Tim Oren's Due Diligence

Ammo Shortages And The Beer Game

If you have anything at all to do with shooting sports, even having a family member or friend who's a devotée, you've heard about the ammo shortages. Pretty much all the popular and some not-so-popular rifle and pistol calibers have become scarce and pricey. Causes ascribed to the ammo drought range from dark government conspiracy to war stockpiling to metals shortages. The truth is likely more prosaic.

This post at the 'Books, Bikes and Boomsticks' blog lays out some of the basics of ammo production and the current supply and demand situation. To simplify (read the post for details), there's a fairly fixed supply capacity, some portion of which can be converted amongst calibers. There's been a spike in retail demand since last fall, probably caused by a combination of fears of civil disorder in the wake of economic collapse and/or moves against ammo supplies by the leftist Obama administration.

This all brought back memories of a little simulation that I've encountered in the past, the Beer Game, which was originated at the MIT Sloan School back in the '60s. Details of the game are given here, but basically it simulates the production, distribution and sale of beer, from manufacturer through distributor, wholesaler, and finally retailer. Players take on one of these roles, and the only communication allowed amongst them is placing their next week's order for fulfillment from up the chain. There's a scoring function that penalizes for holding inventory, but even more for not having stock on hand to fill an order.

After setting up the players and roles and initial inventories, the moderator (or computer, these days) does exactly one more thing: Presents a sharp spike in demand to the player representing the retailer.

Chaos ensues. Every time. It's not giving anything away to say that the result is always gross oscillation in both inventory levels and ordering, which gets worse and worse as demand is aggregated up the supply chain. That dynamic instability is built into the system structure, and all it takes is a sharp transient in the input to kick it off.

I first played this as a graduate student in systems science in the late 70s, and the experience stuck with me. I encountered it again in the late 90s as a participant in an executive workshop, and even though I knew what was about to happen, there was nothing that could be done about it without breaking the information exchange rules of the game. It did make it a lot funnier, however.

The point, of course, is that rule about limited information exchange. After you've been through a session of the Beer Game, you're not going to argue about the value of visibility of inventories and pull-through rates throughout supply and distribution chains. (There's also a meta-message: The best people, with the best practices and data, will still end up SOL if they're working in a system that's structured contrary to their goals.)

Now go back and read the blog post about ammo supply, if you didn't already. Once you get outside of Wal-Mart, and maybe Cabela's, it's a fragmented sector of small retail gun shops, with little to no IT infrastructure and working through at least one level of distribution, along with a smattering of specialist online vendors. Which all got hit with a demand spike back last fall. In the case of the ammo shortages, it's neither incompetence nor conspiracy, it's the nature of the beast. (And maybe some bright entrepreneur can figure out how to make a buck by fixing it.)

<PSA> Boom first, beer later. </PSA>

The Roving Eye: That Mysterious Yellow Line, A New Long Tail Graph, Why CFLs Suck, Harsh Reality on Gaza

How do they do that? That was a great Super Bowl, lots of momentum shifts and 'did that really just happen?' plays. But enough about the game - didn't you ever wonder how they get that first down line onto the field? Here's how it works. A fascinating system integrating technologies from exotic to humble: modems on the audio channel!? Hat tip: Ole Eichhorn.

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN! OK, this is funny. Ain't it wonderful the serious research you can do with the modern intertubes?

Yeah, me too. Even the advocates of 'green' fluorescent lights admit the quality is horrible. When we moved into our new home in 2000, I outfitted the kitchen with all CFLs. My wife didn't like the appearance, so they were moved to my study, where every one of the set is still working. Flash forward to late 2008. I pick up a four pack at a low (probably PG&E subsidized) price at Home Depot. One of the four is DOA. One the survivors gives a light so harsh it goes on the shelf. I'm watching to see if the other two outlive a typical incandescent. Quality standards have collapsed as CFLs have gone mainstream. I might suppose it could have something to do with anticipation of a government mandate, but that would be cynical. Fortunately, LED lighting that will actually deliver on longevity and decent emissions spectrum is dropping in price. (Disclosure: I have an investment in a company that supplies the LED industry.)

And yet more greenery education. Or would that be propaganda?

Michael Totten delivers... one of the most informative interviews on Israel and the Palestinians that I've read in a long time. Note I'm saying informative and insightful, not optimistic. A dash of cold water for those who would like to believe there's a 'solution' for the mess, but well worth the read.

Two Cheers For NBC and The Olympics - or - Why Can't The Peacock Sell Internet Ads?

Four years ago I savaged the IOC and the Athens Olympics for culpable cluelessness in dealing with the Internet. Fair is fair, so I'm here to acknowledge that the IOC and their US mainstream media channel, NBC, have surpassed that weak performance and turned in a new Olympic record for Internet clues. In many other ways, however, they continue to display retrograde notions about distribution control and the potential of the medium. And NBC appears to be deliberately not selling the advertising inventory from its Internet video feeds. 

