Category Archives: Mileage trakker

Compartments

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Walfer X Working drawing for elfa component shelving

Walfer X Working drawing for elfa
component shelving


I would use the word “Chaos” to describe the current business environment. We are in a period where emerging innovations are changing many of the ways that we do things. As humans we need to operate in defined compartments. There is a big business in selling the things that you need to organize your closet. Stuff that you keep is only useful if you can find it when you need it. Our employment and business lives also only work if they are sufficiently organized into compartments.Monopoly
Board games like monopoly can be a lot of fun. Having all of the pieces makes them even more fun. This is why they are sold in a box which serves as a compartment for holding the wide variety of pieces. Many compartments like that exist within my game cupboard so that I can easily gather everything in one go.
Quoting is one of the important tasks in making a profit in business. In a period of stability the customer already has a fairly detailed idea of what he can afford to purchase and what it will cost. This knowledge is based on accumulated experience of the buyer and the people he knows. In a period of rapid innovation it become hard for the customer to determine what belongs in the compartment of goods and services he wishes to buy. “Future Shock” applies when the supplier suggests that the buyer should know the cost of the stack of goods and services he wishes to buy.
Most kits of components contain a wide variety of items.

Most kits of components contain a wide variety of items.

As companies embarque on the difficult task of evolving. They find themselves in unfamiliar waters. Most new ventures involve requests for quotes for new products and services. It would be nice to find suppliers who are already familiar with providing those items. In a time of rapid innovation that is less likely. Most customers want a fixed price quote. This is impossible for the estimator to accomplish if the customer cannot determine a fixed amount of items to include within the compartment. Wishful thinking sets in. “I want you to quote whatever it takes to get the job done” I can assure you if the estimator knew how to quote a “turnkey” profit he would no longer be working as an estimator.
We are all creatures of habit. Business owners are dismayed that they can no longer find buyers for the unchanged products and services that formed the backbone of their companies. Employees drop out of the work force because they cannot find anyone who wants to hire someone to do the job that they have always done. These are only symptoms of the marketplace chaos that is out there. This chaos will continue until the emerging startup businesses invent the new compartments that will restore stability.

Tools

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Early man evolved past the apes by carrying a weapon just in case

Early man evolved past the apes by
carrying a weapon just in case


In the early history of the human race, the invention of tools separated us from our ape ancestors. Yes, an ape will employ a convenient stick to defend itself during a attack by predators. Humans advanced because they had the foresight to carry that same stick as a tool in case it was needed. I suspect that the earliest tools were nothing more that sticks and bones that were the right size to be clubs. It is not surprising that the groups of humans who evolved and invented improvements to the tools in the form of spears had a better rate of survival.
Human history is a chronicle of improvements in tools. The application of fire added the sharp edges and strength of forged metals. Bronze is a lot sharper and durable than the wood and flint that is replaced. The earliest adopters of bronze had an advantage over the primitive tribes who were slow in adopting the new. Once recorded history set in, we see the record of the success of human groups like the Hittites. As an early adopter of iron, they dominated their era.
The steel swords of the Hittites overpowered their bronze predecessors

The steel swords of the Hittites overpowered their bronze predecessors

I can imagine the fear that a soldier with a bronze sword encountered when facing an adversary with an iron blade. The point being is that a tool is no longer useful when it cannot be employed to accomplish the needed task. I cannot picture carrying a spear to protect myself from identity theft.
The success habits that set the human race apart at the beginning still apply today. It is still important to carry tool to protect yourself from predators. It is too late to realize that you need a mileage trakker to tabulate your deduction when the IRS visits for an audit. At that point in time that predator takes away your hard earned cash with penalties.
Capture your full mileage deduction

Capture your full mileage deduction

The concept is the same. Humans with a survival instinct carry and work with the tools that can protect them from predators. Yes all tools require some training and effort by the beneficiary. Modern tools are no different than the early spears that only were helpful in the hands of a user who applied the time and effort to master their use.

