VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [132]
“So you’re looking for an equation,” said Jayro. “An equation, or set of equations, that will calculate the time to reliably replenish and whatever quantity is needed for the material buffers feeding Godzilla.”
“Yes, that’s the size of it.”
“And of course this has to be calculated for every material we use,” said Jayro.
“Start with the troublesome ones first,” Murphy suggested.
“Well, it looks like I do have exciting challenges ahead of me,” said Jayro.
“If you would like, I can probably get one of the Microbursts – the IT fellas – downtown to help out,” said Murphy. “But I don’t want to steal any of your fun.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’m sure there’s more than enough fun to go around,” said Jayro. “And I’m serious, Murph, if this helps my supply headaches to go away, it will be well worth it.”
Everybody liked Joe Tassoni. But there were times when he could be a real pain in the neck. After the meeting, the analysts began to focus their efforts on a one-time, all-out attempt to eliminate the design review backlog – and within a week, they had largely succeeded. They then began to abide by the morning routine for reviews. When new review requests came in from Sales, they would deal with them first thing in the morning, and if possible issue the clearance that same day. Even Joe was doing this at first, but after three or four days, he just plain began to ignore the reviews. This came to Sarah’s attention, and she went to see him.
“Joe, what are we going to do with you? Just look at this!”
From the edge of Joe Tassoni’s office, Sarah stood aghast, surveying the piles and piles and piles of lab reports, program folders, sheets of handwritten notes, compact discs, professional journals, and email printouts. Yes, email. Joe fundamentally despised computers, and so he printed everything. And then there were all of Joe’s personal amenities: his cappuccino maker, his pots of herbs, his tomato trellis, his little refrigerator, his Limoges china and his Tiffany silverware kept stored in the same safe along with heaps of classified documents. Sarah regarded this array of chaos – an oxymoron, yet applicable, because the general chaos was ordered into groups of chaos.
“I use the pile system,” said Joe, seated at his desk.
“I can see that,” said Sarah.
“But I know where everything is. Just because something doesn’t use electricity does not mean it doesn’t work.”
“Right,” said Sarah, having her doubts. “Well, as Murph Maguire might put it, at least your inventory is visible.”
“What you mean by that?” asked Joe, curiously.
“Your inventory – what you have to work on – is out in the open. With the other analysts, it’s mostly hidden away on hard drives and servers. They probably have just as much as you do, but no one can see it.”
Joe brightened at this, hearing the comment as a positive, which in one way it was.
“Tell me,” said Sarah, “in these piles, how many different projects are in progress?”
Joe shrugged, and said, “It depends. Maybe a few dozen.”
“A few dozen? And how long would it take to finish any single one of those projects?”
“It’s hard to say. Some a few months, some a few minutes.”
“A few minutes?” asked Sarah.
“Yes. It depends.”
“The ones that could be finished in a few minutes,” said Sarah, “why don’t you just take those few minutes, like right now, and finish them?”
“Well, again, it depends. For some, I am waiting for one or two things – tests, documentation, other opinions, what have you – before I can finish them. For others, I just haven’t gotten to them yet because I am working on something else.”
Sarah nodded. “I see.”
Whenever Sarah Schwick wanted to talk about something nontechnical, she always went to Brenda.
Brenda was in charge of client billings and had been with Formulation & Design since the very beginning. She knew the corners of every closet in the place,