick list is a consolidation of several orders, one pass through the repack area results in multiple orders picked. Prior to the start of each repack pick shift the replenishment crew restock all the pick locations sufficient to support the load generated by that shift’s orders. This is done by a computer run after all the next shift’s orders have been processed and the inventory count known to the computer has been assessed for adequacy. If Lorraine encounters an out of stock condition, she uses the same type of red label employed by Elmo in the case pick operation. The replenishment crew is responsible for policing the repack area such that these out of stock situations, which aren’t supposed to occur are taken care of quickly. As Lorraine’s cart is filled with picked orders, she puts them on the conveyor for movement to the appropriate shipping door. The pick lists are sent to Joyce in the receiving office.

Things to Note

Not too much this time. The major item would again be the manually intensive nature of the system, involving the removal and attachment of sticky labels, and the intrinsic expense of the paper itself, including the cost of wasted forms. There is always also the chance of mis-picking inventory, meaning that the picker reads an item number, description, and location and actually picks from another location. This results in either a dissatisfied customer, if the item picked is not only wrong but of equal of less value than that which was ordered, or a monetary loss to Typical if the item picked is of substantially greater value than that which was ordered, and if the customer opts to keep the item and not lodge a complaint. It also results in another source of inventory error similar in effect to that which was noted from miscounts at receiving.

Conveyor

As the conveyable picked items are put on the conveyor system they are fed to a location where Ned has a duty station. Ned is sort of the conveyor commander. His job, requiring good eyesight, is to watch the cartons and cases as they approach him, read the two digit run number, which is printed on the label, previously attached by the picker, and key it into the keypad he is running. The conveyor system has a PC which reads the run number, and based on that input kicks the carton or case down one of the 15 spurs. This is the basis for the subsequent customer truck load work performed by shipping. The run numbers not only get the customer orders at the correct shipping location, they also dictate the load position for the order on the truck, getting first to be delivered orders to be put on the truck last.
Things to Note

Two things. First, there are machines that can read appropriately coded labels allowing the use of an expensive labor resource in more productive capacities. Second, these machines don’t daydream or have temporary optical malfunctions, both of which are characteristics of humans when they are employed in machine-like jobs.

Shipping

Cases from the case pick process, cartons from the repack pick process and cartons and bulky items from the hand stack area are constantly being conveyed to the shipping area. The various cases, cartons, and items are sorted by customer and put on carts. If the item, carton and case count on the cart matches the count on the bill of lading, the invoice and bill of lading are included with the shipment and the order is put on the appropriate truck for shipment to the customer.

Things to Note

Assuming that Ned has been reading the run numbers on the labels accurately and that Joyce hasn’t been letting her file of incomplete orders remain unattended for too long, there is nothing wrong with this function. It is dependent for effectiveness upon at least two “upstream” functions, invoicing and the conveyor. If their level of efficiency and accuracy degrade, the shipping operation loses effectiveness. It is interesting to note that if you automate those two “upstream” functions, the paperwork moves one function “downstream”, cutting both manual labor and shipping time. Also, a test of whether this is the best of all possible systems would be to go through the mental exercise of answering a customer question about his order status when it is in shipping. Or of the customer asking to add an item to the order once it is in shipping.

Invoicing

Joyce in the shipping office gets a constant flow of the paperwork from case label picks and repack picks during the day. If the order is complete she uses a workstation connected to the central computer to release the order. This results in an invoice and a bill of lading being printed. These both go to shipping. If an order is not yet complete, Joyce files it and periodically checks to see if the incomplete orders have been filled. When they are complete she releases them, producing a bill of lading and an invoice.

Things to Note

Except that this step substitutes human labor for computer time, nothing. The time between reviews of incomplete orders can also contribute to late shipment and dissatisfied customers.

Physical Inventory

Each year the entire distribution center closes down for 3 days to conduct the annual physical inventory. Every item is counted and verified to the computer count and all imbalances are accounted for and reconciled.

Things to Note

The labor spent on this activity is contributing nothing to sales and profit. The time spent on this activity is dead time, since no orders are filled or shipped during it. So for a large expenditure, no revenue or profit is generated.

