Preventing overheight trucks from crashing into freeway overpasses.

This was a blog post that was going to start out as criticism, but as time has progressed, the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation has addressed the problem admirably and taken the wind out of those critical sails, so you will get to hear the story of what they did to improve the quality of one of BC's freeway overpasses to prevent accidents and protect infrastructure.

The story



In the 1960s, the overpasses above Highway 1 were built to similar design and varying clearance.  Perhaps in those days it was inconceivable that trucks would stretch 4.4 Meters (almost 15 feet) into the air, or perhaps years of additional paving shaved inches off of that clearance.  Whatever the case, we find clearance signs with various "heights" recorded on most of the overpasses East of Vancouver 4.6 Meters being the most common I've observed.

 

[caption id="attachment_565" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Overpass Clearance (one of many)"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_566" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Overpass clearance - 2"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_567" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Overpass clearance - 3"][/caption]

Year before last, some surprised trucker plowed into the Glover Road freeway overpass Eastbound on Highway 1 in Langley.  That particular overpass was a little lower than some of the others, so conceivably he might have driven quite some way before having his big rig stopped (the hard way).  The damage to the overpass was significant enough that traffic on Glover Road was reduced to 1 way alternating traffic for the several months it took for repairs.

I'm sure someone in the Ministry of Transportation thought "Wow, that was shocking, that guy's truck just hit the overpass.  Hope that doesn't happen again..."

Last year, another surprised trucker plowed into the same Glover Road overpass.  Same damage, same road closure with alternating traffic.  The repairs made one side of the overpass solid, presumably to lend additional strength to the bridge (under siege).  Since that second repair, there have been additional precautions taken, which together have formed a system to try and prevent this from happening again.







 

[caption id="attachment_569" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Overpass under siege (repaired again)"][/caption]

Preventing the collisions

 

First there were 2 signs positioned further up the road on either side which re-stated the clearance information printed on the bridge.  With advance warning a trucker could conceivably stop before hitting the bridge.  The signs used bright contrasting colours to draw attention.

 

[caption id="attachment_570" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Bright clearance signs (with enough room to stop)"][/caption]

 

Next, a bunch of yellow and black reflective signs were added to the bridge to draw attention to the bridge.  

So if a trucker was overheight, knew he was overheight, read the signs, did the math and stopped in time he could avoid hitting the bridge.  But what if he didn't know he was overheight? 

A series of bright yellow warning / informational signs were deployed, starting with a sign warning trucks to use the right lane for the overheight detection system. 

 

[caption id="attachment_571" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Truckers Keep Right for overheight detection system"][/caption]

Then the overheight detection system which triggers a flashing overhead sign that would warn when a truck was overheight.

 

[caption id="attachment_572" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Glover Road Overheight detection system uses beams (of light) when interupted, flashing signals are triggered."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_573" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="When flashing give that overheight truck that isn't stopping lots of room"][/caption]

 

Then a small pull-out was built where trucks could pull off the freeway to check their loads.  It had a large bright yellow "pull-out" sign for easy identification, and a series of bright yellow signs warning that the pullout was approaching.  At the pullout there is an informational sign intended for those who have used the pull-out (my eyes are good, but at 100km/h that font is too small even for me :-) ) 

 

[caption id="attachment_574" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="overheight truck pullout ahead"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_575" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="overheight truck pullout ahead (getting closer)"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_576" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="overheight truck pullout NOW! (no seriously, NOW)"][/caption]

 

 

 

So now overheight trucks can be detected and "flashed", and there is an illuminated pullout available for these trucks.  Assuming that works and the driver notices he is overheight, this challenge remains for a driver who is overheight.  He either needs to back up the freeway for 2-3 miles, or he needs a crane to unload him so he can drive underneath the bridge.

Now the Ministry has added a "detour route" informational sign West of the 200th street interchange in the same bright yellow colour, warning drivers of overheight vehicles to detour off of the freeway.

Good job guys, hopefully we don't see another accident at that freeway overpass like the last two.

 













The unmeasured cost

Glover road was reduced to single lane alternating traffic next to a university on the main road leading from Langley to the Albion ferry crossing (on the Fraser river).  Thousands of people had to wait each day while traffic changed direction to cross the freeway.  This took them away from their families, their jobs, their volunteer engagements.  This time was simply lost.  Add to that unmeasured cost, the construction costs and the real cost of not putting signage up after the first incident becomes more apparent.  The albion ferry is reported to have moved about 4,500 people per day, so this number would be reasonable for forming an estimate. Assuming a 1 minute delay for 4500 cars per day for 180 days (2 years 3 months out of service each year), with commuters earning $25/hour, the inconvenience could have cost citizens. $337,500 over 2 years.  That number will never appear in a government balance sheet, but it is a cost that was paid by citizens, and it is a cost we may be able to avoid paying in the future thanks to the improvements brought by the Ministry of Transportation.

 

[caption id="attachment_577" align="aligncenter" width="336" caption="Traffic congestion HWY 1 Eastbound"][/caption]

 

I find it ironic that the train bridge overpass to the East of Glover Road (bearing scars from previous impacts) is even lower...  We'll wait and see if that has been taken into account. 

[caption id="attachment_568" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="The "even lower" railway overpass to the East (notice the repairs from past collisions...)"][/caption]









Cheers,
Greg 

Bad Design

Things are designed for their beauty, their cost, their useability and sometimes just for fun.  It is surprising how often we come across things that seem badly designed given the possibility for greatness in design.

At my work we have all struggled to use our very beautiful entry doors.  They are polished and shiny with hidden hinges.  They are completely symetrical, so that from either side of the door, the door appears the same.  So we are all pushing and pulling when we should be pulling and pushing.  I expect some designer won an award for the doors, but it wouldn't be a useability award.  Here they are:



My co-worker tackled the challenging doors with an office labeler and some discretely placed hints that have so far not been disturbed by the interior design police.



Sometimes the ingenious methods people come up with to deal with bad design are as enjoyable as good design would be.  How many cents did it take to solve the design problem. 5?

In this next photo, can you spot the problem with the card swipe instructions here:



Thats right, the diagram adjacent to the cardswipe indicates that the magnetic strip needs to be on the left...  BUT in the digital image on the right, the orange screen clearly displays the magnetic strip on the right.   Left? or Right?  Well I assumed the hardware was more closely tied to the diagram attached to it and believed the diagram.  "wrong!"  It was the digital image on the orange screen that got it right.

Now how many thousands of dollars go into deploying something like a gas pump, and how many people reviewed the design etc. before it got to me the customer.  (And how many thousands of people a year have to re-swipe their card because of this bad design?)

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did, I'll post more as I find them, so be sure to check back.

Cheers,
Greg.

Good Design and Open Design

I'm speaking generally in this article and not attempting to show too much favouritism, but I am painting history with a pretty broad brush so I appreciate your accomodation of that. 

 

[caption id="attachment_534" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="IBM clone PC"][/caption]

IBM PC vs Apple Hardware

Until recently the "IBM PC" has absolutely killed more proprietary hardware (like Apple products) in affordability. 

Our family owned a Laser 128 apple clone, but apart from that we have over the years owned 1 TRS80, 2 386s, 1 486, 2 Pentiums, 1 Celeron, 1 Athlon64, 2Athlons, 1 zeon  AND zero apples.  Now this is with all the exposure to Apples in the school system (hence the Laser 128)

There was only 1 "Apple" computer company making hardware, but there are many many computer companies building "IBM clones".  We could purchase a 386 for $1500 or we could purchase the same computer from Apple for double the price.  IBM decided to "open" the form-factor for their IBM PC so that low cost manufacurers overseas could "clone" or copy the hardware without paying licensing fees or battling an army of lawyers.  Suddenly this meant there were 5 -10-15-20 soundcard manufacturers, and 20 video card manufacturers, and 10 hard drive manufacturers and 40 Motherboard manufacturers all able to design compatible products and compete on features and price.  While Apple design has remained compelling, it is like Ford's model T. "Any colour you like as long as it is black".

