James Drogan

Re Conversations with Dave

Dave directed me to State of the Blogophere which generated the following reply.

As one of my clients always used to say; "So what?"

Doubtless someone has thought about this and its implications on the grand scale. All I have is Drogan Scale.

Drogan Scale suggests that I am more aware of more stuff than before, but I don't know that I have more interesting conversations than I had before; or am engaging in more meaningful actions than before.

Perhaps the state of the blogosphere is akin to the state of open fire hydrant. 

Re Conversations with Dave, Joe, and Keith

It's tempting to hide behind the burdens of geography and large, expensive assets. And perhaps we have succumbed to that temptation for too long. What would a railway look like if every possible item was moved from a fixed to variable expense?

There may be an example that the railways can learn from. See the discussion of Nucor (steel) in J. Collins, Good to Great, Harper Business (2001), 0-06-662099-6.

Perhaps the responsiveness of the railways is a function of their size. Maybe four majors is too few.

In Forces I speculate on some ideas for considerations by companies seeking to survive and thrive in the future. In An Innovative Business Model for the Freight Railway I propose a new agenda for the railways. Some Ideas on the Application of Information Technology to the Freight Railway is also likely to be relevant.

I'm not suggesting I have the answers and I am quite confident that I fail to understand the fundamental, deep-seated issues that prevent, not just the railways, but the freight transportation community as a whole, from achieving a higher level of performance.

In Barriers and Catalysts in Global Transportation I concluded, in part, that: "The fundamentals of transportation – equipment, operations, supporting infrastructure – are not an issue. The ability to rapidly reconfigure these fundamentals to respond to the market is an issue." I have modified the first part of this in a previous statement on this issue, but I hold with the last part. 

Re Conversations with Dave

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Much of what you say jibes with my own thinking, esp. "...we are just now actually getting smart about the legacy..."

I prompted my students with a question this morning.

"How does one prevent legacy?"

Yesterday I prompted them with:

1. What needs to be considered when planning a move from a legacy system to a new system?
   
   
2. What must be the characteristics of the new system such that we minimize the chances that it turns into a legacy system?
   

Which suggests a great dissertation for an aspiring doctoral candidate.

Hhhhhmmmmm, one more thing to think about.

I've been tempted over the last few days to start a open blog called "Goodness." I've grown weary that the debit side of life's ledger is so prominently on display. That we hear little of the good things -- large and small -- that happen. I've grown weary that others are giving me packaged information about life, subsequently telling me how I should interpret the information and what I should do about it.

It is, of course, the crazy season of the even years in the US.  That exacerbates the situation.

Keith, your comment reminds me of the following.

"Success takes a balance of forces, but technology is not always necessary and is almost never sufficient." Michael Scott-Morton

and

"Systems aligned with human motivational factors will sometimes work. Systems opposing such vectors will work poorly or not at all." John Gall

That said, in the case of intermodal freight transportation, my view is that information, processes, and people can be changed all we might wish, but we are laboring at the margins inasmuch as the fundamentals of the infrastructure and the way that infrastructure is operated need to be rethought. Business transformation and reengineering writ large, if you will.

Now the likelihood of the happening in a way that can be transformed into action is very, very small except in situations where a significant economic power (e.g., Maersk). Even then, it will likely only happen on selected trade lanes or components (e.g., a port) of a trade lane. There is some interesting thinking out there (e.g., Global Movement Management: Securing the Global Economy by Gould and Beckner at IBM; Toward a National Intermodal Transportation System - Final Report - NCIT by the National Commission on Intermodal Transportation), but there are few (no?) fora available for integrating and implementing these ideas. That is, they are nice research, but seem not to be leading to results.

I agree that this is a tough, tough nut to crack. In the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the current system uncountable, but likely huge amounts of money and time are irretrievably lost. We may be constrained by socio-political-economic forces and sheer size of the problem to nibbling at the edges.

Can we nibble more thoughtfully? Probably so, but our approach to system analysis, particularly in the consideration of collateral effects, likely needs a tune-up. For example, what's the point of deeper dredging of the harbors if the inland transportation system is a dirt path?

And then there is the Doha Round.

There is a silver lining to all this. It makes for a pile of interesting work. And every once in awhile the blind pig will find an acorn.

I earlier remarked how I had purchased an iPod and while commuting, or working the garden, I listen to podcasts.  IT Conversations is my favorite channel at the moment.

Today, I listened to this marvelous talk by Linda Stone, former VP at Microsoft and working currently at Apple.  She examined this notion of always on, always connected, always transacting (see A Small View of a Possible World for the context in which I used the phrase) in a much more eloquent fashion than I.

I recommend a listen to this podcast by anyone who has any interest at all on the effect technology is having on lives. 

"In March, 2002, NASA and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luftund Raumfahrt, the German aerospace agency, launched a pair of satellites from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a former intercontinental-ballistic-missile site in northern Russia, to map changes in the earth’s surface. The satellites, nicknamed Tom and Jerry, have been chasing each other around the globe ever since. Separated by a gap of approximately a hundred and thirty-seven miles, they sometimes pull apart, only to draw closer again. By monitoring their relative positions to the fantastic exactitude of one micron—less than one-fiftieth the width of a human hair—scientists can detect tiny variations in the earth’s gravitational field."

Source: The New Yorker, March 20, 2006, p. 67 The entire article is here. 

After 40 plus years of being in associated with the technology business I continue to be amazed by technological capabilities.

Regarding the above:  How high?  How fast? How precise the relative positions?

But more importantly than the technology is the minds behind it.  To lift lines from an earlier presentation:

This has come to me via a couple of e-mails and I don't know the originator.

The picture is titled  "One of God's Great Wonders" and was accompanied by the following text.

EVER SEE AN ICEBERG FROM TOP TO BOTTOM?

This is awesome! This came from a Rig Manager for Global Marine Drilling in St. Johns, Newfoundland. They actually have to divert them away from the rig by towing them with ships! In this particular case the water was calm & the sun was almost directly overhead so that the diver was able to get into the water and click this pic. Clear water huh? They estimated the weight at 300,000,000 tons. And now we know why they say one picture is worth 1000 words... And now we also know why the Titanic sank!

And the original was signed "Dee." 

I continued to be awed by nature. 

Conversations with Dave

You raise another interesting issue. My experience is that few (in fact I can't remember any) systems are designed and developed to be replaced. There are generally some conversations about modules, building blocks, and plug-ins, but I don't really know whether the conversations ever go further than that. Perhaps the conversations can't.

Hence, the long life of certain systems.

In statistics, as I recall, one can perform sensitivity analysis. I haven't heard any discussion like this regarding systems.

What insight do you have to this issue?

Dave lead me to two columns by Ben Stein; How to Succeed in Hollywood -- and Anywhere Else, and Wise Words for Getting Ahead in Your Career.  The articles will be going out to my students in the next few days and are worth a read by just about everyone.