Just Logical

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Binary digital numbers easily represent yes and no choices

Binary digital numbers easily represent yes and no choices


Most people understand how to use the binary system to make logical choices. —— 1=YES 0=NO —— Pretty Simple —– It starts that way. Ah, that life could be broken down into a simple YES/NO choice. Add in semiconductors with large scale integration and a few megaflops later we are drowning is a sea of data. Is our life any better? Even though the amount of data at our finger tips has propagated into the terrabyte range, many of the decisions we make are still yes or no. Arehere any bits buried within the myriad of big data that can improve our life? The data contained within the big data set is the beginning of the answer.
As humans we are born with unlimited wants. Unfortunately we were not also born with a list of what those personal wants are. This is where big data fits in.
Only the big data that is related to us sparks our interest

Only the big data that is related to us sparks our interest

I suspect that Google with its invasive collection of my search behavior, might have a better idea of my wants than I do. I find it fascinating to watch which ads that it sends my way. Its memory is a lot better as well. Many times I forget what I was doing yesterday. Google is still presenting ads related to equipment I was buying last year. Surprising targeting ads is a win-win. Both the presenter and viewer benefit by having a better match. If it takes big data to get the job done well so be it.
The adoption of more big data processing is all about benefit. For example your car produces about a terrabyte of data in its lifetime. This data is already used by the computers on board to adapt to the fuel composition and the weather so that the vehicle runs smoothly with low emissions. This use of the data by the car does not prevent other uses. In my connected car offering – www.mileagetrakker.com – our users typically gain a US$ 9700.00 tax deduction simply because they have a IRS format record of the mileage that their vehicle traveled.
Capture your full mileage deduction

Capture your full mileage deduction

Yes. the IRS will accept a paper log. Most people find that it is a whole easier to let the processing of big data from the cars computers to do it for them.

Diminishing Returns

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Stone monuments served as the earliest computer guiding the planting of crops in the spring.

Stone monuments served as the earliest computer guiding the planting of crops in the spring.


The planting of crops was of critical importance to early societies. At Stonehenge an early computer was built to determine accurately the correct date to plant the crops. As a tourist you can visit and see for yourself the stones that were erected. Visually sighting the position of the sun at dawn establishes the season. Over many generations this computing instrument evolved into the smaller Astrolab.DIMastrolab Standing on the backs of giants, the concepts of the earth as a spinning sphere orbiting the sun were reflected in matching Astrolab geometry. Today using the accuracy of cesium atomic clocks we can use our computer technology to calculate the arrival of spring to the nearest billionth of a second. Diminishing returns have set in. Choosing the correct time to plant crops is every bit as important to our society as it was to early societies. Using more sophisticated computer techniques to calculated the date to higher accuracies has ceased to add any value to the original task of choosing a planting date.
Maybe the answer is “Big Data” Most farmers use long range weather forecasts to hedge their bets. This is all great until a volcanic eruption like the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa fills the upper atmosphere with reflective dust. No amount of current computer horsepower can factor in climate change, solar light emission variation, soot deposition on snow, or other causes we haven’t fathomed yet.
The pendulum swings. After a long run of disruptive computer based changes to society, more of the disruption will come from other sectors. In true “overnight” fashion advances in battery technology, materials, coatings, biology,medicine will splash onto the scene. Yes, the computer will have some role in these advances but it will not have the primary role. We are seeing the season start to change. Many of the new offerings being showcased at start-up conferences like South by Southwest include hardware becoming more than just software. My own www.mileagetrakker.com is based on a connected car hardware device which overcomes many of the frustrations of using an APP. This is not to say that there isn’t some good APPs among the 12 million or so offerings on Apple and Google. Most creators of APPs fight the “discoverability challenge.” Diminishing returns have set in.

Approximation

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The earth is a water world when seen from space

