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Wouldn't it be cheaper to just install the bloody toilets in every train car? Than every car could be everywhere. After all it's just a toilet with a hole.
Hrm. I was annoyed by the cost-savings idea and at each of the partial fixes, and then reasonably pleased by the solution (but I would have been happier if the root cause was fixed.) So I'm not a manager, and not a programmer... I'm a sysadmin at heart.
The planner in me therefore would have liked to see a bit more planning upfront, less knee jerk reaction to each issue, and more consideration to the costs to the org as a whole of each change...
Ironically, this kind of "cost-savings" is exactly what the Netherlands railways have been doing over the years (only by closing half the existing toilets). However, they ended up with the ultimate solution: ordering new trains without any toilets . No joke, they even came up with the brilliant idea of handing out plastic bags for "emergencies"...
I failed to understand the solution :(
The solution is to permanently couple pairs of the two car types, such that the restroom is in the middle. Of course, this is exactly equivalent to just making the cars so that they all have restrooms, but are twice as long...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two cars were coupled together correctly (i.e. car with toilet coupled on toilet end to a car without a toilet), and then never decoupled. Each two car couple was then treated as a single unit.
how do they solve the issue of the turntables being big enough for only one car at a time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two cars were coupled together correctly (i.e. car with toilet coupled on toilet end to a car without a toilet), and then never decoupled. Each two car couple was then treated as a single unit.
how do they solve the issue of the turntables being big enough for only one car at a time?
Regular switching track suffices to switch which end of a train a motor units runs on, and some smaller passenger trains can work fine in "push" instead of "pull" mode.
Hrm. I was annoyed by the cost-savings idea and at each of the partial fixes, and then reasonably pleased by the solution (but I would have been happier if the root cause was fixed.) So I'm not a manager, and not a programmer... I'm a sysadmin at heart.
But it was fixed. It just took a clever enough incremental improvement to move back to square one.
To me the point of the parable (apart from clever programming) seems to be that for a successful venture you need to have competent people on all fronts, managers and engineers, good communication between teams and listen to your clients. The manager did a good job to find a way to cut down the costs but didn't get the specifications right so the engineers, although they could deal with the issue, didn't even know th…
Your reading works too.
Hrm. I was annoyed by the cost-savings idea and at each of the partial fixes, and then reasonably pleased by the solution (but I would have been happier if the root cause was fixed.) So I'm not a manager, and not a programmer... I'm a sysadmin at heart.
>but I would have been happier if the root cause was fixed. But it was fixed. It just took a clever enough incremental improvement to move back to square one.
I'm in IT ops, and I will bet you dollars to donuts that the money saved by putting toilets in every other car was more than wasted by the shunting yard switching cars every which way.
"Look at those idiots who tried to cut costs myopically and ended up at a net loss" is a common story, and I've heard it used to kibosh good ideas.
The point of the parable, to me, is that you need to think the whole process through. It's about good, thorough engineering. It is NOT about not trying. People get reflexively pessimistic about improvement ideas, which is a real shame. Perhaps I'm sensitive to it because I've often been the guy trying to change "the way things are done." :-)