I attended a wedding a few years ago and listened to a man chatting at a table who had worked for IBM for years comment; "It's really too bad that IBM opened up their PC design, they could have made a killing if they had just held onto that and not let others use their design and build components".  He missed it.  He didn't understand that it was precisely because others could have the blueprints that we had commodity computers and incredible demand.  (Understand there is high demand for affordable computers, and very little demand for unaffordable computers) 

Open Standards let us cooperate and work together

There are lots of smart people out there.  They don't all do things the same way, we have chaos or war unless people can agree on how to work together.  that is why we have "standards".  Those attempts to get everyone playing by the same set of rules so we can work together.  Some examples;

• A green light in traffic means...?


• In my country we drive on which side of the road?


• A Meter is exactly how long?


• Do you use POP3 or SMTP for receiving or sending email?


• Are you reading an HTML web page right now transferred by HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)?

So standards are smart right? They allow people who are willing to negotiate or compromise to choose a common method (often it is not the "best") but it is reasonable for the greatest number of people who are willing to collaborate.

Open versus closed design

Some silly companies think that cooperating with others reveals "weakness".  They think that they are smarter than everyone else.  They think everybody should do things their way and they work hard to avoid cooperating with others.  Lets call them "big brothers" because they like to be in charge of the customer and remove choice.  Here the 2 philosopies collide.  The collaborators and the "big brothers.  Collaborators try to make things like software and file formats work with others including "big brother's.  The "big brothers" work hard to obscure and continually update their formats to make them difficult to copy.  Big brother is all about control.  Ironically Apple chose imagery from 1984 for their 1984 Superbowl ad where they were urging people to break free from the IBM PC. ROFL!  OK, when it comes to file formats, there are many "big brothers" out there.   Kudos! It was a brilliant Ad anyways Apple! (as was this um... "modification")

 

[caption id="attachment_532" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Big Brother knows best!"][/caption]

Office document formats and the battle for useability

For years, Microsoft's office formats have been the only game in town.  MS Word, MS Excel etc.  If you try exporting to another format, they you "lose features" and the docs never did look quite right.  Microsoft is no longer the only game in town, but they are holding on hard to the idea that they know best, that cooperation is not as good as being uncooperative inovation.  Every version of Microsoft office introduced new formats that would not work with the old versions of the program (or would not work well).  In order to make things work, you would have to "upgrade" to the new version.  (Now there was nothing wrong with the old one, its just that Auntie Sue bought a new computer that had the new version and now  you can't read what she writes..)  So pull out your wallet and pay money every year to be able to continue doing the same things you did last year.  That is how the "big brothers" make your life. Expensive and difficult.

Enter the giant killers.

Open Office has been looming on the horizon for years.  Their converters for MS Office documents have been getting better and better.  Now you can use free software that works pretty much as well as the MS Office programs, and it can convert to and from those formats.  Open Office saves you paying hundreds of dollars to Microsoft, and new versions address the version issues Microsoft creates.



Google has created an online system called Google Docs that allows you to create, upload, edit and download documents online. No software other than your web-browser is required, and there is a a high level of compatibility with other office formats.  

These companies are making your life easier, more affordable, and are being open and transparent about their formats so that  you have fewer hassles.  Their "open design" is translating into "Good design" and putting money back in the wallets of people who have been paying "rent" on their software for far too long.

Observations on Mexican Transportation

For those of you who know my passions, you will recognize the sparkle in my eyes since traffic is the topic.

I couldn't believe my eyes as we left the Cancun International Airport.  A divided highway with overhead lights on the median.  Not only in the city , but in the country stretching for many kilometers.  The highway was well marked, well signed, well maintained and in most ways as safe as any other north American Highway.

 

[caption id="attachment_503" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Good Highway in Mexico South of Cancun"][/caption]

 

Illuminated LEDs embedded in the roadway guided vehicles to merge.  it was impressive even if this tourist highway was not typical of highways elsewhere in mexico.

This highway was a "1/2 freeway" not Interstate standards, but pretty close.

The highway was limited access, had some at grade crossings as well as overpasses.  Also seperating it from freeway standard was the provision of the uturn "retournos" where traffic could exit the fast lane, turn around and enter the opposite fast lane.  The roadways in mexico often use metal speedbumps embeeded at different interfals where traffic is expected to stop for a police check or an at grade intersection.

 

[caption id="attachment_505" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mexican Police checkpoint"][/caption]

 

I noticed other modes of transportations in cities.  Playa del Carmen had more scooters than I'm used to.  and more bicycles.  Playa had dedicated bidirectional bicycle lanes seperated from traffic by a curb.  Practical tricycles pedalled by union tricyclests carry many local deliveries.  

Taxis (Playa is a tourist area) are plentiful as well as busses and collectivos.  The taxis were similar to anywhere else except for the reputation that Mexican taxi drivers have for being daring.  Taxis are not metered there, so negotiate your price before you get it and pay when you get there. 

The busses are like the greyhound or charger coaches seen in Canada and USA.  Plush seats, airconditioning, TVs, curtains (some seatbelts).  Taking a 20 minute ride between towns cost only $1.80 which is a bargain considering a similar trip would cost $5-15 in Canada.  It seems that those busses run very regularly.  Hourly or every 15 minutes.  In Canada you are lucky to get 1/2 a dozen busses in a day.  So as a Canadian I can't help feel like we are being ripped off here.  A poorer country like Mexico can make nice regular cheap bus service an option? (Maybe everybody owning a car up here has made that a difficult challenge for the operators here?) I wonder what I'm missing here?

Mexico has something special I haven't seen elsewhere in North america.  Collectivos are 15 passenger vans that operate somewhere between bus and taxi.  Heading down the freeway they will pick up people who need a lift as long as there is room left.  When full, the collectivo will travel at alarming speeds to get you to your destination and it becomes more like a taxi at that point, leaving main roads to drop you at your destination.

 

[caption id="attachment_504" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Collectivo"][/caption]

 

Those are the neat observations I made about Mexican transportation.  Thanks for listening, I'm glad I could share some of the things that impressed and surprised me.

Peace
Greg.

We need to Plan and Build Roads Better

I love the freeway.  I get on it, I drive as far as I want and I get off.  It isn't like some of the other roads we have around here.  You know the ones where you stop every block or two because there is a single car pulling out of some mini-mall.  In fact there are some pretty hillarious roads around here.  One of them is the "Langley Bypass".  Historically most of the vehicle traffic going through Langley travelled on Fraser Highway, which was 1 lane in each direction with businesses down both sides of the street (the typical downtown for a small town).  People on Fraser Highway were stopping at stored, looking for parking, backing out of parking spots and basically making this road a very poor choice for anything other than shopping.  A plan was designed to bypass langley (appropriate name).  As a provincial highway it connected Fraser Highway to itself, bypassing the city as well as connecting to glover road 200th street, the route to the ferries.  With 2 lanes in either direction, it moved traffic quite well.   At first.  Then the township decided to allow zoning all along the bypass for shopping.  3 starbucks, countless restaurants, RV dealerships, audio video stores, and of course we will need some traffic lights to let the shoppers in and out.  So rather than this area being a "bypass" to allow through traffic to flow efficiently, it became a traffic magnet attracting more vehicles, and disrupting the flow of the traffic.

What happened?  The planners forgot what they were doing.  They forgot the purpose of the road.  To "bypass" Langley.

Often there will be a visionary who will present a great idea like a "bypass road" if it remains true to its vision it works well. BUT somebody always wants to make plans work for their own interests.  The land owners won't make as much money selling farmland as they would selling land with potential for "retail development"... so they lobby government to change the zoning.  If the city / municipality doesn't have a zoning plan (or doesn't stick to the plan) "good luck".  If we could stay "on vision" we would have roads that performed their designed function well, instead of doing a mediocre job of many contradictory functions. 

