The Board Gamers Guide to Supply Management Part XVIII: Camelot, The Build and Carcassone, New World

While the focus of this series is primarily on economic, worker placement, and pick-up/delivery games which model the economic, labour, and logistics issues prevalent in the product and services supply chains that you manage day-in and day-out, other types of games, such as tile placement — which are reminiscent of supply chain design activities — and hand management — as you can only hold so much inventory at any one time — also model elements of your supply chain and sharpen skills that you need from time to time. Plus, many of these games can easily be fit into a lunch-hour, and regular (Euro) gaming against skilled opponents can help keep your mind sharp. (Much sharper than using a self-driven brain-training game that you can master with enough rote memorization – you can’t memorize, or even predict, what an adversary will do next.)

Today we are going to cover two tile placement games — Camelot, The Build and Carcassone, A New World — as they allow you to sharpen your resource management skills as both games give you a set number of tiles and a set number of options and you have to do the best you can on each turn. Plus, they’re quick to learn and relatively quick to play. Camelot, The Build typically takes 30 minutes or less and Carcassone, New World takes 30 to 45 minutes or less, depending on the number of players, experience, and skill. You can easily fit a game, or two, of these in during your lunch hour. Plus, the age ranges on these games are 8-10 and up, so you it won’t take long to learn the basic rules. (Mastery, on the other hand …)

In Camelot, the Build you are an interior designer in the time of King Arthur and The King needs help finishing the interior design and layout of his castle. The core structure has been built, but it’s up to you to layout the rooms and the hallways and finish things up.

In this game, designed for 2 to 5 players, you each get 10 tiles, of which up to 3 can be kept secret, and you can play up to 3 on your turn. The tiles you play are replenished (randomly) at the end of your turn (until all tiles enter the game). Some of these tiles are worth points, and some aren’t. Tiles that are worth points generate additional points when they are placed against one or more tiles edgewise. Tiles that aren’t worth points can generate additional points when they are placed in such a way as to border tiles that are worth points. In addition, if a player manages to play 3 tiles during her turn in a connected fashion, then she doubles the points she scored that term.

What’s the catch? There are eight types of tiles — blank, blank wall, furnished wall, rounded corner wall, furnished great hall, garden, small hall, and fireplace tile — and each type of tile can only be played in a matching tile space. Wall tiles can only be played on matching wall tiles, hall tiles on matching hall tiles, and blank and garden tiles can only be played on unwalled spaces. So there are a limited number of places you can play each tile. In addition, wall tiles can generate up to 3 additional points if correctly played, hall tiles up to 4 additional points, and garden tiles up to 8 additional points (as adjacent corner tiles also score points), so you have to balance between playing a tile too soon (for too little points) and too late (when a prime location has been boxed in and you can’t play 3 connected tiles to double your points).

In addition, as you can see at least 7 of the 10 tiles each of your opponent’s have, you can see how they can generate the most points and you have to balance between making the most points you can in a turn and blocking your opponents from making the most points they can. If your opponent has a play that could generate twice as many points as the best play you have on your turn, you probably don’t want to be playing a greedy strategy and instead use a blocking strategy that prevents your opponent from generating too many points. Finally, you don’t want to hang onto your best tiles for two long — points scored in the final round count against you! Just like waiting too long to sell on the open market can ruin you, so can waiting too long to cash in your victory points in Camelot, the Build!

In Carcassone, New World, you are exploring and settling the New World. Unlike regular Carcassone, where you get points for completing claimed roads, cities, and farms, and where the challenge is picking what to claim (as you have a fixed number of workers to claim roads, cities, and farms) and then getting your claimed roads, cities, and farms completed (because your opponents will do their best to prevent you from obtaining completion and deny you your victory points), in New World, where you also get points for completing trails, towns, and farms (and plains), the challenge is to not only complete the trails and towns and farms, but do so before you lose your ability to claim the points for doing so. Unlike regular Carcassone, where you can claim a road or city and spend the entire game extending it in an effort to maximize your points for the claim, New World adds two surveyors to the game and one surveyor moves “west” each time a trail, town, or farm is scored. If the eastern-most survey moves to a location that is west of the settler you placed on a trail, town, or farm, then your settler is returned to your supply and you lose the ability to score that feature. You could spend 7 turns working to complete your farm, in hopes of obtaining the 9 points it generates, and lose it before you get a chance to play your last tile because two opponents decided to finish and score their features ahead of yours and move the surveyors westward. It’s just like playing the real market, how long do you hold during an up-swing before you sell and take the profit in front of you. Sell too soon, and you make very little. Wait too long, and the stock crashes and you lose it all.

