Category Archives: Serious

One … One Home Foreclosure …

Somehow, I don’t think even the Count is laughing now. After all, I’m sure his mansion is on the foreclosure list too.

That’s why I find this recent announcement from Sesame Workshop on it’s upcoming special on Families Standing Together: Feeling Secure in Tough Times both humorous and frightening at the same time.

In today’s economic climate, approximately two out of three middle class families are at high risk of sustaining or losing their economic security. Moreover, increases in job loss and income cuts have made families struggle with basic costs like housing, medical care, transportation, food, clothing, and child care. Too often, parents are being forced to make difficult decisions that affect their children’s well-being.

In response to these recent changes in family economics, Sesame Street has produced, in association with David Letterman’s production company Worldwide Pants Incorporated and Lookalike Productions, a new PBS primetime special that aims to help families with children, ages two to eight, experiencing difficult economic circumstances by offering strategies and tips that can lead to positive outcomes for their children’s physical and emotional well-being during this tough economic climate which will air on PBS on September 9 and feature Grover and Elmo.

I just hope “rich-poor” doesn’t replace “near-far” as classic Grover.

O.M.G. R.O.T.F.L “D.T.I.:E.D.I.S.C.S.P.U.C.R.T.A.” … W.T.F? Y.M.H.S? *

* Oh My God! Rolling on the floor laughing! “Distinguishing the Indistinguishable: Exploring Differences in Supply Chain Software Packages Using Centering Resonance Text Analysis” What the f*ck? You mean he’s serious?

One of the presentations I just had to sit in on at the 5th Annual International Symposium on Supply Chain Management was called “Distinguishing the Indistinguishable: Exploring Differences in Supply Chain Software Packages Using Centering Resonance Text Analysis” because I had to figure out whether it was real, or the organizer’s attempt at introducing some comic relief into a symposium that can get a little heady without a break once in a while.

Here’s the abstract: Distinguishing among large supply chain management (SCM) software packages is difficult due to the complexity and breadth of the software. In this paper, we use text mining tools to perform a comparative analysis of documentation covering the seven most popular supply chain software packages (from SAP, i2, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Manhattan Associates, IBS, and Manugistics). Concept maps created for each of the packages indicate a high degree of similarity among the 20 most influential concepts, yet significant differences exist beyond the top 20 concepts. This suggests that any distinguishing features are deeply buried in the documentation, while at a surface level all seven vendors address the same concepts. The resultant concept maps contribute a more precise understanding of the similarities and differences between SCM software packages. Guidelines for using this knowledge to make more rational and informed software selection decisions are discussed.

Before continuing, you should read it again just to make sure you read it right. (Because I know you’re wondering if you did.)

Now you should take thirty to sixty seconds to process the shock of what you just read. The resultant concept maps contribute a more precise understanding of the similarities and differences between SCM software packages. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. However, having attended the presentation, and, more importantly, found out that ( a ) this paper is getting published and ( b ) some of the audience members thought that this is a fantastic idea, I now know I should be instilled with fear!

The reality is that I can barely wrap my head around everything that is wrong with the abstract, let alone the presentation, and, more importantly, the paper that the presentation is backed on. However, knowing me as you do, you know I’m going to give it my best.

  • There is not necessarily any correlation between documentation about any given platform and the platform itself. The documentation could be help documentation, which might have a moderate correlation, but could just as easily be position papers, analyst reviews, or “what’s missing” analysis that does not necessarily have to have any correlation with the software.
  • Even if the documentation is limited to help documentation, the documentation is still going to focus on how to use the system and not how it solves your supply chain problem. Thus, the most common terms could be “drop-down” and “dialog” and “field” … not at all useful.
  • There is not a one-to-one correlation between a word and a concept or a concept and a word. Let’s take the word order. It could be referring to order placement or order management or order fulfillment or to the ordering of options in a text-box. Also, let’s take the concept of order fulfillment. It could be called order fulfillment or it could be called customer delivery.
  • There’s no guarantee that two products that implement the same features will document them with standard terminology, or even document the features at all! Thus, two products with high correlations in capability are not at all guaranteed to have any correlation at all in documented capability.

I could go on, but you can see that the statement that the resultant concept maps contribute a more precise understanding of the similarities and differences between SCM software packages is absolutely ludicrous, even if centering resonance text analysis did what many researchers claim it can do. (It really can’t, but hopefully the linguist at the conference who also had more problems with this presentation and paper than I can easily count will chime in with a comment on everything I missed.)

Now, apparently, after heated discussions with one of the researchers (and presenter) in question (who will not be named to protect the guilty), I have it all wrong, and what I’m assuming is being stated is not being stated at all, but I believe I have a relatively high degree of comprehension of the English language, and I just do not understand how any rational human being could interpret it in any other way.

“It’s the thought that counts … and so far I’m up to zero.”
  Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, Sept 25, 2007

Another Public Nomination

Astute readers will have noticed a comment yesterday by one Ron Holland of FreedomFest News, regarding the creation of the Free Market Hall of Fame where members of the Freedom Movement (not clearly defined or referenced on the site) will have the opportunity to initially vote on individuals contributing most to the success and advancement of free markets and free people around the globe during 2007. My first instinct was to delete it, since even if it wasn’t spam, it was obviously some sort of non-approved advertising, and more than likely in violation of at least one of the Sourcing Innovation Blog Comment Rules, and Rule #1 in particular (since it did not seem to have anything to do with the post).

