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The $30,000-A-Night Jet That Flies Empty
- jrs235 10y agoOne of the commentators on the story says: "An empty plane flying every night – an excellent example of the value of spare capacity. But I wonder how many organisations would have taken a narrow view, classified this as “waste” and cancelled it?" is so on point. Reminds me of Tom DeMarco's Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency ( http://amzn.to/1H4qRld http://amzn.to/1H4qRld ) which is all about having slack (spare capacity, which means not having 100% efficiency) in order to deal with unplanned issues. Failing to have slack results in a slow grinding process when issues arise and has enormous opportunity costs.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> Across the U.S., more than 95% of packages ordered over the internet are delivered by three organizations: FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. A similar percentage of the logistics operation to get these packages to their destinations happens before the last mile. So... 95% of US internet purchases get delivered by one of three organizations... and 95% of the logistics of delivering a package occurs before the last leg of the delivery. I don't get what's going on in the article here. These aren't comparable things. It's like saying "men are under 50% of the population, and vowels are under 50% of the alphabet".
- jrs235 10y agoThey are saying the majority (95%) of the logistics and complexity occurs before the package arrives at the local distribution center (local Fed Ex, UPS, Post Office). You are correct though, it is strange that they intertwine that in; it just makes it confusing. "These two unrelated things have similar percentages so lets make that point."