The Good 

NBC has done a good job integrating its television and Internet offerings into one master schedule and site. Could use some interface help, here and there, but it generally works.

Viewing NBC's online video clips or feeds requires installing the Microsoft Silverlight player. Hmmmm. Microsoft. Beta software. Trepidation. Macintosh. Safari. More trepidation. But I must say that it so far it looks decent, and has been remarkably stable. It's gotten befuddled when coming back from sleep mode, or in a few cases of a lost feed, but it's never crashed itself or taken down the browser. And so far as I can tell at this point it hasn't done anything evil or unwanted to any of my system settings.

And as a result I've gotten a good down payment on something that should have been done back in 2004: The ability to get live feeds and archives from the lesser known events, and those where the US doesn't necessarily have competitors or a chance. So far I've watched all of the shooting finals, including a men's air rifle event that came down to one shot. I've seen a world record set in the women's team archery, caught a couple of the sailing races, and part of the cross-country portion of the equestrian event. And I dipped into a few other events and decided they weren't for me.

The net is just the place for this kind of event and coverage. Let's face it, unless you're into the particular sport, some of these events are about as exciting as watching paint dry. And they don't necessarily feature the sort of male and female hard bodies, more or less covered, that make for good television ratings. So give NBC some credit for sorting out their big audience attractions and the 'long tail' events, and dealing with both effectively.

The Bad

NBC is still grossly afflicted with some combination of channel conflict between the old video media and the new, and clue shortages by its management The attempts to paper over its MSM instincts are obviously strained. One almost suspects rival channel groups parsing out terms of a treaty, watched over by phalanxes of copyright attorneys and affiliate relationship managers.

It started from the top, with the opening ceremonies. NBC ran the program on tape delay, and sent out that phalanx of attorneys to try to plug Americans' access to any live feed. When it posted Internet views of the ceremonies, they were deliberately shuffled in order so that the American teams entry wouldn't appear on the net before it did on the tape delay. The commentators spent so much time pointing out that 'Chinese has no alphabetical order' that one had to wonder if they were hoping someone watching the Internet version (I did) wouldn't happen to notice how the stadium in-field magically became less full after commercial breaks. File this one under "Do they think we are idiots?" In this case, they're the idiots. A good chunk of their audience was TiVoing anyway, and the number who would stay up to see it live is small. The ability to reassemble the mass audience, at one time for one event, is on its way out. Get over it, NBC, and learn to deal.

Ditto the decision to censor the live feeds of the 'big events' from the Internet. Anything with those aforementioned hard bodies, from gymnastics to swimming to beach volleyball, is not to appear on the net until well after the tape delay, let alone the real event. Of course, anyone with a vestigial brain can figure out how to get the results from myriad outlets around the world long before NBC deigns to show us. Get a clue. Learn to use the two channels side by side, meeting people where and when they want to be.

Of course, the mainstream video coverage is as lame as ever. The MSM tendency to reduce everything to people 'journalism' is on full display. Even the hard bodies can't save an event if the US gets knocked out, and suddenly those sports down in the remainder bin become important should we happen to medal. I'm not really expecting improvement here, it's what the medium has become, but at least a little futile whinging seems in order. I'm dealing by using the TV as background, with the audio off, while running the net.

And speaking of those lesser sports - and even some of the big events - what happened to all the prelims and elimination rounds? Somehow 64+ competitors get whittled down to a few finalists, and we see nothing of it. If you've ever wondered what happened to all those who march in from smaller nations, never to be seen again, you're not going to find out from NBC. And what would it take? One camera pointed at whatever field of play, and one at the official scoreboard, and an open mike. No commentary, no 'added value', but let's face it, you're not going to be watching prelims in a lesser known sport if you don't know what you're looking at. The IOC should just do this itself next time, or mandate it from its MSM partners.

The Ugly

NBC is apparently deriving no revenue at all from its Internet based video coverage. The video interstitials that show up when changing event 'channels' are all from GE, as well as many of the banners on the main site. If you missed it, NBC belongs to GE, at least for now, so those are all 'house ads'. As in, no revenue.

There's got to be a story here. Are they expecting me to believe that not one supplier of shooting or archery equipment had any interest in those spots, at any price? Or that those catering to the horsey or sailing crowds wouldn't be interested in reaching those upscale consumers while they're watching their favorite activity? Give me a break.

The only possible conclusion is that NBC didn't try to sell the video inventory. One has to wonder why. Was that the price extracted by the affiliates to let any coverage to escape onto the net? Is this how senior management will try to justify complaints about revenue cannibalization by the net, since they've guaranteed they won't have any income on that side of the house? Maybe some enterprising new media reporter can chase this one down.