So, you have to decide between completing a feature now for a few points or waiting to complete it later in the hopes of scoring a lot more points (but with the possibility you might lose all of the points you hope to gain). When deciding to complete it now, it’s not only the points you gain but the effects on your opponent(s) you have to consider. If completing a feature now will prevent one or more opponents from scoring any points for a feature they claimed, especially if it is one they have been building up for a while, it might be worthwhile. If completing later could double your points, it’s worth the wait unless there’s a good chance your opponents could complete their features and knock you out.

Both games are great for sharpening your analytical and planning skills and they both provide a great interlude in this ongoing series.

Iasta: Smart-Source Style! Part III

It’s been a while since Part I, where we covered the inclusion of native analytics capability, improved native contract management capability, and better integrated SIM & SPM capabilities in the Iasta platform and Part II where we covered extensive support for third party data feeds, P2P integration capabilities, and customizable reporting, but that doesn’t mean Iasta has been sleeping. Since then they’ve had a new major release, and a few minor releases, of their platform, which have included the following improvements:

Extended and Streamlined Project Management
One of the big changes was the ability for an organization, and a user, to define configurable project fields with whatever information they want to track — and all of the user-defined fields can be included in scorecards and analytics. So, in addition to name, start date, end date, etc. you can have custom sub-types, budget codes, execution hours, etc. The project team can be defined by role, with as few or as many roles as you like, and each role can have the user assigned, and re-assigned, as necessary.

Furthermore, setting up a project is a quick 5-step wizard-driven process:

  1. Basic Project Metadata
  2. Project Team and Customized Fields
  3. Project Classification and Value
  4. Bid Type, Display Settings, and Additional (Optional) Project Properties
  5. Lots and Items

Executive Analytics

In addition to the standard Smart Analytics module that was introduced in version 8, Iasta has added a new Executive Analytics module built on top of the Smart Analytics module that includes a set of dashboards with the most commonly requested executive reports and requests split into sourcing, scorecard, contract, profile, and trending dashboards.

In addition, each user can define their own dashboards with their own reports on any data fields associated with any data element from any project, supplier, contract, scorecard, etc. they have access to. New dashboards that can come pre-packaged with the solution include diversity and savings tracking dashboards. If you integrate an e-Procurement or Accounts Payable system feed (with a daily or weekly update), the reports on the savings tracking dashboard will compare actual versus projected spend and show you captured versus projected savings.

Excel Bidding & Embedded Optimization

Not only can bids be submitted in Excel, but Iasta finally added the ability to define individual bid fields in an Excel spreadsheet and upload complete bids broken down on all relevant cost dimensions – unit quote, shipping, tariffs, surcharges, etc. In addition, the optimization module, which used to be stand-alone (and which required projects to be imported to build models), is now embedded in the main suite and it’s easy to switch to the optimization tab and pre-populate a model with bids collected in an RFX.

Streamlined Supplier Portal

One thing Iasta has learned is that, even if a supplier makes a claim to the contrary, they are never as technical or proficient with the tool as the buyer and the best way to not only get a supplier to use a tool, but to minimize the supplier management and support time required as well, is to make that tool as easy to use as possible from the perspective of the supplier. As a result, they have completely redesigned their supplier portal so that when a supplier (rep) logs in, they can quickly see their current tasks in a front-and-center task list that breaks down their task by type, their active projects by status, their most recently completed tasks and projects, and quick links to their profile, training, and scorecards. Each project has a clear and succinct timeline and status for each of their requirements, bid and award history is available for each lot, and outstanding surveys are on the main page as well.

Survey navigation is greatly improved, with the user being able to quickly jump to specific pages and see the status of each page that is her responsibility. She can also assign pages to other team members if their input is needed or they are better able to provide the information. Everything is fully indexed and searchable and it’s designed to be just as easy for a supplier to manage her bidding and survey completion projects as it is for a buyer to manage his RFX and survey creation projects.

Session Sharing

In their newest version, Iasta has implemented a screen-share technology where a user can send her colleague or superior a link through an email that they can use to enter a screen-share with the user within the Iasta application, see what the user sees, and even take over the mouse and drive if need be. The Iasta platform is providing a great, easy, way to get multiple users on the same page.


Sourcing platform for users and bosses too. Sweet.
SaaS on the cloud, always on, real-time reporting complete. L33t.
Analyze this. Auctions, Performance. Real time data.
Optimize It. Contracts, and vendor schema.
One. Two. Smart-Source Success!

 


Sourcing Smart-Source Style.
Smart-Source Style.

If You Do Not Get Sustainable Results, Blame Yourself! (Repost)

This post ran two years ago today. Two years later, the problem remains because a number of organizations still have not figured out it’s Sourcing and Procurement and follow-through. Solutions need to be end-to-end or savings leak!

Let’s Talk!

It’s deja vu all over again!