Freeways work so very well because they are "limited access" (You can only get on or off at certain points), because they have no "at level" intersections (meaning the traffic can carry on at speed despite the presence of other roads crossing), and they are built to a very consistent standard (meaning the road is predictable in signage and design).   Can you imagine if Freeways started having pedestrian crosswalks installed? or if a business was forced to have their driveway onto the freeway?  It's the wrong road for those purposes.

We need to classify our roads, and we need to build them to meet their function, and protect them from those who would dilute their function.

From my limited experience I'm familiear with the following types of roads;

• Residential


• Collectors


• Non-Commercial Arterial


• Commercial Arterial


• Limited Access


• Highways


• Service

You look for a Residential street when you are ready to buy your first house and you are ready to settle down and have children, you want to avoid a "busy street".  You are essentially choosing to avoid living on a "collector" or "arterial" road.  A road fit for the purpose of living on.

Collector roads have more traffic and bring folks in from residential areas to the higher speed roads that actually go someplace.

Non-commercial Arterial roads are urban roads that act as the main routes for carrying traffic through a city.  Their focus is on the efficient flow of traffic through a city.  If you want to go somewhere quickly get on a non-commercial arterial road.

Commercial arterial roads provide easy access to businesses, with mini malls, mom and pop shops, big box stores and any number of opportunities to stop your car and spend your money.  The flow of traffic is less efficient because of the abundant access to businesses.  If you want to buy something get on a commercial arterial road. 

Limited access roads  such as free-ways, seriously limit where traffic can get on or off, which makes for very efficient travel on these roads.  This is why the freeway moves so well, there is little turbulence from new traffic entering, and in this case, no interference to the flow of traffic caused by traffic lights.  I remember a number of years ago, the embarassment that was expressed in North Vancouver, that they had the only traffic light on the transcanada highway. (It isn't true, there are traffic lights along the highway in towns like Golden BC or Revelstoke BC, but perhaps North Van was the last in a developed urban area.

Highways allow for travelling further, without significant business or residential access, but they often do allow more access to collector roads. 

Service roads provide a unique function with highways.  Where highways come into town (like in Rocky Mountain House AB) "service roads" are employed to provide access to businesses such that the function of the highway isn't impaired by the business access.  Its a smart idea.

Understanding why Business Frontage is only of benefit sometimes

When a motorist wants to get from point A to point B in a timely manner, Business frontage or access on the streets the motorist drives on, has no advantage for the motorist or the business owner.  For the business owner, he is NOT a potential customer.  For the motorist, the buesiness access just slows things down by congesting traffic and introducing more traffic lights where he needs to wait on his trip.  So a word of wisdom to the cities and municipalities that consider introducing commercial development on non-commercial arterial roads. Don't. The old fashioned idea that business frontage is good for property value and taxes does not hold on these roads.  It is a compromise of the road's primary purpose which is to move traffic efficiently.  That thinking only holds when you are considering a commercial arterial road.  In Abbotsford, there is an commercial arterial road called "South Fraser Way" which has shopping malls and auto centres, and strip malls, and car dealerships, and it is a place where people go to buy things.  Maclure is a non-commercial arterial road in Abbotsford which stretches almost the entire length of the city, with almost no commercial at all.  It is limited access (every 1/2 mile or so, rather than every block) and it is 2 lanes with a median.  It is the most efficient road in Abbotsford for travelling across town and a testament to the prior city leaders who had the vision for a road with no drive-ways.

The different types of roads above look different.  residential and collector are likely to have sidewalks, arterial might, but limited access, highways and service are unlikely to have sidewalks.  Speed limits are different too.  A commercial arterial road should have lower speed limits than a non-commercial arterial road that is limited access.

I see anomolies.  Perhaps someone is working on our behalf to keep things simple, but in our cities, a standard speed limit of 50 Km/h applies unless it is otherwise posted.  South Fraser way is a major 2-3 laned commercial road with a speed limit of 50, and my small dead end residential road full of young families with children has no posted limit meaning that it's limit is also 50. This does not make sense.  Perhaps there should be a sliding scale based on road classification;

• Residential 40 KM/H


• Collector 50  KM/H


• Non-Commercial Arterial 60  KM/H


• Limited Access 70-100  KM/H

Now I'll introduce you to a radical idea of which I am quite an advocate... Ready?   Roads are for driving on.  They exist only to move people from place to place.  They are not for parking or any other purpose.  They are to provide space for people to move from one location to the next.  With the context of this truly revolutionary idea the next points will fall into line.

The idea of allowing car parking on roads is silly.  Regardless of what has happened in the past, why do we need to build roads 4 lanes wide just because somebody decided to leave their car "out" on the street?  We see car parking on some commercial. arterial and collector roads as well as  residential. The idea that people view this as a right rather than a privilege, that people don’t consider whether they have space to park a car before they buy one is bizarre.  Since the roads are built with your tax dollars, and you are forced to go work to earn that money I think this should be a point that is dear to you. In progressive countries like Japan, you need to prove that you have room to park your vehicle before you are allowed to purchase one. (Smart)

In Canada we have very wide lanes.  Our lanes are much wider than our vehicles.  Most vehicles will have an extra 1-2 meters of space beside them in their lane.  Its hard to estimate exact distances while driving on the freeway, and no I'm not walking out there with a tape measure.  We also (at least in the lower mainland of BC) have this annoying habit of making roads wide enough for 2 lanes and then not putting lane markings on them. So where you could safely have people passing each other allowing for a smoother flow of traffic, you have this ambiguity.

Or there might be times where you want to restrict people from passing to make a safer stretch of road, or where you could have a bike lane that is then swept clean where bikes would be safe to travel with less interference from cars. Often there is just a single lane and then there are 2 lanes, with no sign or warning. the dotted lines come out of nowhere, making the road and the traffic on the road unpredictable and therefore less safe. Plus if you need to increase the capacity of a road, a can of paint is a pretty cheap way to improve your road’s carrying capacity.

So this post feels like a plane circling in the air looking for a place to land, and I think it will have to be a work in progress.  It holds some examples of the need for design, but isn't really a comprehensive treatment... yet.  

Share your ideas in the comments below.

Greg.

 

 

Trucks in Rush-Hour Traffic

Today was the "most exciting" carpool moment in commuting I've had in the last 6 years.  Following a flatbed semi with a double trailer I noticed a pilot truck down the bank in the center of the freeway with the driver standing in the bed of his truck.  Just then the truck in front of me locked up his brakes, producing clouds of smoke while his trailers tried to stop with the cab.  Fortunately reactions kicked in and the other drivers and I were able to get stopped without incident.  As the adrenaline worked its way out of my system I thought again that there must be some ways to make our roads safer by controlling how trucks and cars share the road.

The truck ahead of me was driving in the fast lane, and had been for 7 miles...

[caption id="attachment_475" align="aligncenter" width="369" caption="(flickr credit: C.P.Storm)"][/caption]

The good and bad of Professional truck drivers

I have a love-hate relationship with the commercial truck drivers on the road while I commute.  

For the good, they are generally better drivers than the people in the cars.  Professional drivers often don't get the consideration they deserve (which would make their jobs easier and less stressful).  Because of their experience, training and the weight of their trucks, they tend to be patient and less impulsive. They perform very well in traffic and goodness knows many of these drivers are being watched with the "1-800 watch my driving" stickers and GPS logging.  Sitting higher in traffic they often have better perspective than other drivers.  Truck drivers are often proactive in traffic, using their rigs to smooth out traffic, turning potentially dangerous stop and go traffic into steady traffic (which queueing theory leads us to understand should improve the overall throughput of the highway).  Often they can administer a unique kind of justice with the massive size of their trucks, returning the shoulders to their intended purpose from the "impromptu kamakaze right hand passing lanes".  The professionalism is necessary because of the greater responsibility truck drivers have to keep their heavy vehicles and heavier loads from squishing families in mini-vans.  

