Flu Vaccine: Shortage or Overestimate?

Posted by Robert Merrill on October 26, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

Once again, reality fails to conform to plan, even in the case of something seemingly similar to something done every year—the manufacture and distribution of influenza vaccine.

In “Swine Flu Vaccine Shortage: Why?” on NPR.org, we learn that late-in-the-process verification of actual yields, and a bottleneck at the packaging stage, have led to a late-in-the-lifecycle discovery that we don’t have nearly as much vaccine as we expected to have by now.

It will be interesting to watch the story unfold. Here are my predictions of what we will learn: Read more of this article »

WI AT&T President speaks on telecom trends at WIN Milwaukee

Posted by Robert Merrill on October 8, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

Today’s speaker at WIN Milwaukee was Scott T. VanderSanden, president of AT&T Wisconsin, on the topic of “Telecom Innovation and Economic Growth.” He pointed out some things that I kind-of knew but hadn’t really thought about, and also told me some surprising things that I had never heard. Read more of this article »

(T/F): Agile is to Software as Lean is to Manufacturing?

Posted by Robert Merrill on under Agile Methods, Software-Intensive Businesses | Be the First to Comment

If your firm hires or contracts programmers, and your business results depend on their work (and if your business results don’t, why did you hire or contract programmers?), this question is for you. Read more of this article »