Summary

The warehouse walkthrough should have given you a fairly good feeling for several aspects of how a Typical’s Distribution Center functions. Major things we saw are:

1. Labor Intensive - Although Typical Wholesale’s DC Manager and his boss, the Operations Vice President manage to labor standards, monitor efficiency and manage a DC employee incentive system based upon labor efficiency, they are nevertheless working with a system that is essentially manual with computer-supplied paper support in several key functions. Their key methodology is primarily to try to work faster, because to work smarter requires information, and they are dealing with “history” not information.

2. Isolated Functions - Each functional area we visited in the walkthrough is essentially an end in itself with little or no continuous flow relationship to the other functions. For example, when Betty had to get creative in putting away an item when the primary storage location was filled, she put it away, and it is her job to remember where she put it. She is a functional and informational “island” separated from the rest of the operation; when the results of her function need to be known it is always the result of a breakdown in the “system” (we can’t find item X) and those results are only joined with the “system” by a great deal of manual thrashing and wasted time.

3. Paper Intensive - Not only is there a great deal of paper driving a labor-intensive manual system, it is very expensive paper in its own right. The point here is, that the paper, with all its variety of shapes and adhesive functions is really an attempt at an automated system. In examining an alternative to this “system” it is important to offset not only whatever enhanced function the alternative might have vs. the existing system , but also to offset the basic costs of one vs. the other.

4. Redundant - Two extremely obvious examples of this were where Marv re-keys the purchase order information and where Joyce is continually sorting the pended picking paperwork to discover completed orders and then release them to print the bills of lading and invoices. This type of duplication is not only costly in labor terms, it slows down both the flow of information to the central computer and the actual flow of orders to shipping and on to the customers.


Automated Alternative System

Since all the information we have examined so far has been fiction, fiction heavily based on concrete reality, but, nonetheless, fiction, let’s take advantage of fiction and install an ideal automated alternative to Typical’s current warehouse system.

First, let’s put a computer in the warehouse. Let’s make it large enough to handle as many functions as we want to give it. And let’s make sure it has enough disk storage to handle a lot of information. Let’s give it a lot of workstations and let’s further give it the ability to handle radio transmissions so some of the workstations can be mobile.

Let’s install it just after the annual physical inventory has been taken and finalized so we start with an accurate inventory count. Also, let’s do something as we finalize the physical inventory; let’s tell the new warehouse computer not only the count of the product in all the picking locations, and not only the aggregate count of all product in storage, let’s also tell it what the storage location should be for every type of product in the warehouse, and the actual storage location for every item in the warehouse. Let’s also add the fact that storage locations picked were all selected after considering optimum use of cubic feet and that appropriate warehouse re-organization and re-racking has taken place in support of this.

Now let’s open the distribution center for business and take a quick walkthrough looking at the new system.

Starting in receiving we see Rick with a stationary workstation installed in his receiving lane. He keys his security code and a purchase order is displayed. He verifies that the purchase order accurately reflects the truck he is positioned to unload and pulls the first pallet. He verifies what line item on the purchase order this pallet represents, puts a pre-printed barcode label on the pallet, uses a barcode scanner attached to his workstation to read the barcode, and the line item on the purchase order is received. The warehouse computer has just been notified that the receipt has been made and the pallet is ready for putaway. Even though we can’t see it, this pallet has also been time date stamped, and we also know who received it.

Rick then uses his pallet jack to repeat the process on the next pallet.

As the staging area behind Rick begins to fill with pallets, Betty appears on her fork lift. The fork lift has a mobile radio frequency workstation mounted on it. The workstation has a small display that displays as much information as the larger, stationary one that Rick is using. It also has a full function keyboard. Betty parks next to the first pallet that Rick unloaded, uses the barcode label and reads the result on her display. The display directs her to a storage location, one that the computer knows has two characteristics. First, it is empty, and second, it is one of the storage locations specifically reserved for this type of product, based on velocity (A,B,C) and cube. Betty goes to that location, scans the barcode on the location, scans the barcode on the pallet and puts the product in the location. The computer now knows not only that the product has been received, but that it is in storage and in what location, and by whom it was put away, and when.