Normally "truckers" are great, but there are certainly a percentage of truckers whose impatience, indifference to human life, or incompetence regularly puts the lives of other drivers at risk.  One day a truck travelled all the way from 176st in Surrey to Mt lehman in Abbotsford in the fast lane, which is a distance of 35 Km, then got out of the fast lane to exit the freeway.  I've seen poorly adjusted brakes for empty or full trailers result in an impaired ability to stop in time.  I've seen trucks blowing tires and not even noticing (or deciding that stopping isn't their best option) despite the obvious risk of flying steel belt radials on the freeway.

I'm interested in what strategies could be employed to make our roads safer within the bounds of our current transportation infrastructure. 

 

Recording devices to help drivers obey traffic laws

I recall seeing on a trip to Europe that commercial buses and trucks at that time had a recording device (some use paper disks) which tracks the driver's speed, stops, breaks, sleep and other items relevant to safe vehicle operation.  In any participating country, police can ask to see the record (paper disk), and can fine the driver for any infraction in the last 3 days, regardless of which country the driver was in when they committed the offence.  It is remarkable to observer how obediently the trucks and buses follow the posted speed limit and other regulations.  An environment is created where the rules apply whether there is a police officer in attendance or not, and as the driver of our tour bus explained, the fines imposed by automated systems like red light cameras, follow the license plate and then the driver themselves.

Most trucks I see on the freeway are driving close to the posted speed limits, others (like the dump truck with trailer that passed us doing about  140KM/H) need to be fined out of business and off the road for the safety and reputation of the other "good" drivers.  No I didn't get the license because it was covered in mud. 

 

Treating Trucks Differently

First of all; Trucks ARE different.  Trucks are;

• slower to accelerate or climb a hill.  In rush hour traffic, trucks appear to be the rocks in the stream with the cars being the water flowing around them.  


• more intimidating if they choose to use their size and weight to "force" a lane change where it really shouldn't take place.


• generally travelling farther than other traffic


• more likely to throw rocks up at car windshields than other vehicles. (I suspect tire tread and weight is a factor)


• prone to kick up far more spray (reducing visibility) on wet roads, in rain storms and in loose dry snow


• big and reduce visibility by blocking the view of vehicles travelling behind them. 


• heavier, harder to stop and much more deadly if they


• driven by drivers who typicaly have more training and experience than the rest of us.

I've observed three really useful strategies for "treating trucks differently";

1. The first strategy I've see involves encouraging trucks to use some roads and cars to use others.  Many cities have signs indicating "truck routes" and other signs indicating that only trucks making local deliveries are allowed on certain streets.  In industrial areas, where corners are wider to allow for the special turning needs of the trucks, cars are the minority.  Because cars and trucks typically don't mix, many of the issues that emerge when they mix are avoided.


2. The second strategy I observed in Washington, Oregon & California, where they have a lower speed limit for trucks.  The trucks are in the right hand lane (except to pass) abiding by a speed limit which is adequate, but 5-10 miles/hour slower than the cars.  There is something predictable about trucks being on the right while other traffic flows past on the left.  This ensures excellent visibility for the cars because the trucks are not impeding their vision.  


3. The third strategy I observed was in Germany on statutory holidays like "Fathers Day" when law requires that all transport trucks be off of the roads.  "It is because so many more people are travelling for the holidays was the explanation offered by our bus driver".  Every road side pullout or rest-stop was full of trucks, pennants draped across the front windows, drivers discussing European Football and catching up on sleep.  

[caption id="attachment_476" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="(flickr credit: austrini)"][/caption]

Perhaps those strategies have their place in British Columbia in the Lower Mainland.  I think that our current highways require trucks and cars to use the same roads to go to the same places, so separate routes may not currently be feasible.  While a lower speed limit for trucks might help trucks behave more predictably, I know all too well what happens when one driver gets stuck climbing a hill...  everyone tries to pass, and here there are only two lanes so the problem snowballs and both lanes slow right down.  It won't be a complete solution to our problem.  I think however that the third solution might have merit if it were applied to rush-hour.

A suggested solution for improving rush hour traffic on the #1 highway in the lower-mainland is to create a time when cars can move without having trucks on the road.

In the past 40 years zero lanes have been added to widen the freeway.  Our capacity to move traffic has not grown with the population and the traffic.  Peak load on the freeway (6-8AM and 3-5PM) occurs because people must arrive at work within a limited time-frame.  The absense of truly viable transit or any form of commuter rail in the South Fraser corridor means commuters are in cars. We must reduce the number of vehicles travelling on the freeway during rush "hour".   The transport of many non-perishable goods in many cases is date sensitive and not time sensitive.  Did the lumber arrive at 7PM or 3PM?  It is still usable lumber.  So truck traffic in many cases could be loading and unloading "at the dock" during rush hour, and then hitting the road as the commuters come off of those roads.  If we were to regulate that commercial trucks could not be on the road during those hours, suddenly the "truck/car" dynamics would be gone and the roads would be largely homogenous and less full.  Clearly there is more definition work to be identified.  Where do the in-coming trucks "wait" if they arrive from outside the lower mainland? Chilliwack from the East or South Surrey from the USA?  What trucks if any are exempt.  are the 3ton cube trucks fine, but 18wheelers are out?

This may not be the idea that solves the interaction of commuters and heavy trucks during rush hour in the lower mainland of BC, but we need to do something... maybe several things to make life more reasonable for car and truck alike, in the interests of safety and efficiency.

Thanks for listening.  I'm interested to hear your ideas.

Greg.

Crying Wolf in Traffic

When we cry wolf in traffic, we desensitize drivers to real dangers and real warnings and reduce the overall safety of traffic.

Growing up I was told a fable about a bored little shepherd boy who "cried wolf" to amuse himself.  The townsfolk responded quickly, coming to the boys aid only to learn there was no wolf.  Several times he played this game and each time the townsfolk rushed to the field to defend boy and sheep.  At last a time came when there was a wolf, but no willing townsfolk to answer the boy's cries.  For the little boy who cried wolf, was the threat real? not at first.   There was no wolf, until he had consumed the good will of the townsfolk.

Crying Wolf in construction zones

We see the same principle of crying wolf applied in traffic warning signs located at construction zones.  Now I'll start by stating that being cautious around construction workers and  construction zones is important.  Where it gets silly is when the warnings stop protecting workers and instead start desensitizing people and effectively teaching them that the signs don't mean what they say.

[caption id="attachment_354" align="aligncenter" width="240" caption="Construction Zone Warning Fines Double"][/caption]

 At 3 AM in the middle of the night on the weekend when there are no construction workers around, the construction speed zone sign applies just as much as it does in the middle of the weekday when workers are just feet away from the roadway.  So when there is no obstacle or risk to workers, the signage causes motorists who would normally drive 110 KM/H must slow to 80 KM/H although the road may be clear, safe and intact.  Do you think the public can continue to take the warning signs seriously?  I suggest to you that we are not doing these workers the justice of making the construction zone safer during work hours because we wear on the patience of motorists with unreasonable demands. One such work zone is on the Transcanada highway near Abbotsford which has been in place for about a year, while a freeway improvement was being made.  A year of reduced speeds?  (where full speed still seems safe)  It is silly to stretch our warnings to cover too much time.

We also do a disservice to these workers by exagerating the area where speed must be reduced. Often in BC, 1-2 KM before the construction zone, there are signs telling drivers to drop their speed by 30 KM (20 below the limit since the limits in BC seem to be arbitrarily about 10KM/h too low and most drivers compensate.)  So you drive for 2 KM at that speed limit until the “real” construction zone begins.  As you drive slower, everybody is piled up on your bumpers because nobody else is willing to obey the ridiculous speed reduction.   If I drive at the reduced speed, before, during and after the construction, I impede the flow of the other drivers who (reasonably) are not slowing.  Likely I'm contributing to an increase in their frustration and that makes the roadway less safe, not more safe. Most drivers know that the sign isn't to be taken seriously, even though there is an accompanying sign saying that "traffic fines double in a work zone", and another flashing sign warning that "speed limits are strictly enforced" (which they aren't) It is another lying sign. I know they are not enforced, it is another rule with no teeth. The police are never there when I go by, pulling over the entire freeway to give it a ticket. STOP LYING!

