Today's Snippet
Currently iam reading Essentials of Supply Chain Management by Michael Hugos and i came across this interesting section. It is about something that used to happen in the days of yore when companies indulged in Vertical Integration.
"In the first half of the 1900s Ford Motor Company owned much of what is needed to feed its cars. it owned and operated iron mines that extracted iron ore, steel mills that turned the ore into steel products, plants that made component car parts and assembly plants that turned out finished cars. In addition, they owned farms where they grew flax to make into linen car tops and forests that they logged and sawmills where they cut the timber into lumber for making wooden car parts. Ford's famous River Rouge Plant was a monument to Vertical Integration - iron ore went in at one end and cars came out at the other end. Henry Ford in his 1926 autobiography, "Today and Tomorrow", boasted that his company could take in iron ore from the mine and put out a car 81 hours later."
This might sound incredible in today's world where every company focusses on its core competency, outsourcing all other activities. Well, the world has come a long way !!

I finished reading Anderson Cooper's book Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival and it was truly riveting. I frequently watch his show on CNN and have pondered over the kind of life journalists of his ilk lead. Anderson compares himself to a shark which has to keep moving to survive. He interweaves his experiences in different corners of the planet with insights into his personal life and the tragedies that probably made him the man he is. The Talk about war, death, disease and destruction in the world he sees, the pain and suffering of the victims in those regions along side his own personal tragedies and losses opens a window into his soul. Suffering knows no language, race, colour or religion. The seething pain, tears, hunger and blood are all the same.
The author launched his career with a fake press id and a borrowed camera. His profession took him to several places including Burma, Srilanka, Somalia, Bosnia- Herzegovina and Niger.He has seen the trail left behind by destruction in its myriad forms, be it Kathrina, Tsunami, famines or civil wars. The book does not go to the root of any problem or offer solutions. It is like a photograph which in addition to the colours, took a snap of the pain and suffering too.
Good book, worth your time and money.

Always Low Prices
As an impenitent Walmart customer, i was amused to read what Michael Hugos wrote about "Cross docking" - an inventory management system pioneered by Walmart. "Cross Docking was pioneered by Walmart in its drive to increase efficiencies in its supply chain. In this approach the product is not actually warehoused in a facility, but the facility houses a process where trucks from suppliers arrive and unload large quantities of products. These large lots are then broken down into smaller lots which are then reassembled and loaded onto outbound trucks".
Now let me collate this with what Thomas Friedman says in "The World is Flat"
" I had never seen what a supply chain looked like in action until i visited the Walmart Headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas". My Walmart hosts took me over to the 1.2 million square foot distribution centre, where we climbed up to a viewing perch and watched the show. On one side of the building, scores of white Walmart trucks were dropping off boxes of merchandise from thousands of different suppliers. Boxes large and small were fed up a conveyor belt at each loading dock. These little conveyor belts fed into a bigger belt, like streams feeding into a powerful river. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, the suppliers trucks feed the twelve miles of conveyor streams and the coneyor streams feed into a huge Walmart river of boxed products. But that is just half the show. As the Walmart river flows along, an electric eye reads the barcodes on each box on its way to the other side of the building. There the river parts again into a hundred streams. Electric arms from each stream reach out and guide the boxes - ordered by particular Walmart stores - off the main river and down its stream, where another conveyor belt sweeps it into a waiting Walmart truck, which will rush these products to the shelves of the particular Walmart store somewhere in the country. There a customer will lift one of these products off the shelf, and the cashier will scan it in, and the moment that happens a signal will be generated. This signal will go out across the Walmart network to the supplier of that product - whether the supplier's factory is in Coastal china or Coastal Maine. The signal will pop up on the supplier's computer screen and prompt him to make another of that item and ship it via the Walmart supply chain, and the whole cycle will start anew. So no sooner does your arm lift a product off the local Walmart's shelf and onto the checkout counter than another mechanical arm starts making another one somewhere in the world. Call it "Walmart Symphony" in multiple movements with no finale. It just plays over 24/365: delivery, sorting, packing, distribution, buying, manufacturing, reordering, delivery, sorting, packing..."

Truly Amazing. The latter part of this whole activity where the customer triggers a signal to the supplier forms part of another act that Walmart has pioneered - Electronic data interchange with its suppliers.
What ever may be the cons, this is an amazing, well oiled beast of a machine ! Indian retailers have real reasons to worry. The price conscious Indian customer is an ideal Walmart target. Are the days of mom and pop stores really over ? Hmmm...it is sad to think so, as my father used to own a grocery store till a few years back. Well...it is an ever changing world.

Here is my namesake.He seems to be living his life to the fullest.

Okay, here is how i would solve the problem below,

When the cube is disassembled, we have 8 cubes with 3 black sides, 12 cubes with 2 black sides, 6 cubes with one black side and 1 cube with none.

Now when the cubes are put back, the 27 cubes can be arranged in 27! ways and each of the cubes can have 24 different orientations. So the denominator would be 24^27 * 27 !

Now going for the numerator.

The cubes with three black sides have to be arranged in the 8 corners and can be arranged in 8! ways and they can each be oriented in 3 ways so that the outerside is black and hence the total number of arrangements = 3^8 * 8!

The cubes with two black sides can be arranged in 12! ways and they can each be oriented in 2 ways so that the outerside is black and hence the total number of arrangements = 2^12 * 12!

The cubes with one black side can be arranged in 6! ways and they can each be oriented in 4 ways so that the outerside is black and hence the total number of arrangements = 4^6 * 6!

Now the last cube , the one with no black face has to go at the center of the cube and can be oriented in 24 ways. So total number of arrangements = 24.

So the probability that the reassembled cube is black
= (3^8 * 8! * 2^12 * 12! * 4^6 * 6! * 24) / (24^27 * 27 !)

Did i miss anything ??

Thought for the day

Twenty-seven identical white cubes are assembled into a single cube, the outside of which is painted black. The cube is then disassembled and the smaller cubes thoroughly shuffled in a bag. A blindfolded man (who cannot feel the paint) reassembles the pieces into a cube. What is the probability that the outside of this cube is completely black?