Robert Rudzki is not the only blogger and consultant to recently hear that a potential client had, just a few years ago, hired a large consulting firm to do a high-profile “strategic sourcing program” with nothing sustainable to show for it, as he indicated in his recent SCMR blog post on Deja vu all over again. I’ve heard the same sentiments echoed to me by a number of consultants at a number of small and mid-size niche and specialty services and software providers in the e-Sourcing & Supply Management space in recent months.

It would appear that a common trend last time money flowed into laggard Supply Management organizations before the recent downturn was to simply hire a Big-X consulting firm to fast track the organization to strategic sourcing success. While this is a great way to fast-track a project, and a contract, that is expected to result in significant savings, the only thing that is fast-tracked from a finance perspective is payment to the consulting firm that runs all the way to the bank! As leading Supply Management professionals know, a contract does not guarantee savings. The only way to achieve savings is to execute against the contract and make sure savings are realized. Just because you have a new contract that allows you to source widgets at $8 a pop, instead of $10 a pop, this doesn’t mean you are going to save $200,000 on your annual purchase of 100,000 widgets. For the savings to materialize, all of the following has to happen:

  • the buyer has to place the order with the contract supplier
  • within the contracted lead-time and the supplier
  • has to ship on time
  • using the approved carrier and shipping arrangement
  • and pay all required third party and government export fees
  • and file all appropriate paperwork at the same time your organization, or a 3PL acting on your behalf,
  • files all of the appropriate import and compliance paperwork
  • and pays any associated duties to make sure that
  • the product arrives at the warehouse when its supposed to
  • where it is received, inventoried, and appropriately stored which results in
  • an invoice being accepted and verified against the contracted rates and
  • paid at the appropriate time only when all goods are received and verified as acceptable.

Simply put, if

  • the order is placed with the wrong supplier
  • or placed late and the order has to be expedited
  • or shipped late and a different shipping method has to be used
  • or export documents are not filed on time
  • or fees are not paid and fines are issued
  • or import documents are not filed on time
  • or taxes are not paid and fines are issued
  • or the product is not properly inventoried or stored and can’t be found and unnecessary replacements need to be ordered
  • or the invoice is not verified and the old rate is still being charged
  • or the invoice is paid late and a penalty is applied

then those (significant) savings negotiated on your behalf go out the window. And you’re not going to get them back! First of all, once they’re gone, they’re gone. Secondly, because you weren’t actively involved in the project and didn’t insure that the knowledge that you required to achieve a sustainable transformation was transferred, you’re not going to be able to keep costs down when you renegotiate the contract in this economy where supply is tightening and costs are rising. So you’ll pay even more, even if the rate should stay almost flat.

In order to get results, you have to work with the consultants to understand the strategic sourcing process, the strategies applicable to your organization, the goals of each individual project, the savings opportunities in each project, the key contract terms, the changes that need to be made to capture the savings and adhere to each contract term, the key metrics, the measurements that need to be made regularly, and the warning signs that something is happening / has happened that could jeopardize the savings the organization expects. Failure to do any of this is a sure-fire way of making sure that nothing changes and that your organization continues to leave money on the table.

In short, if your organization continues to be one of those organizations that leaves up to 40% of the contract value on the table because you did not do all of the above, don’t blame the service provider unless you did all of the above. As Charles, Bill, and Bob said in their recent books on The Procurement Game Plan, Managing Indirect Spend, and Next Level Supply Management Excellence, success is your responsibility and you have to actively manage your service providers and make sure that the knowledge required for a sustainable transformation is transferred to you.

So put an end-to-end solution in place. And let’s Never Talk Again about this!

IBM is Predicting the “Software-Defined Supply Chain”

In a recent article over in the Supply Chain Quarterly, Paul Brody, the Vice President and Global Industry Leader of IBM, told us that we need to “Get Ready for the Software-Defined Supply Chain”, and SI agrees. But the big questions of when, how, and where the transformation will start are still up in the air.

According to the article, this is the most exciting time in manufacturing since Henry Ford put the Model T on a moving production line. A wave of new technologies is emerging, maturing, and converging in a way that will reshape product design and manufacturing, shifting from a world defined by hardware and logistics constraints to one that is largely defined by software. However, despite these exciting new opportunities, the supply chain leadership at some of the world’s top companies is more focused than ever on perfecting an increasingly obsolete business model.

This is because most big manufacturing companies are overlooking the three critical technologies [that] are transforming manufacturing: 3-D printing; a new generation of intelligent assembly robots; and the rise of open-source hardware. Individually, each of these trends is transformational; together their power is multiplied.

This is all true, but the transformation is still limited to design and prototype production. Why?

While it is true that, with 3-D printing, solid parts are convertible from software design to reality at the touch of a button which instructs the machine to gradually build up an object one layer at a time by depositing materials like plastics and metals in very thin layers one atop the other, this process is slow. Something that can be moulded in a few minutes will take at least a few hours, and maybe a day, with one of these printers.