The earth is a water world when seen from space


In the classic tale, 3 blind men encounter an elephant. Each of them gives a different report based on their encounter. A space traveler flying by earth would see a water world covered in oceans. While this is the most accurate approximation, it would totally miss the land masses that are home to the earth’s population. Just like the blind man in the tale, some people who live in the great deserts of the world lack the personal experience to confirm the wet nature of our world.
Quoting is an exercise that is based on approximations. Most customers are unwilling to wait for the time that it takes to assemble a fully detailed list of the costs required to supply a product or service. The pendulum would need to swing really far back for customers to pay for estimates. I have not seen engineers paid for creating cost estimates since my dad worked for an engineering consulting firm. Successful lean firms usually receive quote requests to supply most of the product sold in their industry. This is especially true if they have evolved to the point where they are normally one of the lowest cost bidders. Purchasing agents are evaluated based on their ability to secure the best price. One of their tools is removing suppliers who refuse to quote every job from their bid list. José Ignacio (“Inaki”) López de Arriortúa invented a cost cutting tactic which appeared to work, because if you ask enough suppliers to quote, someone would bid less that it costs. Disgrace finally caught up with him when he was forced to resign from VW. Volkswagen agreed to pay GM $100 million and to buy $1 billion dollars worth of parts from GM to settle Lopez’s misconduct. The poor Tier 1 estimators who were bombarded with an excessive Lopez-inspired barrage of quote requests, gained the ability to estimate quickly and triage. Spreadsheets with tuned approximations were invented.
Spreadsheet use approximations to collect total cost

Spreadsheet use approximations to
collect total cost

In triage fashion two-thirds of the quotes were returned with a quickly calculated price that was 35% over market. I can only imagine the effect of approximate high bid pricing on the cost planners at automotive headquarters. Usually you should make an assessment of the capability of the lowest bidders before you spend 2 billion dollars supplying them with custom tooling. The fact that this tooling never made a part for GM is also part of Lopez’s legacy. At this juncture the effect of this unnecessary cash flow on the GM bankruptcy is simply arm chair quarterbacking. I remember Neil Armstrong (a professor at the University of Cincinnati where I went to school) talking about the danger of space travel. “As an astronaut, you remember that the rocket is made by the lowest bidder.”

The IRS uses our tendency to save time by using approximations to their advantage. Yes, it is possible to compute your mileage deduction using the distances computed by MapQuest. I know this because I have spent many a Christmas holiday recreating the log of mileage needed to qualify for the deduction. Now that my http://mileagetrakker.com device generates an accurate log for me, I discovered that the approximate method left a bunch of money sitting on the table. Actual trips include gas stops, detours, errands, procurement stops, sales calls that usually get left off the recreated list. Having lived both methods, I understand how it happens. Most of my trips occur when my business is busy. It is unusual to have an extra second or two to record mileage when you are running behind.

Format Wars

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The VHS vrs Beta war raged for many years

The VHS vrs Beta war raged for many years


The VHS verses Beta cassette tape war is the classic example of a format war. Consumers who purchased a video tape player desired to purchase every future tape in the same format. Once they had a collection of tapes, even wearing out a tape player was not going to get them to change. The furniture industry jumped onto the bandwagon making shelving units to house our collections of tapes. This war raged on without a winner or loser until the DVD splashed onto the scene.
The small size of the DVD media displaced our use of Video tapes in a few years

The small size of the DVD
media displaced our use of Video tapes in a few years

. In the near future high speed internet and streaming video will displace DVD as the pace of technology accelerates. Streaming video will cause us to forget about the blue ray format war that superseded the Beta / VHS battle
Some format wars last for many years with no end in sight. A good example is the metric system. The engineering community had no problem quickly adopting metric dimensioning on drawings. In CAD especially, converting from one dimension system to the other is just a button click. The problem arose with legacy thread pitches. In the beginning of the industrial revolution, the first lathes were set up to create threads. In Europe these lathes had metric sizes. As luck would have it the imperial fine and coarse threads turned out to have better properties than fine and coarse metric threads. A rusted imperial coarse thread bolt can be loosened while a metric bolt usually must by drilled out. A imperial fine thread bolt will break unlike an overtorqued metric fine thread bolt that strips before it breaks.
Metric fine threads are prone to stripping

Metric fine threads are prone to stripping

The imperial fine thread was invented by the Society of Automotive Engineers and is also called a SAE thread. They were looking for a thread that would not vibrate loose. A metric coarse thread is half way between a imperial fine and coarse thread. If it is perfectly tightened it will not vibrate loose. (US car mechanics had to purchase torque wrenches when metric bolts were adopted.) Most molds manufactured anywhere in the world use imperial coarse thread bolts. Companies cannot afford the expense of drilling fasteners every time they need to disassemble molds. The world conversion to metric is pretty much complete. It is possible that threads may be like pipe sizes. The world may continue to use the legacy imperial threads and pipe simply because they work better and the matching taps, fixtures, and related manufacturing equipment are already in place.

