Natural disasters

We humans think that we can control our environment, but as the recent cold and snowy weather has confirmed, this is certainly not the case. Trucks de-icing the roads with salt have been busy, but, horror of horrors, a lack of planning and foresight has meant that the UK government has enforced rationing to ensure that the salt does not actually run out. Surely, it would not be that hard to build a proper forecast for the salt supplies, the drivers and the equipment to ensure that this situation is not repeated?

However, the inconvenience of icy roads pales into insignificance when compared to the effects of the earthquake in Haiti. This impoverished country has experienced a disaster that has left thousands of people dead and vast numbers homeless. This is a real disaster. Help is arriving from many countries, but much was delayed by blockages at the airport in Haiti. Specialist rescue crews with electronic devices for detecting people buried in the rubble were unable to reach their destination losing precious hours.

When they finally arrived, along with teams from many other countries, who was able to coordinate their activities with others? They had no system for helping them to create the coordinated response. Also, like most complex activities, there are multiple stages to the international response. The initial activity is search and rescue. This can last up to 2 weeks, after which time, the odds of finding anyone alive drop dramatically. The next stage is the recovery activities where bodies are recovered and identified. Then comes clearing and rebuilding. Of course, during all this, medical support needs to be provided as well as the basic necessities of food, shelter and water.

The cost of failure in these operations is massive with disease, starvation and dehydration being major killers after the initial disaster.

So often, following this type of aid operation, there are questions asked on how the ‘process’ can be improved. Let me share with you my thoughts: How about establishing a central control mechanism with the skills and the time of the individuals being used to maximum effect. With tasks allocated to individuals based on their skills and location and the initiation of these tasks coming from the field. Included in this can be the equipment and any special supplies, so that when the teams turn up, they have everything they need to be productive.

I wonder if anyone has looked or considered creating an overall scheduling/dispatching system for the disaster relief efforts? This could help in many different ways, including being able to identify any required skills or equipment. This may even be able to help the general population outside the disaster zone, who rather than just watching helplessly and only being able to offer money, could potentially sponsor specific activities. This could be the sponsorship of specific parts of the aid and medical operation through to reconstruction.

We all applaud the efforts of all the aid workers and the people salting the roads, but I think that we could make their work even more effective with a coordinated planning and scheduling system.

Author: Hugh Thomas-Davies

Thinking ahead three moves...

While flying on recent business trip I discovered the pre-loaded chess game on my new MacBook laptop. I was a reasonably good player in my teens but play only occasionally as an adult.

I clicked on the program icon, selected White and made my opening move. The computer didn't beat me. It quickly, efficiently and ruthlessly destroyed me. Game after game. While losing the game was not a surprise, how quickly the computer gained a significant advantage in position, pawns and major pieces was a shock.

I realized I was struggling to analyze two moves ahead and the computer was easily at 3+. The difference in performance was huge. The other key difference was the computer took roughly 4 seconds to analyze and select its next move.

Dispatching field service teams efficiently is far more complex than chess. As with chess, at a certain point of complexity a human dispatcher simply cannot match the analytical and optimization capabilities of a well designed schedule optimization program.

If anyone wants to test that hypothesis, playing the MacBook Chess Program might be a good place to start!

Author: Doug Pauly

Just for a change, a good service experience!

This Christmas, among other things, my parents asked for a fold away reading lamp…not the most exciting of presents sure, but it was Christmas and I was happy to indulge them! My Dad had found the lamp they wanted on Amazon, and conveniently sent me the link so I could buy it for them.

So, I logged on to the site and within a few short minutes the order was placed and my confirmation email popped into my Outlook account. Job done. That seemed easy enough; it was battling Oxford Street in the snow and avoiding the crowds of last minute shoppers that would bring the biggest challenge!

So, a few days before Christmas, everything was wrapped – the lamp included – which by the way, came in such a large box that I used about 3 rolls of paper on it! I was ready for the festivities to come.

Christmas morning, my parents eagerly opened the giant box and began to build the fold away reading lamp. Within a few short minutes the lamp was built and standing up...at a bit of angle. Plug goes into the wall socket…no light. So, disappointingly, the reading lamp had a bent stand, hence it stood at an angle, and a broken bulb. What a pain!!

When something like this happens, I’m prone to a small overreaction, something along the lines of “Oh great! Things like this always happen to me, its ruined Christmas and it’ll take forever to sort this out because I bought the gift online”. However, it was Christmas day, so I managed to exercise some restraint (for once) and calmly said “Ok, I’ll look online and see what I can do”.

So, there I was Christmas day morning, logging on to Amazon ….I could think of better things to be doing on Christmas morning! Anyway, so I log in, go to my order and fire off a short, somewhat curt email about my broken lamp and how dissatisfied I am with this service. Thinking to myself, well I’ll get the ball rolling and probably get a reply in mid January.

To my surprise, and sheer delight if I’m honest, I received an instant reply, apologizing for the poor service – this wasn’t an automated reply, I received a genuine email from a customer service employee. Amazon had already re-ordered me a new lamp and arranged for DHL to come and pick up the broken lamp first thing on 29th December. I even had the tracking code for the DHL package to be picked up, and the code for the new lamp sent out!

As promised, DHL arrived bright and early on 29th and picked up the broken lamp. What a result! The new lamp should be delivered before the end of the week, and I have high hopes that Amazon will deliver a fully operational, upright lamp this time.

Although Amazon made a mistake initially with their quality control, my positive service experience has turned an otherwise bad opinion into a very positive one! Amazon were entirely customer focused, even on Christmas Day! Because of their prompt response and ability to effectively deal with my problem, I would be very happy to recommend them and use the site again.

Here’s to a 2010 full of positive service experiences!

Author: Anna Lawler

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Back in 1966 The Beach Boys asked ‘Wouldn't it be nice’ if we were older. I bet it would – if we could do that just for a short while and then return to our original surroundings. But here are some more thoughts –

Wouldn’t it be nice to calculate how much it would cost to provide our customers with 2 hour time windows instead of 4 hours?

Wouldn’t it be nice to understand how many new employees you need to recruit in order to introduce a new line of service?

Wouldn’t it be nice to know whether you should approve a vacation request or not, making sure that your service level does not go down?

Wouldn’t it be nice to foresee the expected customer demand in the upcoming year and be able to plan accordingly?

Well – it is nice. Once you have the ability to automate scheduling, forecasting and planning, you also have the ability to test case scenarios and see ‘what happens if…’

What does automatic scheduling have to do with the ability to foresee how a change of the appointment window could affect the business? Well that’s easy – an automatic process can be used to simulate different scenarios and compare them. It can also be used to tune the configuration so that it fits the ever changing business goals.

Integrated automatic processes, starting from forecasting, going into planning, then scheduling and/or rostering and finally getting into analyzing the results provides you with the ability to foresee how a new line of service might impact the bottom line. As the Beach Boys said, “Wouldn’t that be nice…”

Author: Omer Meshar