Operational Controls are Worthless if They Aren’t Maintained At approximately 5 pm on Monday 22nd June 2009, a Washington Metro train heading towards Shady Grove smashed into the rear of the train ahead of it. The Automatic Train Control system had instructed the train to travel at full speed (55 mph). When the driver of […]
People Trump Technology
Poverty Nepal is one of the 30 poorest countries in the world. In the fiscal year 2015-6, the average weekly income was 1,556 Nepalese Rupees. That’s about £10.50. Agriculture forms the base of the economy. Two-thirds of the population make their living from farming. The industrial and commercial sectors are also based on agriculture; processing […]
Are You Too Clever for Your Own Good?
I travel a lot with work. It is not glamorous. I’d love tell you that when I said I was in K.L. I meant Kuala Lumpur, but unfortunately it is far more likely to be Kings Lynn (for those of you who are not from the UK, Kings Lynn is sometimes, albeit unkindly, referred to […]
Can You Make the Right Decisions?
Decision-making is hard. So hard that we pay people handsomely to be professional decision makers: Doctors Underwriters Bank Managers Tax Inspectors All of them make their living by taking complex ill-defined situations and making decisions. Unfortunately they don’t always decide the same way If you put two professional decision makers in a room at the […]
How I Lost My Job
A while back I worked in a call centre. It was a big call centre, thousands of people worked there, talking to customers. But not any more… First we mitigated the work, we removed all the rework and mistakes and backlogs, we got rid of all the things that went wrong Second we automated the […]