And while it is true that a new generation of robot assembly stations may cost as little as $25,000 per robot and require minimal effort for installation, which often equates to a day, or less, of a technician’s time, these low cost robots are still limited in the scope of tasks they can perform and rely heavily on complex programming which can be very hard to debug.

And while it is also true that the shared-resource model of open-source software development has spread into the realm of hardware design and that, from mechanical systems to networking equipment, hundreds of product designs are now available to anyone, no reverse engineering required, not many companies are producing this hardware. They’d rather produce their own proprietary hardware and sell it at a(n extravagant) profit. So unless you can produce the hardware you need to produce the products you need, you’re stuck with cobbling together your own designs using low cost parts (like the raspberry pi with controller add-ons or the upcoming $99 Intel board).

The reality is that while all of this technology, as it matures, will get cheaper and become more available, will start to transform manufacturing, manufacturing based on open source platforms, low-cost robots, and 3-D printing is not going to become mainstream for quite a while. However, it is going to transform design — since a designer can custom print in less than a day, on his workshop desktop, a prototype for any part he can design and conduct initial testing and analysis without having to configure a custom mould or manufacturing process. He can then use low-cost programmable robots to test streamlined, automated, production processes, and then build a test line out of open source hardware. However, once everything works as expected, because manufacturing requires economies of scale, the small-scale programmable robots are going to be replaced with larger, customized, high-speed robots; the printers with traditional moulding, bending, and cutting; and the equipment with proprietary equipment under a 24/7/365 support contract with a 1 to 4 hour response time.

Design is being revolutionized by those ready to move into the 21st century, but it will be a while still before large-scale manufacturing is revolutionized.

Big Data = Big Mistake

FT.com recently published a great article on Big Data that asked Are We Making a Big Mistake which contains the best description SI has seen yet for Big Data: Big Mistake!

Why? Because, even though there are times we might want correlation to be causation (because then we could put an end to IE once and for all), it is not, never was, and never will be. never, Ever, EVER!* And, as pointed out in the article, just because a correlation algorithm works great for predicting trends, such as the spread of influenza, three years in a row, this doesn’t mean it’s going to work well the fourth year. Randomly identified statistical patterns in data are just that — randomly identified statistical patterns in data.

The Google example in the article is a huge example of how big data can fail in a massive, embarrassing way. In Nature 457, published 19 February 2009, Google published a paper entitled detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data that detailed how they were able to track the spread of influenza across the US more quickly than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Using a big data algorithm that detected a correlation between what people searched for and and whether they had flu systems, Google was apparently able to track the spread of influenza with only a day’s delay, compared to the week or more it took the CDC to assemble a picture based on reports from doctors’. This theory free approach worked for four years, and then failed spectacularly in 2013 when it drastically over-estimated peak flu levels, as chronicled in this article on When Google Got Flu Wrong over on Nature.com.

To put the issue of correlation vs causation into terms everyone can understand, if correlation was causation, Microsoft would be on trial as an accomplice to felony murder in every state in the United States, since the declining usage of internet explorer directly correlates with the declining murder rate in the US:

In other words, if correlation was causation, then using Internet Explorer invokes violent tendencies which leads to murder, and its continued existence is criminal.**

This is the problem with big data today. Everyone is using it to try and detect potentially useful correlations, instead of trying to support or disprove useful, actionable, theories. Why? Because, as the FT.com article states, figuring out what causes what is hard, and some would even claim it to be impossible.

Correlation might work in the short term, as it did for Google that was able to predict the spread of influenza for a few years, but it always fails in the long term. And if you have no idea what is behind a correlation, you have no idea what might cause that correlation to break down. Just like a stock market trading algorithm, it might work for a year, a month, a week, a day, or a minute. You just don’t know.

That’s why relying on correlation-based big-data algorithms is a big mistake. While they will give you interesting patterns to examine, relying on them will lead you down a dark and winding road that leads to the edge of a deep canyon (that you are aren’t going to see until you fall in). Unless you can come up with a reasonable theory and support it with the data, it’s just an interesting pattern — and you should continue on your merry way until you find an interesting pattern you can actually explain unless you too want to end up with egg on your face.

That’s why Sourcing Innovation Still Prefers Big Brains to Big Data, and likely always will. We might be slaves to the corporations in the continuum, but that doesn’t mean we have to be slaves to stupidity.

* Everyone should know by now that correlation is not causation given that Pinky and the Brain gave you all a great Lesson in Statistics six years ago (when they were still in the employ of a certain Burlington sourcing provider …)

** It’s distribution was criminal for a while when Microsoft tried to create a browser monopoly by embedding it in the Operating System in a way that led Windows users to believe there was no other choice, as monopolies are illegal in many countries, but, I’m sorry to say, the continued existence of IE is not criminal, just sad and frustrating.