Back at the truck Rick is continuing his receiving operation. He has just encountered a pallet with several different kinds of item on it, one that needs to be broken down to be received. This pallet represents several lines on the purchase order. He breaks down the pallet, pulls off the first case, identifies what it is and puts the cursor of his workstation at that line item. Then he puts one of his pre-printed barcode labels on the carton and scans it. The computer receives that carton against the total count for that P.O. line item, but all Rick sees is the same cursor on the same line item. Since this is his first day with this new system, even though he has been extensively trained in its operation, he tries to move the cursor to the next line item, since that has been the routine he has built up with the full pallet receipts. The workstation alarm sounds and a highlighted statement appears on the screen saying item count incomplete. Then he remembers that he is doing a mixed pallet receipt and needs to receive the rest of the cases for that line item. He finds the next case, puts the barcode label on it, scans it and the purchase order screen reappears. He continues this process with the rest of the cases for that line item, and for the rest of the cases on that pallet. As he scans the last case, the only one for its line item, the alarm again sounds and a red highlighted comment appears: “special handling for backorder number 126945. Crossdock.” Rick knows that this means to set it aside where it can be quickly picked up. As he finishes unloading the truck, Clyde from shipping appears on a forklift with a mobile workstation mounted on it, and he asks where the crossdock is. He has been dispatched to pickup the case by the warehouse computer through the mobile mounted terminal. The computer was aware as soon as the case was scanned that it had been received and that there was a backorder to be filled by it, so it notified shipping. Rick shows him which case it is, and Clyde scans the case, puts it on the lift and takes it to shipping for delivery to the customer.

Meanwhile Betty is continuing the putaway operation. In her putaway runs through the warehouse she has seen various familiar old storage locations empty. Her years of experience have caused her to make nearly subconscious mental notes of them. She has just scanned the last pallet from Rick’s staging area, and received her putaway instruction on her mobile workstation. The instruction, based on what the product is and her previous experience doesn’t match with her preference, since one of the vacant locations she has noted has previously been ideal for the product she is about to put away. Lapsing to old habits, she goes to that location, scans the location and an alarm sounds from the mobile workstation. The display says, “not proper location”. She has been trained to know that in the case of such a disagreement with the system, she can hit a system override key, which she does, scans the location, scans the product and leaves the product in that location. However, the computer is aware of the discrepancy, and it notifies Marv in the operations office of an improper putaway. This initiates whatever management action is appropriate.

As we move to picking, we first go to the case pick operation. We see Elmo with the same tugger as before, but now we see that he also has a mobile workstation mounted on his electric conveyance. As he goes to each location directed by his workstation, he scans the barcoded location and scans the barcoded case and puts it on the tugger. At one of the pick locations, as he takes the cases indicated from the location and scans them, the alarm on his workstation goes off. The screen says “verify shelf count”. Elmo counts the number of remaining cases and keys that quantity into his workstation. The reason for this action was that when the computer was set up, among other things it was told was what the re-order point for that location should be to cover most potential out of stock conditions. Since the computer also knew the initial count, and in real time knows what the removal count has been, it keeps track and when the re-order point is reached, during the pick operation when it occurs it directs the picker to do a cycle count on the spot to verify the computer’s count (it doesn’t tell the picker what it thinks the count is) and if the two match it continues with the pick operation. If the two don’t match, it directs the picker to count again. If, after three tries the count from the picker is different from the computer count, the computer accepts the picker’s count and updates its file to reflect that count. In any event, if replenishment is in order, it directs the next available worker, via the mobile workstation to do a replenishment to that location. When Elmo completes his pick assignment he puts the cases on the conveyor.

In the repack area Lorraine has a new tool to use. It is a complete PC in a handheld package, with internal storage, a display, a keyboard and an integrated barcode scanner. She puts this device in a “cradle” that is attached to another PC which is attached to the warehouse computer. Putting it in the cradle allows the PC to download a quantity of orders, typically enough for a full day’s work by existing lines per hour standards. A pick list is displayed on the handheld screen and as she picks the items she scans the location once and each item from that location as she puts them in their separate cardboard boxes, after scanning the barcode on the box. The barcode on the box ties the items to the individual customer orders and gives the computer the ability to validate item count against each order as the picked orders are uploaded periodically during the day by putting the handheld into the cradle. As the orders are completed they are put on the conveyor.