So too many of these warnings exagerate the danger in area and time. A reasonable person looks at these warnings and they disregard them  as silly.  I’ve watched ambulance drivers, truck-drivers, Police officers and normal commuters all ignore the “STRICTLY ENFORCED CONSTRUCTION SPEED ZONE” and drive 110 KM/H through the 80 KM/H.  In fact the other day there was a whole freeway of us driving at 110KM/h in an 80 zone, nobody flinching or looking guilty, nobody checking nervously for police officers. These freeway commuters have been completely desensitized to the speed limit signs and just don’t believe them anymore because the signs are not reasonble.  I imagine that they must be set by some beaureucrat who has never seen how wide and straight and flat this highway is, or how little construction there really is out here, who is out of touch with reality. One of the signs I saw today was a bright orange diamond shaped construction sign, saying “warning no lane markings!”. I drove past that sign on a road that bore, probably the finest lane markings I’ve ever seen, crisp and clear and bright, not confusing in the least. I drove for kilometer after kilometer after kilometer over these new lane markings. It doesn’t make sense that thousands of dollars would be spent on painting the markings on the lanes, only to leave up the warning signs.  The irrelevant sign clearly needed to come down the night the lane markings were painted. Construction signs in particular tend to be irrelevant in this area. “Sign Management” does that have to become part of the project manager’s job? Is it already? It doesn’t make sense to start saying something unless we know when to stop.  It doesn't make sense to overstate the danger.  Just looking at how people drive indicates how ineffective the signs are. (and should be if they are unreasonable).

Crying wolf in school zones
Here is another example. All summer long I see school zone signs warning motorists to slow to 30 KM/H. but I know that school zones are only in effect on school days, but school days are not during the summer unless “summer school” is in session. But how would a member of the public who did not have a child in summer school know which schools had a summer school running and which didn’t? A law abiding citizen who wants to stay on the right side of the law would have to drive 30 KM/H through every school zone year round just in case a summer school was in session. The same problem extends for the rest of the school year when there are professional development days when the students are not in school. The average commuter has no way of knowing that this is a day when the school zones are not in effect, whereas the 16 year old driver who gets the day off would know this and would drive 50KM/H through the school zone. This is a case of special knowledge.  Not enough information is available for the driver to make an appropriate decision. The people have to obey a warning, that really doesn’t apply, they have to drive 30 KM/H just in case the school zone is in effect. How simple it would be to make the principal of the school (who could certainly delegate this) responsible for covering the signs on days when no school is in session. Issue the principal some heavy burlap sacks with zippers he could use, or make the sign hinged, so it could be locked open or closed.

Another traffic oddity I’ve seen in school zones is those “extra” bright yellow little plastic bag signs handed out by the auto insurance companies, which are posted in school zones as children head back to school. Saying “Drive Carefully” “School Zone”. The problem is not with handing these out or setting them up when school is back in session in September, those are great ideas, the problem comes when they get left up all year long and they mean nothing, or even worse, when the school principal and all the teachers have grown so incredibly numb to these signs, that when the school breaks for summer holidays and there are no children at the school, they continue to leave the signs up throughout the summer, only to replace them with new signs when the students actually return to school in the fall.  (You can't make this stuff up!)

Crying wolf at the local Thrift store.

Now not related to traffic I saw something similar the other day in a Christian thrift shop here in Abbotsford. There was a sign there warning about the security camera that was recording people and that shoplifters would be prosecuted.  As I looked around at the $0.30 teacups and other discarded items that had been donated. I thought this was ridiculous, who would prosecute anyone for stealing such low value items? Then I looked carefully at the camera, and sure enough it was one of those fake cameras you can purchase at a novelty store with some silly name l ike “view all” or “sky eye” or something. Cheaply composed from plastic. The sign was an attempt to scare people to do the right thing. There was no means of enforcing it, and it was a Lie! “DON’T STEAL OR WE WILL VIDEO TAPE YOU”, well you aren’t going to video tape me, so don’t make that threat.  How about you just say “Don’t steal”. In the case of a Christian thrift shop perhaps the sign should have read; “If you need something just take it” since that would fit more with Christian charity and giving to someone who is in need.

We need to be asking ourselves these questions; "Is the warning reasonable?", "Is the threat real?".

Conclusion

When I ask you to do something for me and you do it because you honestly believe you are helping me, I’m relying on your good will to meet a need. Now if I keep asking you and you keep helping me because you believe it is benefiting me, this is good, we have a healthy relationship and there is trust. Now if you find out that I’m asking you to do something I don’t really need, but I’m just amused by watching you serve me, or I’m too lazy to stop you when I don’t really need your help, then you will get tired of helping me, and rightly so. This is what is taking place on the freeway. The whole “enforcement side of things” would not be necessary at all if we could ensure that we are not abusing the good will of people.

Thanks for reading, maybe you will find yourself in a position to offer an unreasonable heavy handed warning and you can instead offer something more reasonable.  Maybe you put up construction signs.  The point is that you can make changes to improve the world we live in.  This is about improving things for all of us, because we’re all in this together.

Thanks,
Greg. 

Honda videos on Quality and the Future of Transportation

Honda has some beautifully produced short films addressing quality issues in production.  They consist of a series of exerpts from interviews with quotes from Honda engineers as well as others you might recognize for their vision for the future like, Orson Scott Card.

There are 3 short films ranging between 6 and8 minutes with the following themes;

• How "failure" is the secret of success


• How "Kicking out the ladder" pressures teams to achieve more


• Visions of how Mobility will look 80 years from now  (no it's not all rocket cars and jet=packs)

It's encouraging to see a large corporation thoughtfully discussing important issues like quality and sustainability.  My cynical side sees this simply as effective marketing, but we have certainly enjoyed Honda quality when we owned one of their cars.  Enjoy the informative eye-candy.

Have you seen other really well produced videos on Sustainable living and social issues or Quality and excellence in design that you would recommend?  Let me know in the comments.
Greg

The Customer is always right (but rarely consulted)

In my work as a business analyst, I often find that the customers have pretty good insight into what needs to be done. The vendor, the IT people, and the man signing the cheques all have insight to offer, but the customer needs to be consulted.

Maybe this is why I find shopping so amazingly frustrating. I hate having my time wasted, I hate jumping through hoops that should never have existed, and I am surprised at how incredibly resistant many companies are to simply taking the hard earned money I try to give them.

Shopping carts
Studies have shown that a customer who is handed a basket upon entering a store will tend to purchase more, than a person who has to balance all their purchases in their hands. Enter the shopping cart. Studies also show that a 120lb lady managing 2 kids, rushing to prepare a fancy dinner for guests who are arriving in 3 hours, is 62% less likely to go postal and blow up the grocery store if you put a cart in her hand. One kid goes in here, another “helps” push, the groceries go in here, and she accomplishes her mission on time. Now if a shopping cart increases a customer’s spending while they are at the store, why would stores resist allowing customers to use the carts? I know it sounds crazy, but in my town (I’m sure this doesn’t happen elsewhere) some of the stores have actually “locked up” the carts. They force people to use a round “key”, actually a coin like a quarter or a “Loonie” (In Canada that is our 1 dollar coin) to unlock the cart. Yes you get your quarter or Loonie back, so it isn’t that they need the money from the cart rental… Someone suggested that it was to keep homeless people from taking the carts away. I reject this suggestion as nonsense because $0.25 is a pretty good price for a $180.00 shopping cart. Homeless folks can do math pretty good for the most part and that is an amazing deal. The only solution I can come up with is that the store doesn’t trust you to bring the cart back, and they don’t want to have to send their employee out to collect the cart. (Thanks for assuming that I’m lazy and self absorbed you corporate beancounters). They figure that they will charge you a $0.25-$1.00 cart return fee for not bringing your cart back. Because they know that a student working for $7/hour for 12 hours ($84 dollars) costs them far more than 500 customers who would have purchased one more $4 item ($2000) so you see here they have saved themselves -$1916 which makes the accountants proud because any time you can cut costs by a negative number that reduces revenue, and we all know that revenue is taxable. YECH! taxes.

