9 ms·

How to replace 30 laptops (and $10,000) with 150 sheets of paper

249 points by alxp 15y ago

jtchang 15y ago
It's refreshing to see a non tech solution every now and then. As technologists we have to learn when and when not to apply technology solutions. This just happens to be one of those cases.
- troymc 15y ago
  This is a minor quibble, but I'd still call paper "technology." It wasn't so long ago that paper was an expensive technology. The question isn't whether or not to use technology. The question is which technology to use.
  - rgoddard 15y ago
    Plus the technology involved in storing, organizing, formatting and printing the data. This is more an example of an effective use of technology to solve the problem. Plus it serves as a reminder that the system to be created extends beyond just the computer.
- niels_olson 15y ago
  One of my roles is reviewing the medical notes of independent corpsmen on Navy cruisers and destroyers. I assess everything from black ink to the quality of their differential diagnosis. Most of the corpsmen use one of the electronic documentation systems. From one of my reviews yesterday: "Nothing like handwritten notes: efficient & more pleasant on the eye. In future, focus on setting lowercase letters __on the line__ so the ascenders don't get lost among shorter letters floating away."
  - igrekel 15y ago
    Part of the fun with reading written notes is that you can evaluate the care put into writing the note from the handwriting. Its much harder to appreciate when its electronic.
- tzs 15y ago
  When I took the intro digital logic course at Caltech in the late '70s or early '80s, the textbook had a chapter at the end called something like "The Engineer as Dope Pusher" that urged engineers to not get carried away by technology. An example he gave was designing a timer for a clothes dryer. The user needs to be able to specify how long to try the clothes. The dryer should run for that long and stop. The standard solution was a mechanical timer. It had a dial. The consumer turned the dial to the appropriate time, the dryer started, and when the timer ticked down the dryer stopped. Engineers were starting to replace these with digital solutions. The digital solution was a lot more fun for the engineer. He'd get to design some circuitry, maybe use a microprocessor. He'd need a power supply for the electronics. He could have buttons and a nifty LED display. Maybe have preprogrammed drying times. That's a hell of a lot more fun for the engineer than to just specify sticking some commodity mechanical timer in there like his father and grandfather would have done. However, the mechanical timer is cheaper, easier to build into the dryer, more reliable, and easier to use for the consumer. There is no advantage whatsoever to the consumer or the dryer company in using the custom digital solution--it serves no purpose other than the entertain the engineer who designs it.
  - whatusername 15y ago
    If the custom digital solution looks newer/fancier/better on the showroom floor then there is an advantage to the dryer company.
  - lurker19 15y ago
    How does a mechanical dryer handle wrinkle-free mode, where the dryer runs for one minute every ten to avoid letting wrinkles settle? Or handle a mode where the heat is on high for 15 minutes to evaporate water, and then switches to low or no breath to avoid bleaching the fabric. Analog does not scale with complexity nearly as well as digital.
dhughes 15y ago
Good idea, not everything has to use a computer just because we have them. It's only 150 sheets of paper too it's not like it's reams of the stuff (it's just about 1/4 of a ream) otherwise people would be tempted to use a laptop to be 'green'. Local guy makes it to HN. And I'll be voting in October.
orangecat 15y ago
The building I work in installed a kiosk as the office directory. Normally there's a screen saver running; after touching the screen you get a static list of the 10 business occupants and their floors. I'm not convinced this was the best use of resources.
- timerickson 15y ago
  ...but boy, oh boy is that screensaver interesting!
- bostonvaulter2 15y ago
  Does it show ads?
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  I love those things. Whenever I'm bored in a lobby, I try to find the secret "admin" link, and see if the address is the security code. Long story short, there's a couple of buildings in Addison, TX that might still have "The Guild of Calamitous Intent" working out of a non-existent penthouse.
Bud 15y ago
Whoa. That paper stuff could really catch on! Perhaps someone could print a Bible on it. (editing this comment after downvoting to add content, and my apologies for being sarcastic and content-free): Effective data presentation, graphic design and such are technology. Showing all the data at once is often much more effective than hiding it in an invisible database.
ctdonath 15y ago
Worth recalling "The Breakfast Food Cooker" http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/toaster.htm http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/toaster.htm
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jcarreiro 15y ago
Why not just have everyone vote on their iPhone?
- mikle 15y ago
  If you are really serious, does that mean that the county must provide iPhones to those that <GASP> don't have one?
  - jcarreiro 15y ago
    I was being a bit facetious, yes. But voting electronically would solve this problem, assuming that you could trust the voting software! Public terminals could be provided for citizens without computers/smart phones/netbooks/tablets/implants/whatever.
    - jcarreiro 15y ago
      Just curious: am I being voted down for suggesting that a society use electronic voting? If so, oh, the irony!
      - archangel_one 15y ago
