Spoon Man
Posted 01.31.11 at 08:51 AM UTC
Tagged nonsense, work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

I don't think I've yet mentioned here that the Nescafe container here has a permanent resident spoon for offloading to a cup. The poor spoon is actually corroding due to the acidity and general filth of Nescafe.

I was hoping I wouldn't get all the way to mid-morning without knowing how my day would go, but it's looking that way. My system changes were approved Friday night but are a bit uncertain as to whether they went into the system as promised.

The other system I busted Friday afternoon was checked by a certifiable doofus this morning and cleared for new usage, but there's like a 5% chance there's something bad-wrong that I will find out about soon.

I am a tremendous pain in the butt about the latter system, as I don't trust it and have seen so many failures and glitches in it I am generally neurotic about using it. I try to delay asking Manila to check for failures until at least 30 minutes after the system's consumption of the file, but normally I break after 10 minutes and they have to check way too early and see "In Progress."

I rig up an SAP transaction that checks for success. Failures are not announced this way, and I don't have permission to check for failures the normal way. This is life in this system's security policies. Read-only access is considered a controls risk.

I used to think Manila was crazy to be so scared of it, but now I'm mortified. That's what I get.

Moving prep is going well. We're in basically a constant roundtable discussion to try to decide when the ocean shipment leaves. Sleeping on the floor is no biggie for me in the amount of time we're talking about (basically any time after this week is fine with me, even though that's really early).

I am pushing for plane tickets. The pre-move inspection is this Friday, and after that we will probably start taking down the curtain rods and prepare for a pre-move-out inspection by the guy who would help us patch holes and possibly repair the damage I did to the miserably cheap drywall hanging those curtains!

The pre-move inspection should give us ideas on the limits of the moving timing.

End-of-Life-ing a Lifestyle
Posted 01.25.11 at 12:05 PM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

I remember an MBA class where we did a supply chain simulation. We were pushing product from a factory to a distributorship to end customers. You play a role in the process with varying levels of cooperative information (i.e., perhaps the factory tells you when they forecast a production run or you get demand information from the retailer).

This was competitive within the class for grades (not my favorite method), and the bounded nature of the scenario drove up the incentive to essentially run yourself dry on product right before the end of the simulation.

The professor tried to forbid this, basically telling everyone we should run the business steady-state to the end rather than pretending like there was going to be a shutdown.

I have thought a little about this scenario as we begin our preparations to leave here. A lot of stuff around us is completely falling apart. The worst offenders are probably our bedsheets (where we would be better quoting a nub count rather than a thread count; they were wedding gifts), ice cube trays fatiguing severely down the center support, soap bottles requiring heroic pumping to get anything out, trash can lids stuck shut, and towels edging toward that mild-permanent-funk zone.

We have special issues around liquids, which we can ship in neither of our major shipments and would only be able to carry home in checked bags on the plane.

Plus, a lot of stuff just simply sucks here (at least at price parity with the US equivalents), like towels and kitchen products. Not to mention electronics. We don't need ice trays in the States (this is a subtle thing that will be much appreciated when it's back to automatic production), and we've already caught a few things on sale that are waiting for us at the house when we get back. There's not much point in going on a shopping spree right now for much of anything.

There are some big decisions to make around 220V-only small appliances we've purchased and the mostly-PAL television and the mostly-A4 printer. Most of these have designated homes chosen already. We might throw in a few complementary half bottles of various cleaning and cooking liquids to anyone willing to take something big off our hands.

The simple timing of the two shipments (air and ocean) will be a prickly subject. As opposed to expatriating where you need everything, we don't need a whole lot immediately upon arrival. The sheer accidental genius of leaving the guest bedroom suite intact in the house saved us from urgent furniture scarcity.

I will probably win the "relo employee of the year" award for my responsiveness (just a little eager!). I just did an inventory of the different parties involved in my move:

• Local HR representative in Turkey
• Local HR representative in US
• "Sending" HR advisor in Krakow
• "Receiving" HR advisor in Manila
• General administrative consultancy for administering expense claims, realtors, etc.
• General shipping contractor
• Subcontractor of the shipping GC to actually handle the job in Turkey
• Third-party insurance company to insure shipped items
• General contractor for providing exit assistance (closing accounts, getting out of leases)
• Subcontractor of the exit assistance GC to actually handle the job in Turkey
• A general consultancy for "settling in" to the new location, including neighborhood selection and employment laws

It's quite a deal. But the ball is starting to roll...

Bite the Bullet
Posted 01.14.11 at 08:30 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics, properly_directed_anger | # | Comment [0]

I told myself I would have a serene day today, but I didn't factor in getting immediately screwed by IT and the customer service center as soon as I walked in the door.

The IT thing isn't a big deal; it will just serve as an introduction to our glorious IT processes for our new hire, who will not have a computer account or laptop when she gets here due to awful management of requests.

(By the way, I read something yesterday where a semicolon was called a "Harvard comma.")

Conversely, the CSC thing is bad news bears. I created over 2,000 line items yesterday in the system, and some doofus basically went through and mucked them up this morning because they were on an error log (they were on the error log intentionally, by the way).

My mental picture of this is a guy in a straitjacket bouncing around in a padded room occasionally hitting the delete key with his head, but you are free to develop whatever visual concept you like.

He is now on my error log, and I would like to do some serious mucking up of my own. He just cost Manila probably 4 man-hours of manually going through, one by one, canceling the orders he messed up. Then, he cost me over 2 man-hours reuploading everything to a crotchedy old system, before I can do the additional uploading I planned to do today, which probably will not happen at this point. Plus, just under half of the total orders were preserved and went to billing, meaning we have to sort out which are which.