So enter me… Credit card guy… I pay with my CC I don’t carry cash. NONE! I drive to the store, I get out I look for the carts, and see them lined up with shiny silver chains shackling them together… “Hey do you want me to spend money for 1 jug of milk or 4, because carrying 16 litres (5 gallons for my United Statesian friends) of milk in my arms is ridiculous”? So I do what any self-respecting person would do. I grab one of the carts with the baby seats on top, or one of the extra long kiddie carts that looks like a plastic truck with a shopping cart attached… (they don’t fit with the other carts so they can’t be locked together.)

OR

I go to another store like WALMART which does not lock up their carts because they are smart AND interested in my money. (this is not an endorsement of Walmart, I’ll criticize them for different insanity later).

OR

I go to customer service to learn that I can purchase a “key” to unlock the carts for $1. Now what is the point of letting me buy a key to unlock the carts? If it removes the $1 fee for me not returning the carts.

Ever get the sense that the carts are locked up because the cart salesman was on commission and just happened to be selling the cart locks as well? Let me finish this section on shopping carts with a reference to my favourite store to criticize (because it is so easy). Stupid Store typically has their carts located half way through the parking lot. (half way from the road to the store-front) The really smart people in the crowd will realize that this is a dumb idea because it forces people with “good” parking spots (like the folks in the disabled parking spots) to walk out to the middle of the parking lot to get a cart, which they must then push past their car to the store. After shopping, they drop their groceries at their car, and then walk to the middle of the parking lot to get their $0.25 back, and then walk back to their car to leave. In my town Stupid Store built parking under the store (they built the store higher) which I must admit is a really GOOD IDEA because it reduces the footprint of the store and parking lot, and protects the people and cars from the rain we “enjoy” 6 months out of the year here on the West Coast. So the shoppers have to walk under the store (if they parked out in the front lot), pay their money, and push the cart up a ramp which changes direction half way up.

Cluttered Messy Impassible Aisles
It is comforting to think I am smart, to come up with an idea that most people don’t come up with and to benefit from this. Like realizing that walmart closes at 10PM and starting my shopping at 9:30 because most people have left the store and I can FLY through my shopping.

Except in the evenings at Walmart a funny thing happens. Pallet Jacks (wheeled contraptions for moving wooden pallets loaded with every thing from M&Ms to Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs.) start dumping pallets of product in the aisles as if to begin the transformation of the Walmart store into a warehouse overnight. It is irritating to head into an aisle only to find the exit from that aisle blocked with a pallet (reverse….) but that really isn’t so bad, we keep getting told that everything Walmart does is so that they can offer us low prices (which allows people in sweatshops to enjoy a higher standard of living?).

If you’ve ever been in a new Walmart store and then revisited that store 2 years later you will notice a significant difference in the level of clutter visible in the store. The Aisles are designed to be wide and easily navigated (like the nice aisles in the Target in Bellingham Washington). The aisles have different flooring or painted stripes at the side to clearly indicate where the aisle starts, so it isn’t that the store managers have become confused about where the products should be displayed. It appears to be intentional. Walmart managers or VPs or whoever look at those wide clean uncluttered aisles, and they don’t see happy shoppers free to pass without a micro-traffic jam, they see lost retail space. So rather than making the Aisles narrower, they insert “displays” in the centre of the aisles creating 2 narrower aisles with equally narrow spaces between the displays. What this creates is rows of shoppers pushing carts who can’t see other shoppers nearby (the displays typically extend above eye height). With all the little spaces between the aisles, customers start behaving like they would in traffic, they turn, they merge, they make U-turns, they park in the traffic lane etc. So Walmart regains some precious retail space, and Walmart shoppers regain the traffic headache they had before arriving at the store. They can have traffic headaches outside AND inside the store.

What was otherwise destined to be a pleasant spacious shopping layout, now in atmosphere headed slightly closer towards most dollar stores in terms of cluttered crammed aisles. Congratulations you Walmart bean counters, you’ve taken a great layout and converted it into a mediocre layout. Which probably isn’t actually as frustrating as trying to pay for your purchases at the checkout.

Take my money take my wallet take my credit cards
This phrase is normally associated with an armed robbery where a person wisely decides to let a thief take over his credit card debt rather than risk personal injury. It is also a phrase I’ve found myself (almost) saying while in line to pay for “goods and services” at Walmart and other establishments. Near the place where I work there is a restaurant named WhiteSpot. (previously cleanliness was a value, but the name stuck) We have on occasion attempted to celebrate someone’s birthday or other occasion at this restaurant. Sure the food takes a while to come, but it is ok and we eat it happily enough, what comes next is where the real pain is. Paying can take 15-25 minutes as people queue up with credit cards in hand and servers are hunted down to provide “guest cheques” and impatient overfed diners try to give the business their money. Now if you are as hard working as me, you feel a bit uncomfortable taking an hour for lunch with the entire office, much preferring to munch something from a brown paper bag that allows you to only take 30 minutes for lunch. But after taking 1 hour for lunch, to be forced to stand around for another quarter hour before being permitted to pay for your lunch is ludicrous. Anyone who has run a business or taken a first level business course will tell you about the business cycle, and how the ultimate goal of the exercise is to collect money from the customer you have served. But there you go, they know you won’t run away without paying (the police eat there too). You are stuck with their food in your gut, and you are on the hook. The “girl” keeps wandering away and talking to people and the line of people shifting from one foot to the next with their Credit Cards in hand, sigh and “act Canadian”, and try best to pass the time by thinking up reasonable explanations for their absence from their desks. “We were on a corporate teambuilding experience requiring both stamina and professional conduct… We were… trying to give an unwilling business owner our money”

What the silly WhiteSpot people don’t realize (in their foolish ignorance of what is important to a professional during a lunch hour), is that they have missed out on many many lunches since that time. (at $10 each with 20 people, easily they have missed $600 in sales from our department alone, and I don’t eat out very much!). All for the sake of saying “Suzy, stand here. do not move. Take peoples’ money very quickly so they can leave and other people can have their seats.”

So there you go. oversimplified maybe, but it would seem that there is no end to the apparent shorsightedness of businesses in the interactions they have with their customers.

Menu board madness (AKA: Can I take your order)
I like eating at Wendys because the burgers don’t taste as fat and the vegetables (while anemic looking) are fresh. I’ll order 2 bacon cheesburgers and a water and I’ve come away with an affordable experience I’m willing to repeat almost indefinately (if I wasn’t determined to not eat fast food very often). Last week, we were going bananas with our kids and I decided to treat my wife to “not having to prepare lunch” we pull up at Wendys and look at the menu board (you already know what I’m going to order I’m a creature of habit). The menu board is located right at the speaker where you place your order (-1 point for Wendys) , so the girl tells us she will be with us (1 point for Wendys). Now we are sitting there looking at the options, the pictures, the deals, the fries, the drinks, the prices. We continue browsing the menu as the line of cars grows behind us and we notice that there are 2 prices for Meal #8 (-1 point for Wendys). So I order Meal #8 for my wife and insist on the lower price. The “girl” tells me that the computer says I’m wrong. (Did I mention that I build information systems for a living). I finish ordering and pull up to the window to inform them of the problem with their sign. I’m handed a dime because the computer’s price can’t be changed (0 points for Wendys). We get our food and we pull away.

The mistake on the signboard is easy enough to make if you are posting items in multiple locations (do you think that speeds up customers reading your board, or slows them down?) What bothered me is the entire time I’m finding the food items on the board that I want to order for my family, there is a polite line of cars growing behind me. I’m Canadian, we are programmed to feel bad if we make somebody wait longer because of us. The menu board should have been repeated several times prior to the point where we ordered. (we had to sit behind another car which was ordering ahead of us).