        I imagine you've been downvoted (not by me) because it was an overly simplistic answer - it's obviously not as easy as "have everyone vote electronically". The various debacles with voting machines over the past few years have shown that you can't simply assume the software is trustworthy, let alone having people dialling in to vote on their own phone. And the point of the article was that more technology may not always be the best solution...
    - rimantas 15y ago
      The problem with electronic voting is that you cannot have both anonymous and trustworthy voting.
mkramlich 15y ago
paper & pencil can handle exceptional cases and ad hoc formats much better than software, that's for sure. one reason I still love notebooks like Moleskine, and blank scrap paper. Old tech: it's cheap and Just Works (tm).
- thebooktocome 15y ago
  Moleskine is hardly cheap.
  - mkramlich 15y ago
    depends on perspective cheapo paper notebook: $1 Moleskine: $10 iOS device: $200 - $700 plus opt $30-100/mo (forget cur rates) Yes, I know you can do more with an iPad/iPhone, obvious, but there is some overlap and paper is arguably better in certain common use cases. Always use the best tool for the job. And I have way greater confidence that the content of my Moleskines will be around in 10 years, than the content of my iPhone/iPad/PC/Mac. And no company can shut me out of it.
    - thebooktocome 15y ago
      I'm certainly not arguing that iPhone/iPad is better. I have cheapo paper notebooks from ten years ago. I don't understand how Moleskines are better.
  - pyre 15y ago
    That was just an example. Scrap paper was also mentioned, but I see that you ignored that.
    - thebooktocome 15y ago
      Probably because there aren't cults devoted to free marketing for scrap paper.
- cschmidt 15y ago
  I like Field Notes notebooks. Their just the right size to fit in your back pocket, so you always have it with you. http://fieldnotesbrand.com/ http://fieldnotesbrand.com/
T-hawk 15y ago
The professor for my software engineering course in college posed a problem with a non-tech answer similarly. You have a cabin in the woods, with electricity and a freezer. You go hunting and bag a deer with much more meat than can be used in one visit, so you freeze it for use on a future visit. But you want to know while you are away if the electricity fails for any length of time so that the meat may have thawed and spoiled. After the class spent most of a period arguing over remote monitoring systems and temperature sensors and the like, the professor revealed the simple answer. Freeze a block of ice in the freezer and mark its height. If it is shorter when you return, the power was out so some of it melted.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  Ice evaporates, how do you tell the difference between evaporation and power outage? Sure there should be more loss in the case of an outage but you don't know the exact evaporation rate to expect. Your computer has a setting on whether or not it should turn back on after power loss, build a low cost circuit that does the same(turns off in case of power loss) and you are done.
  - starwed 15y ago
    You probably don't care if power is only out for a few seconds, though. Ice evaporates, but a large block will take quite a while.
    - Splines 15y ago
      .. and the nice thing is that it's a close representative of what you're trying to measure. If it's warm enough to melt a significant portion of ice, it's warm enough to spoil your food. I was thinking of some sort of canary that would trip if power turned off, but that would only tell you if the power ever went off, not how long it was off. No sense wasting a fridge full of meat if the power was off for a few seconds. A clock that requires electricity but displays the time mechanically with a date on it would also suffice, as you could measure the delta between what it displays and what the time really is (accounting for normal inaccuracies).
chime 15y ago
At my old programming job, people would come up to me all the time asking if I could write programs to automate business processes. One day someone called a meeting to discuss a new software system that would help prevent incorrect box labels from being stuck on finished goods. She explained that the problem was that label designs change frequently and sometimes older, expired labels get used instead of the new labels. Mistakes like that are expensive to rectify and though we have many failsafes in place (lot tracking with expiration, multiple QC inspection stages etc.), the only surefire way to prevent errors would be to compare the customer-approved "Master" label for each production job with one of the printed sticky labels before a job starts. Her group's suggestion was that I build a simple system that maintains an electronic catalog of all the Master labels for all the production jobs, and before each job is run, a production employee would scan in a sample of the printed box labels. Then my system could do its magic and let the employee know if the Master label matches the printed label. If so, they can continue with production. As I listened to their request, cogs were already starting to turn in my brain: CRUD system to manage Master labels, versioning for each label, preassigning Masters to specific jobs based on customer approval, scanning labels from the manufacturing area, graphical diff. with auto-orientation matching, and documenting/validating this entire system. Hmm. Let's see if there is an easier way. Me: Why can't the production employees compare the labels by just looking at them? Her: Because sometimes it's just a few sentences or design elements that change. It's easy to miss and has happened a few times. Me: Who provides us the Master labels? Her: The customer. And we make it a part of the production paperwork well-in-advance and get it approved by the customer so there is never a mixup on the Master itself. Me: Sounds logical. How are the sticky labels printed? Her: Depends. We may print them ourselves if it's just a few hundred or get them printed by label vendors for