In the early days, when Microsoft was trying to displace Lotus, Timeline, Word Prefect, etc. they focused on interoperability. Once they became the dominate player they elected to create new file formats for Excel that could not be imported into Open Office. This may have worked for them if they had taken the time to verify that their newest version could successfully import legacy data. Companies which invested thousands of manhours in creating Excel files chose to continue to use the earlier version when the new release could not preserve the formatting. It is possible that Calc in Open office will never bother to write the code for importing the latest version of Excel. As a small fish caught in the turbulent format war water, my http://mileagetrakker.com application creates reports in the Excel 97 format.

Nail down your mileage deduction

Nail down your mileage deduction

Our users want compatibility. It does not matter whether they are using either version of Excel or Open Office Calc. The 97 format can transfer into any of them.

Retrieval

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A Victor V phonograph, circa 1907 Norman Bruderhofer - Collection of John Lampert-Hopkins

A Victor V phonograph, circa 1907
Norman Bruderhofer – Collection of John Lampert-Hopkins


As a young boy, my family had a old phonograph. This machine came from the Rockefellers because one of my great aunts was a domestic servant. One of my uncles had worked at a radio station so we had a small case of the 78 records to match. As a budding engineer I was fascinated by the wind up mechanism that spun the turntable. Retrieval is what I liked best. I could play my favorite records any time that I wanted to hear them. The phonograph was one of the first data storage devices. It could capture and store music or speech. It was the retrieval as desired that made it popular. A whole orchestra could surround you within your own living room. The quality of that retrieval was inverse to the popularity. The records that were played the most often picked up the scratches. Some of our favorite records deteriorated to the point where we no longer enjoyed listening to them.
One of the more important aspects of retrieval is data integrity. Just like scratches spoil the usefulness of a record, a corrupted bit can spoil a CAD data file. Back when I was directing the designers at Lotus in Norwich England how to create my patented GM engine component, it was necessary to transfer CAD data on magnetic tapes.
We adopted 3D CAD design when we could finally retrieve un-corrupt data files

We adopted 3D CAD design when we could finally retrieve un-corrupt data files

Even though the internet could transfer data from Canada to England at the time, the transfer usually had corrupt data. This made for a lot of trips by plane. England is a lot farther North and it is dark at 4:00 PM in November. Obviously the data communication protocols that we currently use today automatically correct static. (Skype saves a lot of plane trips) As an aside, we even have programs that can edit the scratches out of music recorded on old-fashioned phonograph records.
A phone call from the IRS strikes fear into most people. We know that this is a time that retrieval is going to be vital. Unfortunately, our accounting friend Darryl Engebregson, who could remember all of his clients data three years back has passed away. We still talk about his answer to an IRS query where he said “That number sounds familiar.”
New York City field office for the IRS by Matthew G Bisanz

New York City field office for the IRS by Matthew G Bisanz

This experience caused us to arrange our http://mileagetrakker.com business so that it is possible to retrieve mileage records from three years ago. This is a match to the IRS audit schedule. None of us want to face the penalties that the IRS charges when they disallow a few years of deductions when we cannot retrieve our records.

Batch Process

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A batch of fresh baked cookies brings out the kid in me

A batch of fresh baked cookies brings out the kid in me

I was thinking about how to determine the ideal batch size. Cookies came to mind. The ideal batch size is one when you are eating them. As a lover of cookies, I have tried stuffing a bunch of them in my mouth. It doesn’t work as well as eating them one at a time. Further upstream in the manufacturing process, one no longer is the optimum batch size. In my college days the optimum batch size was six. That was the size of my toaster oven tray. Even though the efficiency gurus suggest that we should eliminate all inventory and make cookies one at a time, that is a good theory that does not work in practice. There is something about the smell of baking cookies that attracts and makes friends. Especially on a Sunday night in a guys dorm when there is no food service. Obviously it was necessary to do an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) raw material order earlier in the week to pick up a roll of cookie dough from the grocery story when the grocery store was open. Only one because that is all that would fit in the dorm micro fridge that I shared with my roommate. Again the batch size was no longer one and increased to a dozen. Going further upstream the cookie dough rolls arrived at the grocery store in case boxes. These were stocked on the shelf from the distribution center arriving in mixed skids. The food batching plant obviously wanted to send full refrigerated trailer loads to the distribution center but for the slower moving products like cookie dough this shipment usually includes a mix of all pre-made refrigerated dough products to reduce scrapping of stale product. Any batch size is theoretically possible. In reality when we chose a width and load limit for the roads, factors like the size of trailers start to govern the equation. Even further upstream in the supply chain, the concept of “pull” scheduling totally falls apart when we get back to the planting of the wheat to make the flour. Planting wheat in one cookie batches makes no sense at all.