Well I’m pretty sure I won’t make it through another shopping trip without something else to contribute to this article, but I’ll post it. Maybe you’ll smile and laugh at these scenarios, or maybe you run a business and can avoid irritating your customers by remembering my experiences. At any rate enjoy. I wonder if I should start offering retail customer experience consulting, because somebody certainly needs to be doing that.

Quality through continual refinement

In improving Quality, continual improvement through the practice of incremental refinement is a powerful approach.

For example, as I drive home I have a route that works quite well. It is the most direct path between two points or the fastest path between two points. As I go along I start to notice things. Hey, people are turning off here, I wonder why or hey, Google disagrees with me and thinks it knows it better route. (Google maps that is, Google doesn’t talk to me yet…) Or hey, I wonder where that road goes it comes out at an intersection and looks busier than the road I took previously. Through experience we don’t become experts at driving down new roads but we become experts driving down the roads that we know. So with each opportunity to observe a contrary point of view each opportunity to experience the effect of plans. We are in a position to improve and to do better.

I believe in continual refinement. Let’s draft a document, present it to some other knowledgeable people and have them critique it. Then lets present it to our customers and have them shoot it full of holes. After each critique and review, we see problems and we fix them, so it becomes better and better and better until we have a really good document. The alternative is to try and get things perfect before we benefit from the insight and correction we might be offered. Producing PERFECT work is the realm of those who fear that the customer will discover they are not perfect.  In producing PERFECT work (which is really just unreviewed work) Those doing the writing will tend to overthink second guess and overcorrect the work in the hopes that it will not fail, this extra “dilligence” will result in an increased cost that may or may not pay off in acceptance by the customer.

So, let’s put it out so the customers can test it.  Every time the work encounters a problem, we hear about it and we’re able to improve our documentation. Things that we anticipated would be a problem, are not.  However those that we never would have anticipated become problems. We let our customers help us achieve quality through continual and repeated refinement.

In the case of a business process that is being refined, where incremental change is possible (and it isn’t always) staff experience less disruption, maintain more productivity and generally experience less stress caused by change.

Some customers I worked with had been drafting some webpages which would represent their department and department’s initiatives.  They had these pages in draft form for 3 years, during which time, none of their customers could read the information they had been thoughtfully compiling.  The information by that point, ironically was out of date and would require updating.  Their desire to get the information absolutely perfect had effectively removed the entire benefit of compiling the information in the first place.

Often in the IT environment where I work, we wrestle with the need for information that should be documeted, but which has not been. Even if we had partial information, outdated information, or incorrect information that would be preferable to NO INFORMATION.  At least partial information gives you a place to start. A contact, a server name, a vendor’s 1800 number.  So I am through my experience a fan of work that is created imperfect, and then refined as opportunity presents itself. 

Well, this document has been sitting in draft for a while, so I’m going to kick it out there.  Maybe though it it incomplete, it will be of some benefit.  Let me know what you think, and I’ll improve it as we go.

Automation is not always an improvement

“I’d go crazy listening to that all day” my coworker said today. She was referring to the repetitive recording that was being ’spoken’ by an electronic motion detecting device at the door to the Sushi shop where we were sitting and consuming sushi. Yes, I added, there is an example of something that doesn’t need to be automated.

Someone who is greeted feels good because you took the time and effort to greet them to extend them courtesy and respect. So greeting is good. The greeting itself may have some value, but it is significantly less value than the reasons or attitude behind the greeting. But, some bright guy thought, hey all this greeting is a lot of work, I need some help, I’ll build a machine to concentrate on making the customers feel good, so I can go on with whatever I’m doing. So you walk in and the machine (decorated as a cat or some such friendly apparition) says “Hello”, and when you leave it says “Welcome” or “Hello”. I tried to determine if the greeting was directional (one greeting upon arrival and a different greeting upon departure), but it wasn’t. In fact if you had thought that the initial greeting was cute, leaving reminded you that it was a ‘dumb’ machine that didn’t care whether you were coming or going never mind pretending that it cared about honouring guests with a suitable greeting. So you can imagine that by the time guests finished sitting on the patio next to this, they were quite clear that their “greeting” was only one of hundreds that day, not special, not meaningful, not even cute.

You like cute? fine, like cute. Go cuddle with your kittens and shake the dust off of your crocheted poodle toilet paper roll cover. Cute has its place, but it needs to stay clear of annoying in my opinion. I think there is an important lesson here that we have the opportunity to grasp. Automating something doesn’t necessarily make it better, particularly if it undermines the very reason for undertaking the activity in the first place.

Thanks for reading.
Greg. 

When I’m not solving problems and thinking about my world, I’m working at improving the Liberty Workorder Management System from Greentree Software which has been cutting our customers manufacturing costs since 2002. We automated the parts that made sense (math) and left the customer the flexibility to make their own decisions about how they work with their data. For example, there is no interface with your accounting system, allowing you to keep the two seperate, relying on clear accessible reporting to provide your staff with the production management and costing information they need without handcuffing you to a 10,000 pound gorilla who will kill you if you make a mistake. No, we don’t like accounting software we use very much either. Liberty is available now to be deployed within your organization. We support the configuration and deployment of our system from start to finish so you can be up and running sooner with the benefits of a work order management system that can help your sales staff quote more effectively. Visit the GreenTree Software website to learn more., we’ll take good care of you.

<re-posted from www.greentreesoftware.ca/blog>

Quality Checks - Why doing them economically is necessary

 Recently we had a problem with our web site’s “feedback form” (details later) which got me thinking about quality checks in manufacturing and how they can be done in a way that is economical.

We need to double check the work we do because often the result we produce is not the result we intend to produce. It is true that if we double checked everything we did, we would be very unproductive. I can imagine as I type this out, double checking that I have located the correct key before pressing it, checking that the key I pressed appears on the screen before continuing on. Stopping after every sentence to reconsider my spelling, my punctuation and my grammar. Pausing after each paragraph to consider whether what I just wrote was in fact what I really wanted to say. It is ridiculous.

There was a time when everything was double checked. The first time I typed I was uncertain of what I typed. I had to find the letters… Now my fingers press words without me even needing to think about the letters in those words. I string ideas together and present them with thought to the content, but not much thought to the mechanics of my writing. This is how learning works for us humans we get better at something and our minds are freed from having to concentrate on the details. Amazing how our brains were constructed this way. Our brains can watch for exceptions and ignore the majority of our activity. Most people will observe themselves doing this while driving. They will say “I don’t remember that part of my commute today, I remember getting on the freeway and I remember getting off, but I don’t remember spending 30minutes on the freeway..”. As a driver when the brake lights come on in front of you, that is your brain’s queue to start paying more attention. The thoughts of your planned California vacation fade and thoughts of reacting appropriately in traffic start forming.

The same is true in manufacturing. We can’t afford to quality inspect every widget we produce (unless they are expensive enough). At the same time we must know if there is non-conformance in our products that needs to be addressed. Much like the typing example we may have QA staff shadow a new hire until they start learning what to watch for. After a while the production workers will be performing their own less official but important QA functions.

But how do we balance the cost of increased quality assurance with the attention QA requires? We can start with some best practices based on experience. First-off testing examines the first piece produced for defects and deviations, what better place to catch these than with the first piece. Additionally we can set up a sampling rate that allows us some coverage for the produced product. If the variance on an operation is increasing during the production run, this can be detected and corrected before it becomes unacceptable.

Also, remember to perform QA on your QA. If everything keeps coming up roses, then your diligence with suppliers, production equipment and staff training and quality ownership are paying off. You can be less intense in inspecting. If however a product or operation shows reduced quality you can be more vigilant.