large quantities. We may reuse them in multiple jobs and so may warehouse them for future use. Me: So before every production job, someone goes to the warehouse, looks for a stack of printed labels in the racks by Item# / Bin#, and brings them back to the production room? Her: Yes. And that's when errors happen. They might bring back the wrong version of the label and not realize it. Or people in the previous shift might have returned unused labels into the wrong bin etc. Me: OK. So just to recap, our production team can get the correct Master label every time because it is part of the paperwork already approved by the customer, but errors happen because there could be 10 very similar versions of the same label in the warehouse and the employee might pick the wrong one. Her: Correct. Me: One way to prevent such errors would be to add Version# to every lot of every label item we have in the warehouse and have the barcode scanners block movement of incorrect versions, however that requires a tremendous effort of data-entry, programming, and training. Her: Absolutely. That's why we just want to compare the Master with the printed samples automatically. Me: What size are these Master labels in? Her: Centered on regular 8.5x11. Me: And the printed labels are also centered on 8.5x11 and same size as the Master labels? Her: Yes. Me: What if the prodution employee photocopies the Master label to a transparency sheet and overlays it on the printed labels? I know we have copiers in the area. silence everyone looks at each other and nods in agreement Her: That'll work. Thanks everyone. Let's get some lunch.
F_J_H 15y ago
Reminds me of this story: http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-at-the-edges/ http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-a... A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down the supermarket don’t get pissed off and buy someone else’s product instead. Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using some high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighing less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done. A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money well spent!” – he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report. It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. It should’ve been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren’t picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good. Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before it, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin. “Oh, that — one of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang”, says one of the workers.
chopsueyar 15y ago
Cannot wait for the IPO.
romaniv 15y ago
This goes to show that a good designer or engineer is not just someone who "solves the problem", but someone who considers alternate solutions and solves the problem in the most efficient way that is practically feasible. Unfortunately, it's often the case that no one thinks about it until the "default" way of solving the problem becomes pretty much impossible to use.
daedhel 15y ago
This is true, unless the move to technology was a way to control the results of the poll...
zwieback 15y ago
Oregonian here - all our voting is by mail, no technology needed to route voters.
orofino 15y ago
Interesting, reminds me of a practical exam we had in intro to programming class that was taught in Java. We were asked to implement a FIFO data structure class with methods push and pop (something along these lines). We'd just learned about OO principles and extending classes the week before. After reading the task for the practical I nervously raised my hand, "Would it be acceptable to just extend array list and create methods just named as described but using the existing methods?" The teacher kind of looked at me blankly and said yes. I was the first person finished, no one else apparently thought of that approach. I'm not a programmer, but given that we'd just discussed this days before it seemed like an obvious solution...
- mmatants 15y ago
  The exam was probably mostly about the algorithms involved in managing FIFO data. Whether you extend an array list or create a custom class wrapping a buffer does not change the algorithm. Hence the blank look from the teacher.
  - Jach 15y ago
    Keyword there being exam. I think that's a great approach for a high-enough level course; that is, let the students do whatever they want with whatever language they want in the assignments (hard to generalize a build-test-diff system though for submissions), then test concepts on the test. I have a friend in a Python intro whose assignment was to make a program encrypting user input with the Caesar Cipher and (optionally) decrypting, and optionally supporting ROT13 as well. I'm pretty sure the teacher wanted them using ord(), chr(), for loops, etc., but the solution I suggested after my friend tried that way is much simpler: import string normal = 'abcd...ABCD...' caesar = 'defg...DEFG...' caesar_table = string.maketrans(normal, caesar) reverse_caesar_table = string.maketrans(caesar, normal) msg.translate(caesar_table) # for encryption msg.translate(reverse_caesar_table) # for decryption Add in string.ascii_letters, string.ascii_uppercase, string.ascii_lowercase, and collections.deque (for string rotation) to generalize the alphabet sets, it was all very simple. And used a completely different 'algorithm' of a translation table that's done in C and performs super-fast, easily handles non-ascii characters (since the translation just leaves them alone), easily generalizable to whatever simple encryption scheme, etc. Of course my friend doesn't want to learn programming therefore everything's complicated and she doesn't remember anything and even after 6 months which ends in a couple weeks I doubt she could do FizzBuzz. :(
lwhi 15y ago
Isn't this how most polls work? At least, AFAIK, they work this way in the UK.