However, I decided to check it out since I really couldn’t see too much harm leaving it as long as it did not put forth the views of any particular government party or political association. And although I’m still not entirely sure what it is, I am a bit intrigued. I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that write-ins are permitted and “journalists and writers” is a category. After all, I think the supply and spend management space needs all the attention it can get, and a few bloggers in particular definitely need more attention.

So it got me thinking. Specifically, it got me thinking that maybe if not a lot of people vote and maybe if a lot of sourcing and procurement professionals vote (for the same write-in candidate), maybe one of our own can get an honorable mention. (After all, you know Stephen Colbert is going to win once the Colbert Nation picks up on this, assuming it hasn’t already.) And that would make a great story.

So, even though he’d probably tell you it’s likely a big waste of time, if you have 30 seconds, please go to the Free Market Hall of Fame Survey, write-in Jason Busch for Question 1, and enter a valid e-mail address and zip code for question 2 and submit.

Then, if you have another 30 seconds, as the comment instructed, please e-mail ron@freedomfest.com and nominate Jason Busch for a Free-Market Hall of Fame Position under the “journalist and writer” category. To aid you, I’ve created a short nomination that you can cut and paste.

For the last two years, Jason Busch, a pre-eminant thinker in the supply and spend management space and author of the Spend Matters blog, has been diligently blogging multiple times a day on issues, events, best practices, and thought leadership in an effort to raise not only the profile of the space, but to inform each of his readers - peers, consultants, vendors, and general practices alike - of it's, and their, potential.

As one of the first practitioner's to realize that procurement is undergoing a transformation into a strategic supply and spend management function that will cross all boundaries and borders of the business, Jason's thinking is second to none. He was also one of the first to realize that forward thinking organizations not only need to consider long term price hedging contacts to insure supply and spend stability but also need to consider securing, and securitizing, raw production capacity, which they can then trade on a new type of open market if they secure more, or less, than what they need. (For example, see his great post "Sourcing Innovation: Securitizing Direct Materials"* on August 28, 2006.)

He is a firm believer in free markets who strives hard to get the message across that as procurement evolves into the most strategic supply chain function, so does it's position and recognition within a corporation. Considering that good sourcing and procurement can save an average billion dollar company tens of millions while bad sourcing and procurement can cost them tens of millions, or more, it's important to have such a forward thinking journalist embrace the web, the new medium for content delivery, and blog almost religiously in an effort to simply open the minds and increase the understanding of others. And in this regard alone, he is a thought leader of the Free Market Movement and deserves to be recognized as such.

He may not win, but if the Colbert Nation can convince Google that Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American by overloading the system, maybe we can do the same and finally get this sector a little limelight!

* All posts prior to 2012 were removed in the Spend Matters site refresh in June, 2023.

Cadbury gives Oompa Loompas a Bad Name

Last month I reported that Cadbury, who was making grandiose efforts to become “synonymous with the color purple” (Metro UK) was down on its luck and was announcing massive job cuts to try and right the ship. But before you go feeling sorry for the sugary giant (which is the world’s largest confectionary company with revenues of about £7.4b in 2006) and it’s self-reported need for a “£650m four-year cost reduction plan” (Silicon.com), which it is partially blaming on its enterprise rollout of SAP (which caused too many chocolate bars to be produced and forced it to take a £12m hit on profits), it seems that it decided to introduce a new testing system for salmonella last year that allowed “safe” levels of salmonella in its products.

Well, when it comes to salmonella, there are no safe levels when consumables are involved, and that’s why the official guidelines say that there is to be no salmonella in ready-to-eat products. Furthermore, they did this knowing perfectly well that outbreaks of salmonella had been associated with very low levels in chocolate. See, salmonella is a bacteria … a gram-negative enterobacteria to be precise … and, like all bacteria, they have this funny habit of multiplying like mad under the right environmental conditions (which, oddly enough, are provided by the human body). And what did they get for it? A slap on the wrist for potentially exposing thousands and thousands of people to a bacteria that is known to kill at least 600 people a year (as per the CDC) and infect over 40,000.

Salmonella
and you’re to blame
Cadbury, you give oompa loompas
a bad name

The Cost of Capitalism

Capitalism, the foundation for a free market, has its cost. It’s called inflation. And when that cost is accompanied by rising raw materials prices, especially in metals, that cost multiplies. We’ve all heard the arguments that we should at least stop using pennies in North America, since the average penny cost 1.25 cents to make in the US in 2006, and maybe even nickels, since they cost 5.73 cents to make in the US in 2006, but it seems that our problems in North America are nothing compared to the problems they have in India.

It seems that their rupee, worth about 2.5 cents in North America, is actually worth about 15 cents to your average resident if they melt it down and make razor blades. It’s as illegal there as it is here, but when your currency is worth at least 600% more as scrap metal, and at least 25% of your population is below the poverty line, it becomes a bigger problem than copper salvage in China. The coin shortage is so bad in some places that some tea gardens have had to resort to using card-board coin slips internally.

It’s a good thing the smugglers and grocers aren’t thinking globally, because razor blades these days cost a heck of a lot more than 2.5 cents! The going price is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.22 cents for a Gillette Mach 3, or roughly 74 cents here in Canada (as evidenced by a recent Walmart receipt, which is the lowest cost seller in the area). If they ever figure this out, I doubt there’ll be a single rupee left in India!