I'm an economist and saw a story about innovation. An arbitrage was identified and, after some searching, a mechanism found to exploit it. The process was messy, but resulted in a system which increased profitability (or lowered ticket prices or freed up capital to make the chairs comfier) by more efficiently allocating limited resources (note that none of the complaints were about lines outside the toilet) through the deployment of technology.
A Parable
31–40 of 83 posts
Re: A Parable
#32I guess I am a true mathematician.
Me too. It's obvious that the two permanently coupled cars are really just one big car with a toilet, and it's obvious from the start that they should just have put a toilet in every car. But that's too easy to be the point, I suppose? Maybe it is a parable against yet another workaround?
Having two permanently coupled cars is obvious.
It is NOT obvious that they should have put a toilet in every car. The solution works quite well and you save a potentially large amount of money.
Re: A Parable
#33To 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…
Hmm, I read it at least partly as a riff on the idea of composition: the day is won by designing components with desirable properties out of lesser components which lack them. The parallel to programming seems obvious. Your reading works too.
Given that the article was written by Dijkstra, your interpretation is probably closer to the truth than mine.
I wonder though if this lesson has the same value nowadays as it had on its day. Maybe it is because of such lessons that this design procedure is common today.
Re: A Parable
#34a) the solution assumes you can put two cars on a turntable... can you?
b) couldn't the solution have been to just manually move the TOILET sign on the toilet-less cars as appropriate?
Finally the real take-away here is that cost-cutting always has external costs that are seldom thought of, and especially when they harm the product experience, should definitely be re-evaluated :)
edit: I realize I was wrong, you don't need to ever put pairs on a turn-table as long as you keep them paired correctly.
Re: A Parable
#35I'm an economist and saw a story about innovation. An arbitrage was identified and, after some searching, a mechanism found to exploit it. The process was messy, but resulted in a system which increased profitability (or lowered ticket prices or freed up capital to make the chairs comfier) by more efficiently allocating limited resources (note that none of the complaints were about lines outside the toilet) through t…
Are you sure the added congestion in the yards didn't mitigate the cost savings? It's not so cut and dry from the parable.
Re: A Parable
#36Wouldn'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.
I think there is more to train toilets than that. You need somewhere for the wast to go, and waste disposal, cleaning, maintenance, stocking all have to be done on a regular basis.
Traditionally the waste went on the track
Re: A Parable
#37I'm an economist and saw a story about innovation. An arbitrage was identified and, after some searching, a mechanism found to exploit it. The process was messy, but resulted in a system which increased profitability (or lowered ticket prices or freed up capital to make the chairs comfier) by more efficiently allocating limited resources (note that none of the complaints were about lines outside the toilet) through t…
Are you sure the added congestion in the yards didn't mitigate the cost savings? It's not so cut and dry from the parable.
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Re: A Parable
#38I'm an economist and saw a story about innovation. An arbitrage was identified and, after some searching, a mechanism found to exploit it. The process was messy, but resulted in a system which increased profitability (or lowered ticket prices or freed up capital to make the chairs comfier) by more efficiently allocating limited resources (note that none of the complaints were about lines outside the toilet) through t…
I wonder how much profit was left on the table though because of this "innovation". :-)
Re: A Parable
#39Wouldn'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.
That's the point.
One penny pinching solution, improperly evaluated, pissed off customers, made the company less efficient (man hours working on a previously smooth process), and resulted in a direct capital expense.
All in all, they probably took a loss.
Re: A Parable
#40To 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…
The point of the parable is that there is no such thing as a "simple, straightforward fix", because everything has consequences - anticipated or not.