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Greetings and Welcome to The 405 Coffee Break with O.K. Solberg
New episodes tend to air over the local KMMR radio station @ 5 minutes past 4PM each M-F. And have been doing so, nearly every week since Sept 2018.
I'm D.J. Rasmussen, O.K.s friend since junior high, possibly your neighbor & this websites maintainer, whom strives to get each episode's show notes written, the transcript proofed and the audio posted to the internet within a few hours of that days KMMR air time. NOTE: recently been publishing most new releases by 4:30PM.
Thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoy the time we can spend together.
I want to again welcome you to The 405 Coffee Break. Get you a cup of coffee, beverage of your choice. Let's see what's happening.
OK Solberg:Spring wheat pretty solid $6.98 a bushel and harvest is going on. 550lb steer calf, I'm gonna give you a range, all steer calves are not created equal, from $4.50 all the way up to $4.95 depending on their condition per pound for fall delivery. And a 100lb fat lamb in Billings $3.05 all the way up to $3.15 if they're shiny. But guys there's more, much more.
OK Solberg:Okay. Okay. Yesterday, we talked about organizing all 30 of the Major League Baseball teams and getting them all to play a 162 games and put in all into one organized schedule. So that got me to thinking about other organizational nightmares. You think scheduling Major League Baseball is complicated.
OK Solberg:Listen, Try telling 10,000 airline employees where they're supposed to be tomorrow morning. Now that is a scheduling problem. 10,000 employees? Are you kidding? Yes, sir.
OK Solberg:Did you realize every day American Airlines has airplanes going one direction, pilots going another, flight attendants who have to get home, crews who need rest, employees who are qualified to fly certain airplanes but not others, and federal rules that say, in effect, you can work this long but after that buddy, you're going to go to bed.
OK Solberg:And somewhere in the middle of all this is a person or rather a whole bunch of people who have to make it all work. Think about our own calendar. You know, say you have a doctor's appointment Tuesday at 10, church on Wednesday evening, maybe a grandchild's birthday party Saturday afternoon, that's 3 things.
OK Solberg:Now imagine having to schedule thousands of people, thousands of flights, hundreds of airplanes, multiple cities, work rules, rest requirements, and connections. And if you get it wrong, well, you don't just disappoint someone. You might have an airplane sitting on the ground with nobody legally available to fly it.
OK Solberg:So American Airlines turned to something that sounds like it belongs in a college mathematics department, mathematical optimization. In other words, instead of simply asking, can we make a schedule, they ask, can we make the best schedule?
OK Solberg:Computers were given the enormous puzzle of matching crews to flights while satisfying all those rules and restrictions. And here's where the story gets really interesting. American Airlines developed an optimization approach to its crew scheduling problem and estimated by doing so, they saved approximately $18,000,000 a year.
OK Solberg:Really? 18,000,000. Now that's a lot of money to save by figuring out who sits in which airplane. But, really, that's not what they're doing. They are solving a gigantic puzzle. Suppose flight 217 leaves Dallas at 07:10 in the morning. Somebody has to fly it, but that pilot may have arrived in Dallas the night before.
OK Solberg:And that pilot may need to fly somewhere else afterwards. And that airplane may have to leave again with another crew. And that crew may need to connect to another flight. You get the picture. And that flight may be carrying a crew that has to get somewhere else. And suddenly, one little change and one little flight can ripple through the entire system.
OK Solberg:You know, it's kinda like trying to rearrange the seating at a family reunion, except the family reunion has 10,000 people, thousands of airplanes, federal regulations, and an $18,000,000 price tag. Nears the part all math teachers from high school and college will love love.
OK Solberg:While us students tended to think of mathematics as numbers on a blackboard, here mathematics is what gets people where they're supposed to be. And in real life, that works. The Major League Baseball schedule has to answer who plays whom, where, and when.
OK Solberg:The airline schedule has to answer who flies whom, where, when, and who gets to go home afterwards. And somewhere behind all those departure schedules and boarding passes is an army of schedulers, mathematicians, and computers quietly trying to make the impossible look, well, routine.
OK Solberg:Think about it. All we do, we board the airplane, we find our seat, put our carry on bag in the overhead, and buckle our seat belt. And we never once think of all the organization it took to have that plane there for us on time.
OK Solberg:Sometimes it's good to look behind the scenes, and I'll close the episode with the same bible verse that I used yesterday because it fits so well. 1st Corinthians 14:40 but all things should be done decently and in order. 1st Corinthians 14:40
OK Solberg:Organization. It helps put our lives in order.
OK Solberg:So until next time, as you go out there, remember now, don't be bitter.