249 points by alxp 15y ago

It's refreshing to see a non tech solution every now and then. As technologists we have to learn when and when not to apply technology solutions. This just happens to be one of those cases.

troymc 15y ago
This is a minor quibble, but I'd still call paper "technology." It wasn't so long ago that paper was an expensive technology. The question isn't whether or not to use technology. The question is which technology to use.
- rgoddard 15y ago
  Plus the technology involved in storing, organizing, formatting and printing the data. This is more an example of an effective use of technology to solve the problem. Plus it serves as a reminder that the system to be created extends beyond just the computer.
niels_olson 15y ago
One of my roles is reviewing the medical notes of independent corpsmen on Navy cruisers and destroyers. I assess everything from black ink to the quality of their differential diagnosis. Most of the corpsmen use one of the electronic documentation systems. From one of my reviews yesterday: "Nothing like handwritten notes: efficient & more pleasant on the eye. In future, focus on setting lowercase letters __on the line__ so the ascenders don't get lost among shorter letters floating away."
- igrekel 15y ago
  Part of the fun with reading written notes is that you can evaluate the care put into writing the note from the handwriting. Its much harder to appreciate when its electronic.
tzs 15y ago
When I took the intro digital logic course at Caltech in the late '70s or early '80s, the textbook had a chapter at the end called something like "The Engineer as Dope Pusher" that urged engineers to not get carried away by technology. An example he gave was designing a timer for a clothes dryer. The user needs to be able to specify how long to try the clothes. The dryer should run for that long and stop. The standard solution was a mechanical timer. It had a dial. The consumer turned the dial to the appropriate time, the dryer started, and when the timer ticked down the dryer stopped. Engineers were starting to replace these with digital solutions. The digital solution was a lot more fun for the engineer. He'd get to design some circuitry, maybe use a microprocessor. He'd need a power supply for the electronics. He could have buttons and a nifty LED display. Maybe have preprogrammed drying times. That's a hell of a lot more fun for the engineer than to just specify sticking some commodity mechanical timer in there like his father and grandfather would have done. However, the mechanical timer is cheaper, easier to build into the dryer, more reliable, and easier to use for the consumer. There is no advantage whatsoever to the consumer or the dryer company in using the custom digital solution--it serves no purpose other than the entertain the engineer who designs it.
- whatusername 15y ago
  If the custom digital solution looks newer/fancier/better on the showroom floor then there is an advantage to the dryer company.
- lurker19 15y ago
  How does a mechanical dryer handle wrinkle-free mode, where the dryer runs for one minute every ten to avoid letting wrinkles settle? Or handle a mode where the heat is on high for 15 minutes to evaporate water, and then switches to low or no breath to avoid bleaching the fabric. Analog does not scale with complexity nearly as well as digital.

