By The Numbers

There are many things I have enjoyed about my career so far. Planning material availability and scheduling production capacity to meet aggressive customer demand. Analyzing usage trends to give suppliers long-term forecasts. Gathering data to find where the waste in an operation is, and where the value is.

Some of my relatives and friends have suggested I get a Masters in Statistics. If I do, it will be my mission to use numbers to make the world more, not less, understandable. Too often I see news reports or books where someone uses fancy equations to justify something that would make no sense otherwise. Examples of that to come.

Writing Myself

In the decade before this, when I was working for the second of six companies which have employed me in some production planning capacity, I started getting that dream which often comes to those struggling for meaning in their occupations. I had an idea for a book based on me. It would have gone something like this:

A young man goes to work for a manufacturing company, partially because he thinks he can revive our nation's industrial capacity from the bottom up, also because he saw his father lose a business to the Carter downturn and a job to the Bush 41 sequel. Our hero battles co-workers who want things to stay the same, suppliers with similar problems, and general corporate nonsense in the name of serving customers. Eventually he sees that all his efforts, indeed his whole life, has been making sure everyone gets what they want, but not him. So now he asks, how can I fill my "personal shortages?"

No third act came to mind, but I face it now.