If Lorraine encounters an out of stock situation she goes to a workstation at the end of the picking lane and scans the item number. This action dispatches one of the replenishment crew to validate the situation, reconcile the item count on the computer and replenish the picking location. This not only restocks an out of stock shelf, it accomplishes a cycle count. This situation will become extremely unusual as the new system becomes fully operational due to the new facilities it gives to the replenishment crew when they do their regular replenishment of the repack area. That operation is triggered prior to the beginning of each repack pick shift, as previously, but now it includes a cycle count of each location to be replenished. So every time a picking location is shown by the computer to need replenishment against the next shift’s picking requirements, a cycle count occurs. Conversely, any location which is shown not to have had activity within the last three working days is scheduled for a cycle count. After three of these in a row the computer notifies purchasing and operations of a slow moving item requiring attention. This attention will usually include a lowering of the safety stock, a relocation of the item’s pick location, and consideration of a “fire sale”.

The new automated cycle counting is expected to force a level of accuracy not ever seen in Typical’s inventory count with its previous system. The result of this is expected to be the elimination of the need for a yearly physical inventory.

The conveyor has had an interesting change. Ned isn’t there anymore. Instead, a 360 degree barcode scanner has been installed which reads the bar codes that have been put on the cases or cardboard totes. As long as the barcode label is not on the bottom of the box, the scanner picks up the number, which has been associated with the customer’s order and therefore the run number and spur and the system works just as it did previously. Any non-read items are conveyed to the end of the conveyor. At this location there is a sensor which, although it doesn’t read barcode, does sense the passage of the carton or case and it notifies the computer that an unscanned item has arrived. The computer selects the member of the replenishment crew who is closest to the end of the conveyor at that moment, who also has not got a current assignment and dispatches him via his mobile workstation to the end of the conveyor. When the replenisher gets there he finds the barcode label which is usually on the bottom, scans it and waits for the response on his mobile workstation. The workstation tells him which shipping location to take the item to. When he gets it there the shipping clerk scans the item and the computer treats it the same as if it had passed the conveyor scanner normally.

Invoicing is now interactive with the rest of the warehouse system, so as the items pass the scanner on the conveyor the system builds the invoice item by item. As soon as the last item necessary to the customer’s order has been scanned the invoice and the bill of lading are released to the computer’s print queue, ready for release by shipping personnel as they load the truck. In the new system a “ready for loading” function on the computer helps the shipping department. This system displays on the stationary display in each shipping lane. George, one of the shipping clerks, places the display cursor by one of the ready to load lines, indicating that he is loading that customer order. As he assembles the cases etc. he scans each one. When the last item is scanned the printer installed at that lane prints the invoice and the bill of lading. The invoice is included with the shipment and the bill of lading is retained with the others for this shipment, and they are given to the driver at departure.

Things to Note

There are less people. Ned and Joyce have been re-assigned because their jobs have been taken over by the computer. Not only that, but the results of what had previously been expedient, isolated “function” are now vital integrated “information”. The scanning of an item on the conveyor is not just a manually assisted input to the automation of a spur gate, it is a real time status update to the customer order system. It is also an incremental update to an automated part of a complete customer service system which had previously been an isolated manual paperwork sorting process that Joyce had performed between phone calls, crises and coffee breaks.

There is less paper. The only paper in receiving, putaway, picking, replenishing and conveying is the pre-printed barcode label. This is a standard-sized set of adhesive labels which have a set of pre-printed sequential numbers in barcode format. They have no individual significance until they have been attached to a moveable unit (pallet, case, carton, tot) and associated with a purchase order, storage location or customer order. If one is spoiled prior to attachment the only loss is the actual value of that label. Other than that, they are all used, in sequential order as their time comes.

The system is real time. This allows for activities to occur when they need to, such as cycle counts or fixing out of stocks. It allows for a high degree of customer service in the form of cross docking back orders and doing customer order inquiries or additions at any stage in the picking to shipping process. It allows for actual current on hand quantities of inventory to be accurately available, allowing quick customer service in exceptional order requirement situations. It also allows the system to track velocity, which provides a constant input to refining the warehouse stocking locations, with the most ordered items in the most accessible spots, and it allows the system to track usage, and check its accuracy, making the reduction or elimination of slow-moving items an ongoing system by-product. It allows the actual implementation of a location management system. Since it knows now what slot is the best slot for incoming inventory it forces such thing as best use of space and elimination of wasted time looking for slots.