It's actually a great thing when this kind of situation happens on Friday, though...

SLA, or Outsourcing Story
Posted 01.11.11 at 07:28 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

Having been directly involved in a successful offshoring implementation (that actually made business sense) makes me very sensitive to piss-poor offshoring performance. A few islands down the road from our Asian Pacific island, we have some operations that are currently causing me trouble.

Most of these interactions are governed by a Service Level Agreement, or SLA, which is basically a contract with a guarantee of maximum wait time for a request and any other important performance metrics to ensure customer satisfaction and efficiency.

Even leveraging some very clever mathematical tactics, my current request is quite overdue, and I have very little foothold to contact anyone to complain. This is pretty much the story with offshoring performance inside the corporate world if the partner or department is not performing well.

The fuzzy math going on is as follows: a request for a new user account is governed by a one-day SLA. I was very excited to see that, because in the past these requests can drag on for weeks. However, they noted that the SLA actually begins not when the request is received, but when approval is received.

I thought, fair enough, why should they be accountable for a slow response from the requesting business? I can get on the ball and make sure I swing an approval as soon as possible. But reviewing the request, it said "Approval Required: No."

When I checked the status on the web, it said "Under Review" or something like that. Seven hours later, I get an approval request. Shady. So, I get the approval turned around within an hour (I've already lost a full day, of course) and start the SLA clock. That was Friday afternoon, so no matter what times they're working over there, a business day has passed by now.

I wrote an e-mail complaining about the SLA breach, and the SLA response time limit for a complaint e-mail is one business day! I wonder when they will respond to my complaint! I assume they will complete the request and then write back making me look like a jerk for complaining right before the request is completed.

This kind of stuff is maddening. I mean, I feel acutely thankful that a petty handover thing like this is my chief problem right now, but why is this a problem? This is not even a hardware request (that comes after I get the account set up). So, everything is gridlocked until that request goes through.

The Handshake
Posted 12.17.10 at 07:43 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

It's official now:

Whaddaya Do When All Your Enemies Are Friends?
Posted 12.16.10 at 08:36 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

We would all understand ourselves a lot better if we could somehow separate the influences on our mental state and analyze each one individually. Of course, this is futile even if it were somehow possible.

My recent quiz has been about this week, which has been pretty terrible by any measure. I think it might have been worsened because we're so so close to coming home. I remember getting pretty irritable before we came home last time. But I know on an objective basis this has been really bad conditions.

The system gurus who designed our new architecture only tested our stuff for one month of activity. Upon the second month closing, a lot of stuff blew up in strange, unique ways. I am the only person locally who has done the research on the root cause and understands how to fix the problem.

I feel like this situation is kind of a hand grenade being tossed around and some people do not want to get close enough to the issue to take any heat.

This is not a computer programming problem or something from my end. People act like it is. This is a process problem with a technical but logical solution. But, the logic I'm applying here is engineering logic, troubleshooting, like you would employ when you fix someone's computer or something.

The people adept at this activity cannot see how it isn't obvious, but my observation is that there is another group of people who just don't follow that thought process. They look at things differently, which is an asset until you get cornered into a pure troubleshooting situation.

As I have said about geometry proofs and programming in general, a troubleshooter sees a problem as a limited world with a finite set of moving parts and tools. You isolate the problem and then look at your toolbox to see what you can throw together. I compared myself to a surgeon yesterday coming out and saying, "I did everything I could do." In a limited world, you can reach the end of your tools.

I am writing this now because I have dropped an 859 line file into this miserable bulk uploading system we have. If this file goes through I will drop another <100 line file, then we will do some extra processing and I will have thousands of lines to drop, most likely. This should really all get done today.

The file was just picked up. The system is running at 400% the maximum expected lead time. Busy day.

Hopefully something successful will come from this, or I will have bad news to break this evening...

Fringe Benefits
Posted 11.24.10 at 08:32 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

Who would have known the best Turkish translation of "Retail Finance Fees" is in fact "Other Products and Services"?

SAP is a vastly complex, configurable, but also strict system. We (a very Global We) have put an overlay atop this system that makes it much less configurable but still very complex. We're virtually disallowed to create new "material" codes (finance fees are a material in SAP land), and the ones we have suck. We don't charge finance fees from my area, but we need a code to get other stuff charged.

Luckily, we're not an English locale, because we DO have control over the localized translation of each product description. So, as long as your customers do not receive English printouts from SAP, you can translate the items into any description you want.

Bad E-Mails: This Time, Mea Culpa
Posted 10.19.10 at 07:57 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

Hopefully to close this issue permanently, please check the attached customer codes for a general block and/or a block on 06.

If there is a general block, please unblock general, reblock 02 and 03, and unblock 06 as described below.

If there is a block on 06, please remove this block.

Attached File: All Blocks.xls

Sometimes, in the depths of techncial SAP work, you just can't say it without saying the same word 500 times.

W-w-w-what?
Posted 10.12.10 at 06:22 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [1]

"This is part of the Q3 results appraisal wherein the attached excel spreadsheet would replace the earlier file, the difference being the fact that we are not asking for commentaries from all OUs for all cash flow movements during the quarter. But we would need commentaries for working capital movements more than $100m to comply with DFJ requirements for which a the DFJ Working capital template would be sent on WD9.The change in the process is to avoid duplication of efforts in filling the commentaries."

Mood: Corn-fused

Term of the Day
Posted 10.08.10 at 07:36 AM UTC
Tagged work_and_academics | # | Comment [0]

"Retail Peacocking"
Source kept anonymous and not me.

The art of establishing seniority and importance through subliminal or indirect methods. Often used to deflect responsibility. Unknown in most other business units.

Mood: Rainy