dhughes 15y ago

Good idea, not everything has to use a computer just because we have them. It's only 150 sheets of paper too it's not like it's reams of the stuff (it's just about 1/4 of a ream) otherwise people would be tempted to use a laptop to be 'green'. Local guy makes it to HN. And I'll be voting in October.

orangecat 15y ago

The building I work in installed a kiosk as the office directory. Normally there's a screen saver running; after touching the screen you get a static list of the 10 business occupants and their floors. I'm not convinced this was the best use of resources.

timerickson 15y ago
...but boy, oh boy is that screensaver interesting!
bostonvaulter2 15y ago
Does it show ads?
pavel_lishin 15y ago
I love those things. Whenever I'm bored in a lobby, I try to find the secret "admin" link, and see if the address is the security code. Long story short, there's a couple of buildings in Addison, TX that might still have "The Guild of Calamitous Intent" working out of a non-existent penthouse.

Bud 15y ago

Whoa. That paper stuff could really catch on! Perhaps someone could print a Bible on it. (editing this comment after downvoting to add content, and my apologies for being sarcastic and content-free): Effective data presentation, graphic design and such are technology. Showing all the data at once is often much more effective than hiding it in an invisible database.

ctdonath 15y ago

Worth recalling "The Breakfast Food Cooker" http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/toaster.htm http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/toaster.htm

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jcarreiro 15y ago

Why not just have everyone vote on their iPhone?

mikle 15y ago
If you are really serious, does that mean that the county must provide iPhones to those that <GASP> don't have one?
- jcarreiro 15y ago
  I was being a bit facetious, yes. But voting electronically would solve this problem, assuming that you could trust the voting software! Public terminals could be provided for citizens without computers/smart phones/netbooks/tablets/implants/whatever.
  - jcarreiro 15y ago
    Just curious: am I being voted down for suggesting that a society use electronic voting? If so, oh, the irony!
    - archangel_one 15y ago
      I imagine you've been downvoted (not by me) because it was an overly simplistic answer - it's obviously not as easy as "have everyone vote electronically". The various debacles with voting machines over the past few years have shown that you can't simply assume the software is trustworthy, let alone having people dialling in to vote on their own phone. And the point of the article was that more technology may not always be the best solution...
  - rimantas 15y ago
    The problem with electronic voting is that you cannot have both anonymous and trustworthy voting.

mkramlich 15y ago

paper & pencil can handle exceptional cases and ad hoc formats much better than software, that's for sure. one reason I still love notebooks like Moleskine, and blank scrap paper. Old tech: it's cheap and Just Works (tm).

thebooktocome 15y ago
Moleskine is hardly cheap.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  depends on perspective cheapo paper notebook: $1 Moleskine: $10 iOS device: $200 - $700 plus opt $30-100/mo (forget cur rates) Yes, I know you can do more with an iPad/iPhone, obvious, but there is some overlap and paper is arguably better in certain common use cases. Always use the best tool for the job. And I have way greater confidence that the content of my Moleskines will be around in 10 years, than the content of my iPhone/iPad/PC/Mac. And no company can shut me out of it.
  - thebooktocome 15y ago
    I'm certainly not arguing that iPhone/iPad is better. I have cheapo paper notebooks from ten years ago. I don't understand how Moleskines are better.
- pyre 15y ago
  That was just an example. Scrap paper was also mentioned, but I see that you ignored that.
  - thebooktocome 15y ago
    Probably because there aren't cults devoted to free marketing for scrap paper.
cschmidt 15y ago
I like Field Notes notebooks. Their just the right size to fit in your back pocket, so you always have it with you. http://fieldnotesbrand.com/ http://fieldnotesbrand.com/