Drones will emerge as a means for avoiding traffic jams as the population concentrates into big cites

Drones will emerge as a means for avoiding traffic jams as the population concentrates into big cites

It will be interesting to see how new delivery methods such as drones affect batch sizes. In this emerging mass customization era, batch size planning also applies to building heavy equipment like excavators. In this market every purchaser wants a machine that is customized for their use. Theoretically the batch size of a sold excavator is one but in the actual market the end users like to buy units is groups of three or five so that they have some opportunity to reduce the number of spare parts that they need to stock. Many of the large components like diesel engines, hydraulic pumps, cylinders are ordered in one year batches of 1000. This is inconsistent with the customers who would like their machines a week or two after they place an order. The solution is to complete the manufacturing until the point that the parts begin to acquire customer unique features. The historical customer behavior influences the upstream batch size planning. Many of the components arrive in “kits.” Building heavy equipment is the sum of organizing and collecting heavy components onto skids that fit into trailers or sea land containers. In the past we saw more 1 TEU containers in ocean shipping. In the US most sea land containers in use are 2 TEU because they are similar in capacity to truck trailers. Lift trucks and pallets sizes also evolve toward the same dimension constraints. In most cases the workers require lifting assists at every step

Gathering heavy items takes a lifting device

Gathering heavy items takes a lifting device

I also market a connected car device http://www.mileagetrakker.com that helps people who drive for business save about $1000 to $2000 per year on their tax bill. We give the user the option of recording trip purpose in batch sizes of one using their cell phone or in weekly bunches using the internet. One size does not fit all. Users choose a batch size which fits their work pattern. People that have an unpredictable travel pattern like recording in smaller batches. People with a more stable work pattern tend to like recording trip purpose in weekly batches using the internet because is saves time.

Inversion

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Classic illusion flips from faces to vase by Brocken Inaglory

Classic illusion flips from faces to vase by Brocken Inaglory

As we focus in on our immediate objectives, the lesson we learn from classic illusions is that occasionally we need to step back and see the bigger picture. The most famous example of a figure–ground illusion is probably the faces–vase drawing that Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin described. Your mind can’t decide whether to focus on the white vase or the black faces.
Shigeo Shingo invented the concept of SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die) He correctly asserted that if a die change occurred fast enough, the manufacturing planners would not be tempted to build extra production to put into inventory to save die changes. People who only saw the black faces simply tried to increase the die change speed. Shingo correctly guided his followers to focus on the white vase. In most cases much of the die change can be done while the equipment is in production.
Demand charges for electricity work the same way. The size of the wires in the power grid and within the plant are related to the peak draw on the system. Significant savings occurs when the high power draw actions do not occur simultaneously. This is especially true in situations where the usage is approaching the maximum that the existing infrastructure can deliver. I happen to like coloring Excel spread sheets so that a quick glance confirms that all high power users are not active at the same time.
Colored charts add understanding to simple tables of numbers

Colored charts add understanding to simple
tables of numbers

Attention to detail made it possible to divert 100 of 450 amps to added hot oil heating units.
The same focus on only the black faces applies to my mileage trakker business. In start up mode our effort was aimed at tabulating the trips in IRS format so that our trakkers could qualify for the deduction which puts about $2000 in their pockets. It took a request by one of our users to help us see the white in addition to the black. Some business owners need to tabulate how long they are at the customer on a service call. Surprise – Surprise! This matches how long their car is in the customer parking lot. We are now beta testing a feature that logs the time at the customer.