The items are time stamped. This, coupled with the fact that the computer positively knows where everything is at all times, in real time, allows the system to be positively FIFO.

It is way more efficient. What you can’t really see from out walkthrough of the new system is what else is going on. Unseen is the fact that the new system dispatches putaways, replenishments, crossdocks, and case picks in the most efficient manner. The computer has been given a map of the warehouse and a standard time for each activity. Based this the computer optimizes labor efficiency. Coupled with the inherent efficiency of knowing positively where to put the next incoming item and where it is when it needs to be retrieved the computer’s contribution to labor efficiency is significant.

Quantifying the Business Case

After seeing the way that Typical Wholesale is operating the warehouse currently, and seeing a fictional ideal system, it is apparent there are some major advantages to an automated information system to run their distribution center. The next step is to quantify the business case.

Simply stated, that means to compare the cost of the new system to the dollars to be gained by doing it. If the amount to be gained is favorable when compared to the cost, it would seem reasonable to implement.

Unfortunately, the cost is the easier of the two parts of the equation to quantify, and therefore the easier of the two to focus on with the frequent result being confusion and lack of progress with the sale.

So the focus of this section of the marketing guide is quantifying the dollar results to be expected from an automated warehouse information system and the means of presenting an negotiating agreement to those results.

The base method is to examine every tangible feature offered by the system and state at least one business effect resulting from the feature. If the feature can’t have a one to three word statement of business effect associated with it, then it is not a feature worth discussing. Further, once a one to three word business effect is stated, if it can’t be quantified in terms of some form of measurable dollars, then the business effect is of no use. For example, if the feature is “cross docking” one possible business effect is customer service. Customer service can be stated in terms of some form of increased sales, which can be quantified in terms of expected profit from those sales. The only intangible in this case would remain what the sales increase might be. that can typically be effectively handled by creating a low, medium, high case, and quantify the dollars from each. Similarly, “location management” could be shown to have several business effects; “cube optimization” (reduce offsite rental requirements, do more volume for same capital investment, or delay capital investment for expanded square footage) “labor savings” and “inventory savings”. The purpose of this section and the planning sheets below is to give you a way to gather the necessary functional and financial information to support the investment. Not only can you describe your proposal as a way of doing business that is faster, smarter, better and leaner, you can quantify, at least within ranges, the dollar advantage.

Pogo Was His Hero

Dave was a member of the RF Trio. The Trio was one of the major themes in Screen Saver. When Dave died a couple of years ago I wrote this memorial. His family preferred the "Dave was born ... Dave always liked ... Dave leaves ..." format. So I have finally decided to publish mine.

Pogo was his hero. Until or unless one reads some volumes of Walt Kelly’s stories of Okefenokee Swamp and its denizens, that statement seems somewhere between meaningless and ridiculous. After such a reading one joins Dave in acknowledging his hero, and acquires a sense of wonder at Dave’s grasp of the absurd.


Music was his essence. When one watches Yo-Yo Ma play the cello it is his face that becomes the center of attention. The contortions and grimaces that accompany (perhaps provide) the verging on heavenly sounds are amazing. When Dave played the banjo similar facial gymnastics were present. And the sounds, while not Bach or Beethoven were equally heavenly.


Versatility was his forte. He excelled at singing, magic tricks, story telling, writing songs, selling appliances, being a fireman, being a health care worker, being an executive administrator, being a father, being a husband, being a friend and being a confidante. He was about as complete as any individual human ever is.


Whimsical was his spirit. When much younger he named a group of neighborhood friends the Simpson Street Marauders. The group still exists.


A real life was his goal. A friend once observed that Dave wished “to navigate the sea of life in an inner tube of happiness while strumming the banjo”. Those of us who knew him think that he succeeded, and have a deep admiration for his success.


But that life has ended. With Dave’s passing, the other side now has two Simpson Street Marauders. That is joyous news for the other side.