T-hawk 15y ago

The professor for my software engineering course in college posed a problem with a non-tech answer similarly. You have a cabin in the woods, with electricity and a freezer. You go hunting and bag a deer with much more meat than can be used in one visit, so you freeze it for use on a future visit. But you want to know while you are away if the electricity fails for any length of time so that the meat may have thawed and spoiled. After the class spent most of a period arguing over remote monitoring systems and temperature sensors and the like, the professor revealed the simple answer. Freeze a block of ice in the freezer and mark its height. If it is shorter when you return, the power was out so some of it melted.

stonemetal 15y ago
Ice evaporates, how do you tell the difference between evaporation and power outage? Sure there should be more loss in the case of an outage but you don't know the exact evaporation rate to expect. Your computer has a setting on whether or not it should turn back on after power loss, build a low cost circuit that does the same(turns off in case of power loss) and you are done.
- starwed 15y ago
  You probably don't care if power is only out for a few seconds, though. Ice evaporates, but a large block will take quite a while.
  - Splines 15y ago
    .. and the nice thing is that it's a close representative of what you're trying to measure. If it's warm enough to melt a significant portion of ice, it's warm enough to spoil your food. I was thinking of some sort of canary that would trip if power turned off, but that would only tell you if the power ever went off, not how long it was off. No sense wasting a fridge full of meat if the power was off for a few seconds. A clock that requires electricity but displays the time mechanically with a date on it would also suffice, as you could measure the delta between what it displays and what the time really is (accounting for normal inaccuracies).

chime 15y ago

At my old programming job, people would come up to me all the time asking if I could write programs to automate business processes. One day someone called a meeting to discuss a new software system that would help prevent incorrect box labels from being stuck on finished goods. She explained that the problem was that label designs change frequently and sometimes older, expired labels get used instead of the new labels. Mistakes like that are expensive to rectify and though we have many failsafes in place (lot tracking with expiration, multiple QC inspection stages etc.), the only surefire way to prevent errors would be to compare the customer-approved "Master" label for each production job with one of the printed sticky labels before a job starts. Her group's suggestion was that I build a simple system that maintains an electronic catalog of all the Master labels for all the production jobs, and before each job is run, a production employee would scan in a sample of the printed box labels. Then my system could do its magic and let the employee know if the Master label matches the printed label. If so, they can continue with production. As I listened to their request, cogs were already starting to turn in my brain: CRUD system to manage Master labels, versioning for each label, preassigning Masters to specific jobs based on customer approval, scanning labels from the manufacturing area, graphical diff. with auto-orientation matching, and documenting/validating this entire system. Hmm. Let's see if there is an easier way. Me: Why can't the production employees compare the labels by just looking at them? Her: Because sometimes it's just a few sentences or design elements that change. It's easy to miss and has happened a few times. Me: Who provides us the Master labels? Her: The customer. And we make it a part of the production paperwork well-in-advance and get it approved by the customer so there is never a mixup on the Master itself. Me: Sounds logical. How are the sticky labels printed? Her: Depends. We may print them ourselves if it's just a few hundred or get them printed by label vendors for large quantities. We may reuse them in multiple jobs and so may warehouse them for future use. Me: So before every production job, someone goes to the warehouse, looks for a stack of printed labels in the racks by Item# / Bin#, and brings them back to the production room? Her: Yes. And that's when errors happen. They might bring back the wrong version of the label and not realize it. Or people in the previous shift might have returned unused labels into the wrong bin etc. Me: OK. So just to recap, our production team can get the correct Master label every time because it is part of the paperwork already approved by the customer, but errors happen because there could be 10 very similar versions of the same label in the warehouse and the employee might pick the wrong one. Her: Correct. Me: One way to prevent such errors would be to add Version# to every lot of every label item we have in the warehouse and have the barcode scanners block movement of incorrect versions, however that requires a tremendous effort of data-entry, programming, and training. Her: Absolutely. That's why we just want to compare the Master with the printed samples automatically. Me: What size are these Master labels in? Her: Centered on regular 8.5x11. Me: And the printed labels are also centered on 8.5x11 and same size as the Master labels? Her: Yes. Me: What if the prodution employee photocopies the Master label to a transparency sheet and overlays it on the printed labels? I know we have copiers in the area. silence everyone looks at each other and nods in agreement Her: That'll work. Thanks everyone. Let's get some lunch.