Now for that personal example that started this train of thought. Much like the driver who is convinced everything is fine on the freeway, I was convinced that the feedback form on GreenTree Software’s website was working fine. I had done a first-off test when it was first set up which worked fine. We had been receiving some spam through the form which sent us form submissions with SPAM content (probably sent by automated scripts). So when we started receiving completely blank form submissions (the brake lights on the freeway) we just ignored them. On a whim the other day I retested the form and promptly received a blank email. Whoops. So to everyone who tried sending us a message I apologize. We did not receive it and have no record of who you are (or we would apologize personally). The broken form has been taken out of service (everyone has email these days). Again I’m sorry. If I hadn’t tested the other day we would still be losing your messages and receiving blank emails. If you tried to contact us using the form, drop us a line via email and we’ll try to make it up to you.

Thanks Greg.

Losing the battle against car theft.

I knew we had truly lost the battle against car theives the day I arrived at the shopping mall and was greeted by a huge banner plastered across the front of the mall crying out “Bait Cars are Everywhere!”. Implying that one of the cars might be a plant designed to trap car theives. http://www.baitcar.com/

I have also noticed how the slogan for the program has changed from “steal a car, go to jail” to “steal a car, get busted”. Clearly they are not going to jail every time.

Technical solutions don’t fix moral problems. Time to drop the technical triumphalism and address the root issue. CAR THEIVES’ HEARTS.

Better versus Perfect, a pattern of change.

I’ve observed a pattern that I want to share with you. It seems important because it is common, and it affects how we view the world around us. Whether we are opposed to change or embrace it. Whether we feel that a change is “enough” or “over the top”.

Now I’m only interested in addressing change that moves us from an undesirable state to a better state. And I’m only interested in addressing change that is intentional, requiring the will of people to accept it and successfully make a change. There is this principle at work, that people tend to look to a perfect state, and if they can’t achieve that perfect state, then they won’t even attempt to improve things at all.

I’ll apologize, this article has been delayed because I’ve been bogged down with examples and keep missing the essence of what I’m trying to capture for you. I see the process like a bell curve. At first we are blithely continuing on doing something harmful. Then there is information introduced that leads us to believe that what we are doing may not be all good and perfect. We resist the idea, we like the status quo, some early adopters start shifting away from harmful activity. Following this there is a less harmful activity offered, and it becomes more popular/accessible to do things the new way, but the new way is still causing harm. Eventually the information, the education and the innovation continue, and people are moved from doing lots of harm, to doing less harm, to doing no harm, to actually reversing the process and undoing harm (repairing cumulative damage from prior activity).

We saw this with the hole in the ozone layer. We were using CFCs and other chemicals that actually caused a depletion of high altitude ozone, which showed up most obviously at the South Pole. Through education about what was going on, we as a global community were able to see harm, see the cause of the harm, make changes to reduce the harm, eliminate the harm and even remedy the harm.

Or take smoking. 50 years ago in North America it was passed off as “sophisticated”, healthy, normal, fashionable, and social. Education about the effects of smoking has been difficult to absorb. People didn’t want to give up their sophistication, their habit, the social aspects of smoking, or their FREEDOM!!! Please someone get me a flag. Even the cigarette companies started “reducing harm” they added filters, bigger filters, reduced tar etc in an attempt to make their products less harmful or decrease the perception of their harm. (How could breathing a carcinogen be bad for me? I breathed it through a paper filter.) Now we have people quitting, and their lungs by wonderful design are actually recovering with the risk of nasty diseases cut by as much as half 1 year after quitting. (We aren’t out of the woods with smoking yet are we?)

Education, publication, and dissemination of information come first. These make qualitative judgements on our actions “smoking may cause cancer” -> “smoking causes cancer” -> “Second hand smoke hurts your children you horrible person”. Now Judgement is a loaded word so lets use the relatively neutral word “evaluation”. An evaluation of a course of action is that it is not beneficial. This is judgement or discernment, or discrimination in the classic sense, but in our North American culture where discriminating shoppers sound horrible and where judging someone’s actions sounds intolerant, we are better off with retaining the idea of evaluating something sans baggage. Nobody likes to have their actions evaluated, and find that the evaluation requires them to change how they are living. But Education and evaluation create an opportunity for change. They show us the door, walking through it is up to us. This education and evaluation is not enough to continue on this pattern of change for the better. There needs to be will as well.

By this point in your life, you are familiar with the resistance of people to change how they do things. Big industry didn’t develop a conscience, they were forced to pollute less by legislation. Very few smokers successfully quit the first time they hear about health risks. There are always explanations for why we don’t change including. It can’t be done, it is hard, it is costly, it is inconvenient, it would hurt the economy, the alternatives aren’t much better, I was born this way, this is my right, and I don’t want to.

Will is essential in making a change. Without will the opportunity to change is merely academic. An interesting theory to be tossed around at the dinner table and then forgotten. The will to improve must stand strong in the face of an entrenched status quo, and in the face of active resistance and even counter-information.

e.g. “The link between human activity and global warming has not been proven” says the senator from the United States who received the majority of his campaign contributions from oil companies… 

Where there is a will, there is a way.  This way can be made easier through innovation (legislation, technology breakthroughs, new mindsets).

Now wanting to do no harm, or receive no harm is worthy, but it takes something more to pull people beyond the point where they stop hurting themselves or their children.  There needs to be a real self-lessness, or a real love that takes place in order to move into the healing phase.  The accountants won’t push us there because they are terrified of the costs of doing more than is required.  The lawyers were satisfied the moment we stopped harming, and are terrified that our attempts to heal could go wrong and cost us dearly. Its the lovers who need to lead this charge.  The idealistic dreamers turned world changers who move beyond “hurting others less” to “not hurting others” to “healing others”.

Lets test out this pattern with a real life example that is bound to have some people plugging their ears and singing “lalala I can’t hear you”.

Our cars consume gasoline that is refined from non-renewable fossil fuels. They produce exhaust that is deadly poison. (If you were to fill a room with exhaust and breath it for a short period of time you would die.) It is a scientific fact that there are a finite number of years of fossil fuels left on earth (http://www.energybulletin.net/659.html), and only a fraction of those fuels can be extracted at reasonable expense. So essentially by driving a gasoline powered car, I’m ensuring that humans consume what little fossil fuels the earth has left. Now the ideal state would be that my vehicle is powered by something plentiful (water) and produces no pollution (clean air). Then I could drive my car with impunity knowing I’m doing no harm (in terms of fuel consumption and air pollution). However, GM, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Chrysler, Mazda and others have not started selling cars that don’t consume fossil fuels or pollute the air. So today at reasonable cost I can’t have the perfect car.

My desire to leap to “perfect” is what makes this change impossible. Were I willing to purchase a car that gets gas mileage / kilometerage? that was twice as good, I could effectively cut my pollution in half, and effectively cut in half my consumption of fossil fuels. Were I able to commute to work with 2 other people, I would effectively cut the pollution from my driving by 2/3 for the days we carpooled. Were I to do both, I could cut my pollution to 1/6 of previous levels. That is a hugely significant change.

Sometimes what blinds us to the possibility of improvement is our insistence on having our cake and eating it too. People think of the 2 weeks a year they spend on summer vacation and insist on purchasing an SUV with lots of “cargo capacity”, which they proceed to drive to work the other 50 weeks a year. (effectively a big empty metal balloon). There is an un-willingness to “sacrifice” (drive an efficient subcompact car), so the improvement in gas mileage becomes negative. I don’t want to carpool with people as that would put constraints on my “lifestyle”, versus I can carpool 1 day per week.  We tell ourselves stories, that are eerily similar to the stories the marketeers tell us, to justify our reluctance to improve and change.

I see incremental change as the best hope of reaching an ideal state. It is slower in terms of total change, but it is easier in terms of disruption, it is easier in terms of economics (consumer and producer).  It is easier in terms of social change and behavioural improvement.  It is far easier to plan a trip to the neighbours than it is to plan a trip to Grandma’s house, but if the neighbour’s house is on the way to Grandma’s house, then the journey in the right direction has already begun.

Do you see places where this pattern of better versus perfect emerges?