F_J_H 15y ago

Reminds me of this story: http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-at-the-edges/ http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-a... A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down the supermarket don’t get pissed off and buy someone else’s product instead. Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using some high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighing less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done. A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money well spent!” – he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report. It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. It should’ve been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren’t picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good. Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before it, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin. “Oh, that — one of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang”, says one of the workers.

chopsueyar 15y ago

Cannot wait for the IPO.

romaniv 15y ago

This goes to show that a good designer or engineer is not just someone who "solves the problem", but someone who considers alternate solutions and solves the problem in the most efficient way that is practically feasible. Unfortunately, it's often the case that no one thinks about it until the "default" way of solving the problem becomes pretty much impossible to use.

daedhel 15y ago

This is true, unless the move to technology was a way to control the results of the poll...

zwieback 15y ago

Oregonian here - all our voting is by mail, no technology needed to route voters.

orofino 15y ago

Interesting, reminds me of a practical exam we had in intro to programming class that was taught in Java. We were asked to implement a FIFO data structure class with methods push and pop (something along these lines). We'd just learned about OO principles and extending classes the week before. After reading the task for the practical I nervously raised my hand, "Would it be acceptable to just extend array list and create methods just named as described but using the existing methods?" The teacher kind of looked at me blankly and said yes. I was the first person finished, no one else apparently thought of that approach. I'm not a programmer, but given that we'd just discussed this days before it seemed like an obvious solution...

mmatants 15y ago
The exam was probably mostly about the algorithms involved in managing FIFO data. Whether you extend an array list or create a custom class wrapping a buffer does not change the algorithm. Hence the blank look from the teacher.
- Jach 15y ago
  Keyword there being exam. I think that's a great approach for a high-enough level course; that is, let the students do whatever they want with whatever language they want in the assignments (hard to generalize a build-test-diff system though for submissions), then test concepts on the test. I have a friend in a Python intro whose assignment was to make a program encrypting user input with the Caesar Cipher and (optionally) decrypting, and optionally supporting ROT13 as well. I'm pretty sure the teacher wanted them using ord(), chr(), for loops, etc., but the solution I suggested after my friend tried that way is much simpler: import string normal = 'abcd...ABCD...' caesar = 'defg...DEFG...' caesar_table = string.maketrans(normal, caesar) reverse_caesar_table = string.maketrans(caesar, normal) msg.translate(caesar_table) # for encryption msg.translate(reverse_caesar_table) # for decryption Add in string.ascii_letters, string.ascii_uppercase, string.ascii_lowercase, and collections.deque (for string rotation) to generalize the alphabet sets, it was all very simple. And used a completely different 'algorithm' of a translation table that's done in C and performs super-fast, easily handles non-ascii characters (since the translation just leaves them alone), easily generalizable to whatever simple encryption scheme, etc. Of course my friend doesn't want to learn programming therefore everything's complicated and she doesn't remember anything and even after 6 months which ends in a couple weeks I doubt she could do FizzBuzz. :(

lwhi 15y ago

Isn't this how most polls work? At least, AFAIK, they work this way in the UK.